By: Frank Hyden, MMATorch Senior Columnist
2020 is finally coming to a close. I suppose I could do a good “Year in Review” type of thing and I’ll give it a shot here in a moment, but honestly this year felt like it was about 5 years long. Kobe Bryant died in late January, so not even a year ago yet that feels like a lifetime ago. Making this MMA related, Conor McGregor fought and beat Donald Cerrone in the middle of January of this year. Again, not even a year ago yet feels like a lifetime ago.
Personally, this has been a really tough year for me. I haven’t told anyone this online because we’re all dealing with things, but my dad died on March 20th. He had struggled with COPD for years and it finally got to be too much. You’re not prepared, of course, but too many people have had to deal with this stuff. I think the best way to deal with it is you just try to keep moving forward.
This has been a year of great loss. For a lot of people, that’s a result of Covid-19. Luckily for me, I’ve only had one person in my physical life that got Covid-19. That was my aunt, and she was fine. I’ve had some people in my online life be affected by Covid-19, though. I don’t want to make this divisive so I’ll refrain from giving further thoughts but I will say that I hope everyone enjoys good health and good times in 2021. I just wanted to bring all this up because it’s important to try to remember that we’re all people. We may disagree on things, and something that is far too prevalent is this notion of demonizing the “other side”. Just because you disagree with someone doesn’t make them a bad person. If I could give one piece of advice to people, especially young people but this is applicable to all, it would be to remember that social media is not real life. It can be easy to get caught up in it but one of the best things you can do for yourself is get off the internet and go out into the world and experience it. Perhaps make that a New Year’s Resolution?
Anyway, enough schmaltz. I’ll go over some of the bigger things that happened this year but probably not nearly all of them. I’m sure I’m missing some stuff and I’ll try to bring those up next time or something. As I said above, this year has felt so long that I have to be missing some major things.
UFC Departures-
Anderson Silva was released by the UFC in November, currently unsigned/may retire
Anthony Pettis was released in December, signed with Pro Fighters League
Daniel Cormier retired in August
Fabricio Werdum didn’t re-sign, will compete in PFL’s heavyweight tournament
Henry Cejudo retired in May
Khabib Nurmagomedov retired in October
Paige VanZant signed with Bare Knuckles FC for some reason
Yoel Romero released in December, signed with Bellator
Best Fights-
Zhang Weili vs. Joanna Jedrzejczyk from UFC 248
Justin Gaethje vs. Tony Ferguson at UFC 249
Deiveson Figueiredo vs. Brandon Moreno at UFC 256
Dustin Poirer vs. Dan Hooker at UFC Fight Night: Poirier vs. Hooker
Petr Yan vs. Jose Aldo at UFC 251
Stipe Miocic vs. Daniel Cormier at UFC 252
Big moments-
UFC announces that Venum will be their new apparel partner starting in April 2021
Bellator leaves Paramount Network, joins CBS Sports Network
Comments and suggestions can be emailed to me at hydenfrank@gmail.com and you can follow me on Twitter at @hydenfrank and you can check out my blog athttps://3pr117238763.wordpress.com/ where I talk about wrestling, sports, and videogames. Thanks for reading and have a good day.
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