Join us today on Bloody Elbow for live results, discussion, round scoring, and play-by-play as UFC 237 goes down in Rio. The main event will see Rose Namajunas attempting to defend her women’s strawweight title for the second time when she meets rugged Brazilian challenger Jessica Andrade. The main card will also feature Brazilian stars like Anderson Silva, who meets Jared Cannonier; and Jose Aldo, who faces off with Alexander Volkanovski. The featured prelim comes in the light heavyweight division, with veteran Antonio Rogerio Nogueira meeting Ryan Spann. This post will cover the preliminary card. The show kicks off on Fight Pass at approximately 6:30pm ET with three fights. The card then moves to ESPN at 8pm ET for four more bouts, then onto the main PPV card. Remember that you can only order UFC PPVs now through ESPN+, so you have to sign up for that service beforehand if you haven’t already. The full lineup and schedule follows. The main card will be covered in a separate post. Check out this week’s MMA Vivisection for predictions, analysis and betting odds on the each matchup. Antonio Rogerio Nogueira vs. Ryan Spann Round 1 - Spann with an inside leg kick. They trade in close. Nogueira basically pulls guard. Spann goes straight to mount and has an arm triangle. Nog defends and Spann gives it up. They get back up. Spann with a hard right. Spann has a takedown attempt stuffed and he eats a left. Spann with a huge left uppercut and Nog goes down. One more hammerfist and it’s over. Ryan Spann defeated Antonio Rogerio Nogueira via KO (strikes), 2:07 of round 1 Thiago Moises vs. Kurt Holobaugh Round 1 - They’re getting at it immediately. Moises was touching him up from range, so Holobaugh closes the distance. Holobaugh looks for a takedown. Moises fought it off. Hoobaugh with a combo but Moises covers up. Moises with a nice right. Holobaugh goes to the body. Moises with an elbow on a clinch break. Moises chains some wrestling together and gets a takedown. Moises working well from half. Holobaugh regains full guard. Elbow from Moises. 10-9 Moises. Round 2 - Moises with a hard right. Another. Holobaugh fires back. Holobaugh clinches. They jockey for position. Moises with a beautiful double-leg takedown. Holobaugh fights his way back to his feet halfway through the round. Holobaugh wants some grappling of his own but he’s not being very successful so far. Body work from Holobaugh. Moises with an elbow. The crowd isn’t digging it. Knees from Holobaugh. Moises shoots but Holobaugh defends. They exchanges combinations. Low kick from Moises. Body work from Holobaugh again. They brawl to the horn. 10-9 Moises. Round 3 - Hard shot from Moises. He lands behind the ear. The next shot put Holobaugh down! Moises is trying to pass his guarnd but isn’t getting much of anywhere. Holobaugh rolls over, gets up, and almost powers Moises to the mat. Moises gets another takedown halfway through the round. Holobaugh back up again. Moises steps over and sinks a choke but he doesn’t have body control. Holobaugh escapes. Elbows from Moises but Holobaugh is holding onto his body. Moises reverses, scoops Holobaugh up, and slams him. Elbows and punches from Moises. He’s closeing hard. 10-9 and 30-27 Moises. Thiago Moises defeated Kurt Holobaugh via unanimous decision (30-26, 30-26, 30-27) Warlley Alves vs. Sergio Moraes Round 1 - Alves with a few low kicks. Moraes isn’t liking them, but he checked one finally. Alves with a left. Uppercut. Another hard leg kick. Moraes with his patented winging right hook. He charges in with some punches. Alves with a combo and another kick. Moraes misses with the right hook but got eye poked. Quick restart. Jump knee misses but a long right follow-up lands for Alves. 10-9 Alves. Round 2 - Alves with an immediate leg kick. Alves lands a looping right hook. Mores with his own. Alves scores up the middle. Oblique kick from Alves. Another leg kick. Alves lands to the body. Another chopping leg kick. Moraes checks a kick again. Not enough, apparently. Guess what? Another leg kick. Body kick now. Body punch. Short uppercut from Moraes. 10-9 Alves. Round 3 - Moraes’ leg is jacked up. He’s trying to pressure early. They both land big punches. Alves with a low kick. Body shot. Jump knee and a right from Alves. Chopping kick to the other leg. Nice right hook from Alves, and an uppercut. Alves walking him down with punches. Moraess just standing there now. Yet another leg kick. Big combo. Moraes looks like he’s done. Brutal leg kick! Jab from Alves. Spinning back kick. Leg kick. Straight right from Alves. Jump knee and huge uppercut and Moraes is down. It’s over. Mercifully. DC said it right after I typed it. Warlley Alves defeated Sergio Moraes via KO (strikes), 4:13 of round 3 B.J. Penn vs. Clay Guida Round 1 - Guida jabs to the body and lands an uppercut. Penn with a left hook. They trade shots. Penn with another left hook. Penn lands again and Guide acknowledges it. Guida with his own left hook and ah ead kick. Penn with a right. Another leg kick from Guida. Penn avoiding a lot of what Guida is throwing. Guida does score with a left hook though. Penn with a step-in left hook. Jab. Guida with a slipping left hook. Penn with a short right. Uppercut from The Prodigy. Penn with a right. 