Rousey has described the event as a potential landscape-shifting moment in MMA with potential to challenge the UFC’s dominance if regular events occur under the banner.

In an interview with BBC Sport before the fight, Rousey said she “would not be here if the UFC paid their fighters better”.

Rousey had been critical of the UFC’s fighter pay, suggesting she wanted the MVP-Netflix partnership to provide an alternative for fighters.

During the broadcast, former UFC heavyweight champion Jon Jones, who was working as a pundit, also shone a light on the restrictions of UFC contracts by saying a bout with Francis Ngannou is unlikely because he is tied to the organisation, despite retiring last year.

The UFC has been a regular topic during fight week, and the organisation appeared to take notice by announcing Conor McGregor’s bout against Max Holloway during the broadcast.

McGregor is one of the biggest MMA stars of all time, so announcing his return after five years away from the sport means the story will compete with Rousey’s headlines in the media.

It also points to the UFC taking notice.

“That just shows how pressed there are. Little insecure boys trying to piggy back off our event and try to put some news over top on us – not going to work,” Paul said.

“Dana White, all of you – be prepared, because this is the takeover.”

In the UFC, under 20% of revenue goes to fighter pay while in boxing, fighters can expect to receive as much as 60% of event revenue.

Disclosed fight purses show every fighter on the card got a minimum £28,800 ($40,000) while Rousey collected £1.7m and Ngannou £1.1m.

In comparison, the UFC pays about £8,960 ($12,000) to £14,900, plus performance-based bonuses, to its entry-level fighters.

Maybe Leila Ouahabi was just rusty. A little tired. All that celebrating of historic Women’s Super League titles and Wembley bookings. So as the Manchester City left-back attempted a thrown-in in the 16th-minute of City’s final WSL match away to West Ham United, perhaps we shouldn’t fault her for missing Khadija ‘Bunny’ Shaw running straight at her, smile bared and eyes eager, just a girl hoping to meet a ball at Dagenham and Redbridge FC.

Of course no ball came. Ouahabi instead stood with the ball above her head and Shaw’s head, in turn, instantly dropped, disappointment and annoyance wrestling for the real estate of her face.

But Shaw remained, feet planted a yard and a half in front of Ouahabi, the West Ham defender assigned the duty of marking Shaw ostensibly having found something better to do than bare witness to this stand-off. Until finally someone — a City staff member, a member of the crowd, a City teammate — shouts to “just give it to her!”

And of course it’s hard not to make poetry here, to draw obvious lines between the inability of Ouahabi to recognise the plainly evident move to give Shaw what she wants with City’s hierarchy perched a handful of seats away exhibiting the same inexplicable incapacity to “just give it to her.”

If this was to be Shaw’s final match in a Manchester City shirt, then at least the 27-year-old Jamaica international went out in sublime fashion: two goals tucked away from two shots despite an xG of just 1.32, the most chances created (3), the most touches in the opposition box (9). It is a snapshot of Shaw at her best. So seize it. Clutch it close. Don’t let it go.

Because of course there’s the real possibility City let her go upon the expiration of her contract, a prospect that has dominated column inches and airwaves for the past week since City clinched the WSL title for the first time in a decade.

And so it dominated here, under gathering storm clouds, as City wrapped up their season with a comfortable 4-1 win and painted, momentarily, the grey a searing and deserved cyan.

City have been the most consistent team this season, marshalled and unleashed under new manager Andree Jeglertz. On Saturday, the football had a sense of formality, the final dotted line to sign before the long-awaited lift, before every member of the City team was called onto the quickly-assembled lego-set stage at full-time and lavished by the travelling supporters.

Eventually came the blue pyro, the confetti, the champagne showers, the spectacle for which we have all been patiently waiting, for which Shaw arrived so prepared, donning champagne-shielding sport glasses as she frolicked alongside captain and long-time teammate Alex Greenwood.

Man City are the 2025-26 WSL Champions pic.twitter.com/dw6MXvxIwB

— Megan Feringa (@megan_feringa) May 16, 2026

That is until the pair were eventually corralled into mandatory media duties. From which the original programming returned: What about you, Bunny? Will you really leave? Better yet, will they really let you go?

