A note before starting: This piece contains a lot of conversations that took place many years ago. They’re not word-for-word quotes, but they are pretty motherfucking close. The phone answering machine messages are exactly what was spoken.

WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder has agreed to terms to fight IBF, IBO, WBA, and WBO champion Anthony Joshua in a highly anticipated and exceedingly rare heavyweight unification bout, to be held in the United Kingdom, according to a report from ESPN’s Dan Rafael:

Until he stepped into the octagon, CM Punk was having a great week. His three-year legal battle against former WWE physician Dr. Chris Amann had finally ended with a Cook County court ruling in his favor. Punk no longer has a potential $8 million decision hanging over him, and he can focus on his new job now.

Why stop fighting when you can instead keep fighting?

On Friday afternoon, UFC flyweight Andrea Lee posted a lakeside photograph of herself and her husband Donny Aaron. MMA fans quickly noticed something unexpected in the picture: a swastika tattoo on Aaron’s left forearm.

Jarrod “The Monkey God” Brooks lost his second UFC fight tonight because, well, he picked his opponent up and then fell on his head. Brooks was giving UFC debutante Jose Torres the business until the bizarre end to the fight. It was scored as a TKO win for Torres, who explained afterwards that he was trying to…

The UFC held its first event in Chile on Saturday, and while the only Chilean fighter on the card lost and the main event was a a real stinker, fans who arrived reasonably early at least got to see a spectacular finish. Gabriel Benitez met Humberto Bandenay in the fourth fight of the evening, and the Mexican fighter…

Former NFL player Greg Hardy will fight fellow former NFL player Austen Lane on June 12 in a heavyweight bout. The two will meet on Dana White’s Tuesday Night Contender Series, a show run by the ruddy UFC czar in which amateur fighters and others fight for a (non-guaranteed) chance at a UFC contract. Hardy trains with…

Charismatic veteran knockout artist Paul Daley did not have a good time at Bellator 199 this weekend, spending most of his fight with Jon Fitch getting ground into meat against the mat and the cage. Late in the third round, Daley was getting his head punched right next to the Bellator broadcast booth when he took…

Jorge Linares is a flashy, creative athletic freak who has, over a period of many years and much pain, been pushed into the mold of a textbook boxer, like a wild, raging river channeled into an orderly canal. Thus he possesses both the physical gifts of the freak and the carefulness of the technician. When subjected…

Kyoji Horiguchi and Ian McCall headlined this weekend’s Rizin 10 in Fukuoka, Japan, and the two former UFC flyweight contenders put on a highlight-dense fight, in that there was one highlight and it took up the entire fight. Horiguchi unhooked McCall’s jaw in five seconds on the first punch he threw, knocking him out…

English welterweight Jack Mason took a TKO loss to Hakon Foss at Cage Warriors 93 this weekend, and it left the fighter with a second mouth on his face.

Judging strictly from his professional MMA record, Nick Newell should really be in the UFC. The Connecticut native is 14-1, finishing 11 of his fights in the first round, and losing only to UFC face-masher extraordinaire Justin Gaethje. That’d seem to make him an obvious addition to the roster, but Newell’s had to…

Pro MMA veteran Leslie Smith was supposed to fight on last weekend’s UFC Fight Night card, but her bout with Aspen Ladd was scrapped under strange circumstances. Ladd weighed in 1.8 pounds over the limit, claiming that “certain female circumstances” kept her from being able to cut weight. Smith initially okayed the…

Justin Gaethje is not going to last terribly long as a top-level UFC fighter, though you really only need to see the relentless lightweight fight just one time to grasp how special he is. In his 20 professional fights, Gaethje has only twice left things up to the judges, and while he’s 1-2 in the UFC, to focus on his…

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia’s port city on the Red Sea, serves as a commercial hub full of beach resorts and sights, as well as a gateway into the Islamic cities of Mecca and Medina. Several kilometres inland from the Red Sea, with its breathtaking coral reefs, is the Al Rawdah district, where a private, all-women gym tries…

As the dust has begun to settle following Conor McGregor’s bus attack at a UFC media event yesterday, it’s clear that UFC 223 is more or less ruined. McGregor has been charged with three misdemeanors and one criminal count of criminal mischief, and after spending the night in jail, he faces arraignment in a Brooklyn…

After crashing today’s UFC 223 press event in Brooklyn—throwing a barricade, injuring multiple fighters, and sparking a huge damn mess—Conor McGregor is reportedly in custody and is expected to be charged with assault.

Boat hobbyist Conor McGregor is apparently pissed that the UFC will strip him of his lightweight championship belt and give it to the winner of this weekend’s Max Holloway-Khabib Nurmagomedov fight. McGregor won the belt in Nov. 2016 and has functionally ruined the promotion’s most compelling division with his staunch…

Originally published in the July 1996 issue of Playboy and reprinted here with permission.