‘Twas the night before Christmas

And at MMAFighting.com

The sport settled down for a holiday calm

Most major promotions were done for the year

So the time has come for some holiday cheer!

Who has been Naughty and who has been Nice?

Santa Meshew is the arbiter of Virtue and Vice

He bounds down the chimney with presents for all

Then he’s away in a flash, with one final call:

“On Coker! On Chatri! On Sefo! On White!”

“Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.”

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The 2022 Naughty and Nice List

Great question, Jed!

Obviously this is the sort of list that could sprawl to rival even Santa’s, given how many fighters there are out there, so in the interest of keeping things manageable, I’ve decided to limit the number of entries to three apiece. So, without further ado:

The 2022 Naughty List

Douglas Crosby

Crosby, one of the sports most maligned judges in general, was in his bag deeper than Saint Nick this year. Crosby submitted 57 scorecards in 2022 (per MMADecisions), with seven of those coming in split decisions. By my count, in five of those Crosby was on the wrong side of the decision (though some are worse than others), and none of this includes the Paddy Pimblett fiasco, or Andrei Arlovski getting a gift decision over Jake Collier, or the controversial Daniel Rodriguez over Li Jingliang scorecard. But that’s not why Crosby made the Naughty List; it’s because the man can’t take an L.

There is nothing wrong with being wrong, it’s part of the human experience. Everyone is not right all the time, even when that is part of their job description. The key though is admitting your mistakes, and Crosby failed spectacularly in this regard. If Crsoby wants to defend some of his terrible scorecards, that’s dumb but whatever. But speaking out in response to backlash by functionally admitting that you don’t do your job well (basically, Crosby blames issues on short time and the process of submitting scores, except how he explains it is not how the process is taught) and then hand-waiving away the extremely valid criticism about judging fights on back-to-back nights on opposite sides of the country with a “that’s just a classist attack on me” is Grade A nonsense. Coal for you, Mr. Crosby.

Kamaru Usman, Justin Gaethje, and Henry Cejudo

Accepting gifts from a warlord means you get no gifts from Santa. That’s the rule.

Jake Shields and Jorge Masvidal

I don’t care what anyone says to you, you can’t go around assaulting people, even if they are also professional fighters. In fact, in that instance, just fight those people professionally instead of attacking them in public. We live in a society and that’s not how this works.

The 2022 Nice List

Dustin Poirier

For one thing, Poirier beat up Michael Chandler, which is always the fastest way to make my Nice list any year. But for another, Poirier continues to be an all-around great guy with his charity work, providing 500 Thanksgiving meals to those less fortunate last month. The standard bearer of being a good person in this sport.

Nate Diaz

I’m throwing a curveball here because as you probably know, Nate is not always the nicest person to others, particular on the Twitter machine. However, he gets a pass onto this year’s list because after the UFC stalled for nearly a year and then did its best to publicly humiliate him, and then Nate got a Christmas miracle and came out of everything smelling like roses, he took the high road. The holidays are not about dancing on the graves of your enemies. They’re about forgiveness and family, and friggin’ Stockton 209.

You

If you’re here and reading this, if you love this sport despite it’s many, glaring failings, if you support MMAFighting or myself or any of the people who do our best to provide you with information and entertainment, I love you all and hope Santa brings you the moon.

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Gifts!

I love giving gifts! Let’s hand out a few.

UFC

I’m not particularly interested in doing the UFC any favors given that the recent price hike on PPVs should land them squarely on the Naughty List (I know that’s technically an ESPN decision but come on), and so instead I will do the classic Christmas strategy of giving your significant other a gift that’s really for you, in this case: UFC Africa.

The UFC’s return to London this year was electric and their debut in France was awesome. They’ve been teasing a UFC Africa for years, with Dana White saying they are targeting it for 2023. Of all the presents in the world, I would give the UFC that one because truly, we would be the ones to benefit.

Bellator

This is a tough one. There are so many to choose from, but I’m going to go with the one I think would be the single-biggest win for them: a new name.

Bellator is an outrageously dumb name. The only people who know what it means are WAY too deep into the MMA game, and it’s objectively off-putting to any common sports fan. Imagine if the NFL was called Pedesphera? Do you think anyone would watch that? Of course not. So for Christmas, Bellator gets rebranded Showtime MMA or

PFL

For the organization that is starting to really gain traction, I offer them something they desperately need in 2023: a bantamweight division.

135 pounds is one of the deepest and most interesting divisions in the world, with no shortage of talent to build from. Featherweight and lightweight have been excellent for them. Let’s keep it going as we try to create a new WEC.

ONE

With ONE’s Amazon deal, I’m not sure what to give the organization that has everything. Broad distribution, billions of viewers, and some damn good fighters on roster is all any promoter can ask for. So I’m left with the gift you give someone when you don’t know what to give them: a gift card to Barnes and Noble.

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Thanks for reading and thank you for everyone who sent in Tweets! Do you have any burning questions about things at least somewhat related to combat sports? Then you’re in luck, because you can send your Hot Tweets to me, @JedKMeshew, and I will answer them! Doesn’t matter if they’re topical or insane. Send them to me and I’ll answer the ones I like the most. Let’s have fun.