‘Twas the night before Christmas

And at MMAFighting.com

The sport settled for holiday calm

Most major promotions were done for the year

It’s time to spread holiday cheer

Who has been Nice and who was Naughty?

Santa Meshew is the arbiter of Virtue and Vice

He runs down the chimney carrying presents for all

With one last call :

, he is gone in a flash.

“On Coker! On Chatri! Sefo Sefo!

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

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The 2022 Naughty and Nice List

Great question, Jed!

This is a list you could easily expand to rival Santa’s. Given the sheer number of fighters out there, it’s not surprising that this would be a long and complicated list. Therefore, in an effort to keep things simple, I have limited the entries to just three per person. Without further delay:

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. Crosby was not chosen for the Naughty list because he can’t accept an L .

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There is nothing wrong with being wrong, it’s part of the human experience. Everybody is wrong at times, even if it is part of their job. Acknowledging your errors is the key, which Crosby did spectacularly. 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. Crosby, coal for you. Crosby.

Kamaru Usman, Justin Gaethje, and Henry Cejudo

Accepting gifts from a warlord means you get no gifts from Santa. This is the exception.

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. You should fight them professionally, not in front of the public. This is not the way society works.

The 2022 Nice List

Dustin Poirier

Poirier defeated Michael Chandler which, in my opinion, is the best way to get on my Nice List every 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. He gets an exemption from this year’s roster because, after nearly a decade of UFC indecision, then trying to humiliate him publicly, Nate had a Christmas miracle, came out of it smelling like roses and 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 give 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. Out of all the gifts in the world I’d give UFC the one, because we are the ones that would 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. What if the NFL were called Pedesphera instead? Do you think anyone would watch that? No. For Christmas Bellator is rebranded Showtime MMA and

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. They have excelled at lightweight and featherweight. 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. The gift that you can give to someone who doesn’t know what gift to buy is a Barnes and Noble gift card.

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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! It doesn’t matter what topic they are. You can send them to me, and I will answer those I love the most. Let’s have fun.

Source: https://www.mmafighting.com/2022/12/24/23525197/hot-tweets-who-gets-presents-and-who-gets-coal-for-2022-in-mma?rand=96749