“Manchester is where I would want to be, but we’ll see,” Shaw told Sky Sports diplomatically, as every City teammate and staff member has treated the saga when asked.

Two schools of thought emerge here: how shameful it is we keep yammering on about this, that we can’t just let City enjoy the present because we keep insisting on the future, forensically examining Shaw’s post-goal celebrations to decipher precisely what she meant by choosing to wink her left eye and not her right and if this is somehow code for leaving, or not leaving?

The other school, shared in increasingly bolder whispers in the Dagenham terraces as Shaw totted up her league goal tally to 21 and clinched her third successive Golden Boot, is how shameful it is that City have let it get to this point, that there is even discussion of Shaw being able to join the very league rival she helped dethrone because City’s hierarchy might not meet the terms and conditions others have offered. As The Athletic reported last month, Chelsea have offered a salary of over £1million. Despite Shaw wishing to remain at City, whom she joined in 2021, negotiations have broken down over finer details, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.

Free transfers aren’t rare in the women’s game, even at the top, given the relative nascency of million-pound transfer fees and the historic short-term nature of deals.

Yet, City have made clear their mission is to forge a dynasty from this season. Appropriately, 19 miles east of their first major trophy lift since the 2021/22 League Cup, City men busied themselves by lifting the FA Cup over Chelsea in what was Pep Guardiola’s 24th visit to Wembley Stadium and his 20th major trophies as City manager.

City were not at their best on Saturday. Passes were disjointed. Players pointed to space that others couldn’t see until they did. Goalkeeper Eartha Cummings started her first match of the WSL season. Winger Iman Beney was deployed at right-back. It was a reminder that this is a team full of potential but still getting to grips with each other under new management.

The context makes their league triumph all the more impressive and all the more intimidating.

But there are key threads undergirding it. Threads that are, for example, six-foot-tall and score 21 league goals in a season, including the two that ensured Saturday’s trophy celebrations were wholly unsullied.

And perhaps the least recommended procedural step at this stage would be to pull that thread, a player that is not the heart but at the very least the mouth, the part most directly required for sustenance and survival and enjoyment.

To some extent, much of Shaw’s game is not getting what she wants when she wants it. At 49 minutes, Kerolin stormed forward in attack. Shaw made the run across her defender. Kerolin’s head was down and eventually so was Shaw’s, her run stopped, arms flapped against her side.

Forty minutes later, Shaw then on a hat-trick and one goal shy of the WSL single-season record of 22, a record she has yet to breach, Sydney Lohmann opted to go for goal instead of laying it off, reducing Shaw to toeing the blades of grass beneath her and pondering what might have been.

Because the best are always hungry for more.

A Premier League season is 380 games long, but it is the final 19 which now hold the potential to shape all that has gone before in the 2025-26 edition.

This campaign’s last dash will crown new champions to succeed Liverpool and push a member of English football’s establishment over the relegation cliff edge into the EFL. There might also be a Champions League debut secured, as well as fresh invites sent out to join the other two European competitions, all by the time the full-time whistles blow on the final round of fixtures on Sunday, May 24.

Here, The Athletic assesses where we are with the title race, European spots and relegation.

The league title

It has been a two-horse race for the majority of this season, and one of them has now kicked for the line. Arsenal’s dramatic victory against West Ham United last Sunday gave them a five-point lead over Manchester City, who kept up their pursuit with a 3-0 win against Brentford the previous evening.

City’s 3-0 win over Crystal Palace on Wednesday meant they closed the gap to two points with two games remaining.

It is clear City cannot afford a single slip from here. Had they failed to beat Palace, Arsenal could have ended a 22-year wait to land English football’s biggest prize as soon as Monday night. But the comfortable victory denied Mikel Arteta’s side that chance.

Arsenal are aware that two wins from their final two games will be enough, but there is a chance they could be crowned champions without kicking another ball after that match at their Emirates Stadium.

If Arsenal get the better of Burnley then it could be that their big moment comes when Guardiola and company visit in-form Bournemouth on Tuesday. Anything but an away win there would start the celebrations in north London.

