Bleacher Report

Former boxing champion Paulie Malignaggi (36-8), now an announcer for Showtime, knew something was up the minute he walked into the UFC's new performance institute to square off for a second time with the promotion's lightweight champion. The first time he'd sparred with Conor McGregor, who is preparing for a bout with boxing's greatest contemporary fighter, Floyd Mayweather, things were quite a bit different. That session was about putting in work, a private, gritty affair where the few men in the gym had to leave their cellphones in a box to ensure no unauthorized video or pictures leaked out.

Don't let the bright red toenails or the larger-than-life smile fool you. Cris "Cyborg" Justino, 145 pounds of roiling muscles and bad intentions, is not a woman you want to have angry at you, even in jest. Boyfriend, training partner and nonstop chatterbox Ray Elbe is learning that the hard way on the mats of the Cobrinha Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Academy. Though nestled in the bottom floor of an H&R Block office complex, the transactions happening here are physical, the only currency is pain. Elbe is on the receiving end as a kick to the ribs thuds through the small studio.

The UFC has become nearly synonymous with the sport of mixed martial arts. The Las Vegas-based promotion is home to many of the top MMA fighters in the world, and its events dominate the landscape. But that hasn't always been true. Before it was a piece in a billion-dollar company's portfolio, MMA was home to mavericks, outcasts and fanatics looking for a tiny slice of danger. The sport had an Eastern flair, and for nearly a decade, it called Tokyo its home. While the UFC was battling regulators, politicians and cable companies at home, Pride Fighting Championships was the dominant player in the space, featuring events equal parts ridiculous and sublime.

You can hear it in his voice, in the way he dives into answers before his translator can even begin to turn English into Spanish. For Saul "Canelo" Alvarez, known to most only as Canelo, Saturday's bout against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. is different. It's something more than just another prizefight.

Is the woman who dominated a sport, carrying it on her back from the fringes to the spotlight with her indomitable will, still lurking inside a seemingly broken husk? Rousey is not tipping her hand.

Mati was a product, he was consumed and then forgotten. Not that this bothers him. ... He's happy here, he says, among his people, one more martial artist on his journey. After all, if he's fighting with fame in mind, he's in the wrong place. "A lot of people watch boxing. A lot of people watch MMA," Mati tells me with a shrug. "Nobody watches kickboxing except fanatics."

In a sport built on respect, on old values bred in martial arts gyms around the world, McGregor was an aberration. His trash talk, often incredibly personal and sometimes racially charged, defied the established paradigm. The result was a fighter as divisive as anyone since the great Ali—a fighter with whom he was often compared.

Rances Barthelemy, a rising Premier Boxing Champions star who faces Denis Shafikov on Friday on Spike TV, had spent two long days lurking on the Cuban coast, hiding in the crags and roaming the rocky beaches before the boat to America finally arrived. That was a Sunday in 2007, two days after the planned Thursday night rendezvous. That's a long time to go without food and water, but for Barthelemy, the trip was just beginning. There was still the matter of swimming to the boat, a football field

Just five months after one of the greatest fights in modern boxing history, Sugar Ray Leonard and Roberto Duran met in a rematch that somehow managed to transcend the original. No classic in the ring, it was well on its way to being a notable fiasco. Had the bout gone to a decision as seemed its destiny, it would be remembered merely as a disappointment, proof that lightning rarely manages to strike twice. Around 60,000 tickets remained unsold as the two entered the ring, and in the second roun