10-9 Penn. Round 2 - Penn firing the jab early. Guida with his own in return. Penn misses with a lead left hook. Low kick from Guida. He scores with a left. Penn sticks a straight right. A lead left hook scores for BJ. Guida chewing up the front leg. Penn with a jab. Penn with a shovel hook. The crowd is a bit restless. Penn back to the jab. Head kick from Guida is partially blocked. Guida in on a takedown attempt. Guida backs out, lands three punches, and goes back to the takedown attempt. Guida with a left in the clinch. Body work. Penn spins out and lands a right. Leg kick from Guida. Penn goes body-head. Guida with another head kick that may have hurt Penn. Guida throws Penn to the ground. 10-9 Guida. Round 3 - Guida with an immediate left. He lands a right and Penn is backing off. Uppercut from Guida. Short right. Low kick. Penn really backing up. Guida clinches. Left from Guida, and some body work Elbow over the top. Penn just trying to tie him up. Shoulder check from Guida. The crowd is restless at the age work. A right hook knocks BJ down, but he’s up right away. Looked more off balance than a legit knockdown. Back in the clinch. Penn looking at the clock. Two minutes to go. Guida with a right. Penn with a right of his own. Guida goes back to the takedown attempt, despite his corner screaming at him to get back to range. Guida steps back and lands a combo and a knee. Penn with a combo. Guida walks through it. Penn with an uppercut and two rights. Penn still there, landing shots. Guida with a right hook. Penn with a counter left. Head kick from Guida blocked. 10-9 and 29-28 Guida. Clay Guida defeated B.J. Penn via unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-27) Luana Carolina vs. Priscila Cachoeira Round 1 - Cachoeira with a big right to start. Another lands. Carolina clinches and wants to stay inside. Cachoeira ain’t havin’ it. They trade big shots in the pocket. Carolina circling. Carolina with a big knee from the Thai clinch. Body kick. They trade low kicks. Big right from Cachoeira and Carolina literally runs away. They brawl in the center. Cachoeira opens a cut under Carolina’s eye, and clinches. Not for long. Nice combo from Carolina. Head kick. Cachoeira trips her with a leg kick but it doesn’t go to the ground. Counter left from Carolina. Cachoeira ducks and lands a right hook. Kind of sloppy. 10-9 Cachoeira. Round 2 - Cachoeira gets caught with a right.<doc-sep>UFC returns to Brazil on Saturday for UFC 237 at the Jeunesse Arena in Rio de Janeiro. A long list of Brazilian stars will enter the cage in their home country, from José Aldo to Anderson Silva, while Jessica Andrade will get another chance to claim the UFC Women’s Strawweight Championship, this time in a main event fight with Rose Namajunas. The UFC 237 main card will begin at 10:00 p.m. ET on ESPN+. Prelims will begin at 8:00 p.m. ET on ESPN. You will not be able to order the pay-per-view through your cable or satellite provider, and instead will have to order the PPV through ESPN+. If you plan on keeping ESPN+, you can save money by purchasing a package that includes UFC 237 and a 12-month ESPN+ subscription for $79.99 (here) You can sign-up for a seven-day free trial of ESPN+, and then purchase UFC 237 separately for $59.99 If you opt for a month-to-month ESPN+ subscription, the cost is $4.99 per month. An annual subscription costs $49.99. Here are the five fights scheduled for Saturday’s main card: Bantamweight: Irene Aldana (9-4) vs. Bethe Correia (10-3-1) Welterweight: Thiago Alves (23-13) vs. Laureano Staropoli (8-1) Featherweight: José Aldo (28-4) vs. Alexander Volkanovski (19-1) Middleweight: Jared Cannonier (11-4) vs. Anderson Silva (34-9, 1 NC) Strawweight championship: Rose Namajunas (c) (8-3) vs. Jessica Andrade (19-6)<doc-sep>Rose Namajunas watches Jessica Andrade (R) celebrating her title victory at UFC 237 on Saturday in Brazil. (Mauro Pimentel/AFP/Getty Images) Rose Namajunas may have come to the end of the line as an MMA fighter on Saturday in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, thousands of miles from the peace and tranquility of her home in suburban Denver. One of the most fascinating fighters in the history of the UFC, the 26-year-old Namajunas makes no attempt to hide her emotions. She had a 13-month gap between fights because she was traumatized by the actions of Conor McGregor and his band of hoodlums two days before UFC 223 in Brooklyn last year. McGregor hurled a dolly at the bus in a badly misguided attempt to exact some sort of vigilante justice on Khabib Nurmagomedov. That dolly and the glass it shattered may have spelled the end of Namajunas’ career. On Saturday, after she was knocked out in the second round by a slam from Jessica Andrade that would have made Hulk Hogan proud, Namajunas suggested she may be done fighting. She suffered no physical injuries and didn’t have a mark on her face. The scars she suffered were more psychological that came from a tumultuous life and the incident on the bus. She smiled and hemmed and hawed and wouldn’t make official her retirement, but she kept saying everything but that she was done. “I just want to do something else in my life right now,” she said at the postfight news conference. Asked if she was announcing her retirement, she backed off. “I don’t know,” she said. “We’ll see.” That came only a few seconds after she’d said, “We’ll see if I’m still interested in this.” By this, she meant fighting another human being in a cage, and while she’s good at it, it’s not hard to understand why she’s thinking she had enough. The script couldn’t have played out more perfectly for her in the first seven minutes or so of the bout. No fighter has ever achieved perfection in a round, but Namajunas came close to it