Should City beat Bournemouth, though, all roads will lead to the final day of the season on Sunday week: when they are at home to Aston Villa, and Arsenal go to Palace.

There would be scope, albeit unlikely, for further twists.

Arsenal drawing with Burnley and City beating Bournemouth would see the teams tied on 80 points heading into the final day, and the goal differences could be all square too. After the 3-0 win over Palace, City are one ahead on goal difference and seven ahead on goals scored.

Relegation

And then there were two. Crystal Palace, Leeds United and Nottingham Forest have all made their excuses and left the fight for Premier League survival, whittling it down to just two potential candidates to join Burnley and Wolverhampton Wanderers in the Championship next season.

They are Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United, the two London rivals who began the season believing this would be an inglorious scrap for others to endure.

Spurs’ 1-1 draw with Leeds on Monday night has maintained anxiety levels, with another winless home game (the 16th in 18 league fixtures on their own pitch this season) meaning West Ham are still within touching distance of the only team they can catch.

West Ham’s trip to Newcastle United this afternoon now carries enormous significance. A win on Tyneside would lift them above Spurs, whose weekend fixture away to Chelsea has been pushed back to next Tuesday owing to their opponents featuring in Saturday’s FA Cup final.

Anything less, though, swings the door open for Spurs to clinch survival at Stamford Bridge. Beating Newcastle is now the only way West Ham can guarantee this fight goes to the final day.

Spurs’ current advantage of two points and a far superior goal difference leaves little margin for error in the West Ham camp. One misstep could now doom them, after back-to-back defeats against Brentford and Arsenal.

A draw at Chelsea ensures Spurs will retain control of their fate regardless of what West Ham do in Newcastle but that last Sunday has the potential to turn fans’ stomachs into washing machines. At the same time as West Ham are hosting Leeds, just seven miles away across London, Spurs will be at home to Everton.

Race for Europe

Now this is more complicated.

Results in this season’s European competitions have already guaranteed that the top five finishers in the table will feature in the 2026-27 Champions League, but the prospects of a sixth English team joining them have been reduced.

That eventuality needs Aston Villa to finish fifth and win the Europa League final against German side Freiburg in the Turkish city of Istanbul next Wednesday, May 20, but the 4-2 win over Liverpool on Friday night has made that outcome less likely. That result has guaranteed Villa a return to the Champions League and means a point in their final game, away to Manchester City, would confirm they finish fourth.

A Liverpool win at home to Brentford, coupled with Villa losing at Manchester City, would swing the door back open for sixth place squeezing into the Champions League but the complexities of UEFA’s European Performance Spots (EPS) system says another English team can only benefit if it is Villa, who must also win the Europa League, that finishes fifth.

Liverpool, stumbling towards the finish line, would finally wrap up Champions League football for next season if Bournemouth, currently sixth, are beaten by Manchester City on Tuesday and Brighton & Hove Albion, in seventh, fail to win at Leeds today. A Bournemouth win in midweek, though, might yet mean Liverpool have to beat Brentford at Anfield next Sunday.

Manchester City’s win over Chelsea in the FA Cup final yesterday ensures that there will currently be two Europa League places up for grabs in the Premier League over the next week. One of those (sixth) could become a Champions League berth in the event of Villa finishing fifth and winning the Europa League but the current standings would see sixth and seventh go to the Europa League (with the extra place coming from City winning the FA Cup) and eighth into the Conference League.

Brighton’s remaining matches, away to Leeds and at home to Manchester United, give them a strong chance of holding on to seventh, while Brentford, who are eighth and trailing Bournemouth by four points, are also still in the mix. Sixth will be out of reach if they lose to visitors Palace on Sunday.

Eighth is now sure to deliver European football through the Conference League, which means Chelsea, Everton, Fulham and Sunderland are all realistically still in the hunt. Everton and Sunderland face one another at the Hill Dickinson Stadium today.

Then, of course, there is the very real possibility of Palace also being in the Europa League next season, should they get the better of Spanish side Rayo Vallecano in the UEFA Conference League final in Leipzig, Germany, on Wednesday, May 27.

Clear? Hardly. But it soon will be.