There’s a laundry list of songs about rain in music. Who could ever forget the classic Creedence Clearwater Revival selection Have You Ever Seen The Rain? Not only is that a good question, it’s also apropos when your day gets washed out completely.
Another such track is the old standard by BJ Thomas, the 1969 single Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head. Just because your day is dampened by inclement weather, it isn’t a total loss by any stretch of the imagination.
Don’t let the sky conditions and the forecast for the rest of the day get you down. Your original plans may have had the tarp put on over the infield, so to speak, but the afternoon is still yours for the taking, because you have streaming media subscriptions to use.
Fights For A Rainy Day
Fans of combat sports need not despair when the sky darkens and the heavens open up with water. If the weather doesn’t cooperate with whatever it is that they hoped to get done, archival MMA is here to save the day.
Regardless of the promotion or magnitude of the fight, opening up the video vault and watching contests from the sport’s past will save you from a lousy weather day. If you’ve got inclement weather on the horizon, here are a few fights you can watch while you wait for the sun to come back out again.
Fights For A Rainy Day: Oktagon 58 Main Event: Karlos Vemola vs. Attila Vegh- Originally Broadcast: June 8, 2024
Appropriately enough, we start this list with a fight from a card that was held outdoors in an open-air soccer (football) stadium. Late last spring, Czech Republic-based Oktagon MMA took the fights outside for Oktagon 58 and the Oktagon 58 main event. Inside the United States, DAZN streamed the card on June 8 of last year.
Thankfully, no rain dampened the spirits of anybody who made the trip to Prague and Stadion Eden for the card. Oktagon 58 was one of the top MMA shows of 2024, an evening highlighted by the battle for the Oktagon MMA Light Heavyweight Championship. Karlos Vemola (33-9 MMA, 12-4 Oktagon) was defending the strap against Attila Vegh (33-10-2 MMA, 4-2 Oktagon) that June evening.
Vemola’s bid to defend the title proved successful with a second-round submission via arm-triangle choke. He returned on the year-end Oktagon 65 on Dec. 29, with Will Fleury (14-3, 1 NC MMA, 3-0, 1 NC Oktagon) unseating him as champion. Vegh will be able to get a shot at redemption on June 14 when he rematches Vemola during Oktagon 72 in Prague.
Part one of this series is a great watch whenever the rain falls outside your window.
Fights For a Rainy Day: Ronda Rousey vs. Liz Carmouche- Originally Broadcast: Feb. 23, 2013
For our second entry on this list, we travel back in time to late February of 2013, when the UFC’s women’s bantamweight division was being taken over by a former Olympian. Feb. 23, 2013 was the evening of Ronda Rousey‘s UFC promotional debut.
In late 2012, UFC CEO Dana White announced that Rousey, who was the final women’s bantamweight champion in the late Strikeforce MMA, would automatically secure the same title in the UFC upon signing Rousey to a contract to the promotion after Strikeforce was bought by the latter organization, becoming the first female to join the UFC. For “Rowdy’s” UFC promotional debut, she drew Liz Carmouche, nicknamed “Girl-Rilla”.
Rousey entered this title tilt at 6-0 in her professional MMA career, while Carmouche countered with a mark of 8-2 in her first 10 career bouts inside the cage. While most of Ronda Rousey’s career victories in MMA were done and dusted in a hurry, with a few of them lasting only mere seconds on the clock, this particular assignment required more work to complete.
Still, the result was a classic refrain for Rousey: Submission via armbar in four minutes and 49 seconds. If you’re looking for a way to watch this fight on playback on a drizzly day, you can do so on UFC Fight Pass.
Fights For a Rainy Day: Conor McGregor vs. Aron Jahnsen- Originally Broadcast: Sept. 8, 2011
Finally, let’s turn the clock back a little bit further to the second week of September of 2011. Back then, Conor McGregor was a prospect with 10 professional bouts to his credit, having gone 9-1 up to that point.
The one nicknamed “Notorious” entered Cage Warriors’ CWFC Fight Night 2 against Aron Jahnsen having lost his undefeated record in his fight the previous November. Although this was McGregor’s 11th career appearance, the man was a star in the making.
McGregor’s ground game was on point that night, landing a vicious barrage of punches on Jahnsen, forcing the referee to call off the contest inside the first round. The next time it rains, check this fight out on Fight Pass.