in the first round. She established her jab early, landing it with authority and cutting Andrade with one of the first ones she landed. She mixed in the right hand and snapped Andrade’s head back with it several times. Story continues Namajunas controlled the distance and the angles expertly, and used a massive speed and quickness advantage adeptly. Even when Andrade used her prodigious strength to lift Namajunas above her head, Namajunas caught Andrade in a Kimura and prevented a fierce slam. Namajunas never looked better and seemed about to cruise to yet another successful title defense. And then, in an instant, it was all over and Andrade was draping the strawweight belt over the shoulder of coach Gilliard Parana while physicians attended to a flattened Namajunas. As she’d done in the first, Andrade tried to slam Namajunas. This time, though, she fought off the Kimura attempt so that when she slammed Namajunas, the force of the champion’s collision with the mat knocked her out instantly. What was looking like the best night of her professional life turned into a nightmare in a nanosecond. She said her neck was fine and that the only physical problem she had from the fight was a sore leg. The money she earned from the bout will allow her to pay her home off, she said. “So that’s cool,” she added, cracking a wry grin. She fights not because she loves it like so many others do, but almost because she feels an obligation to use the talents she discovered she had at a young age. She loves to garden and play the piano and has a million other interests, none of which involves punching someone in the face or slamming them on their head. Rose Namajunas slowly made her way into the cage on Saturday. (Getty Images) As she made that long, slow walk to the Octagon to face Andrade, her facial expression suggested she wanted to be anywhere but where she was. Her paradox is that she’s so damn good at fighting that it seems almost like a waste to give up on it. “A big motivation for me is to not waste my potential and stuff like that,” she said. As she spoke, she revealed herself. She’s well aware of the bully pulpit that being a UFC champion gives her, and she wants to use that wisely. She didn’t just want to sell T-shirts and rack up big checks. She wants to make a difference in the lives of people who were struggling, just like she was struggling when her father walked out on the family oh so many years ago and she went through almost unimaginable problems as a child. “I’ve tried to use this opportunity and this platform to maybe inspire other people who are fearing something,” she said. “Whatever it is, go face it. Getting knocked out actually wasn’t that bad.” It would be terrible, though, if that’s the last memory fans have of her, slammed to the canvas and knocked cold. Fighters are a different breed, and there’s something inside of them that that allows them to step into a ring or a cage and accept all the risks that entails, which most of us could never take. Most of them hide their emotions with stoic looks, and never admit their vulnerabilities. That’s not who Namajunas is. This is scary stuff and she admits it. She knows the outcome could be bad, and much worse than simply getting beaten in an athletic contest. But she’s overcome those fears to become one of the best in the world at what she does. She should feel no pressure to fight again. She doesn’t have to do anything for anybody except herself and her fiance, ex-UFC heavyweight Pat Barry. If she chooses to fight because it’s what she wants to do, that’s great, because it’s always fascinating to watch a genius at work. If, though, she’s had enough, she can and should walk away with no regrets. The last thing she should ever do is let the fight life consume her. It’s probably time to get out and move to the next chapter in life. More from Yahoo Sports:<doc-sep>
Rose Namajunas vs. Jessica Andrade is a must-see and the Alexander Volkanovski-Jose Aldo fight holds major significance. UFC 237 takes place later tonight from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, continuing the worldwide expansion of the brand. Even without the likes of Daniel Cormier, Jon Jones, or Brock Lesnar, the card still holds major significance. The main event, featuring women’s strawweight champion Rose Namajunas battling a powerhouse in Jessica Andrade, offers a fascinating clash of styles. UFC 237 also includes a featherweight fight between Alexander Volkanovski and Jose Aldo that is important for both fighters as well as the entire featherweight division. The legendary Anderson Silva is back with a fight against Jared Cannonier. Silva made news earlier this week with a public request to UFC president Dana White for a fight against Conor McGregor. A win by the 44-year-old Anderson would create more questions than answers regarding his future in UFC. Here are the top three factors heading into UFC 237: 1. "Thug Rose" Looks to Elevate Her Ascension to Superstardom Rose Namajunas vs. Jessica Andrade is a must-see fight, with Namajunas defending her strawweight championship against an opponent that has the potential to knock her out—and do so quickly—if she is caught lingering too long in the pocket. The quality that resonates most about Namajunas is her poise under pressure, and this fight is a phenomenal example of that. Namajunas has a wonderful, eccentric personality, along with incredible poise when dealing with adversity. Refusing to melt under the pressure of her initial fight against Joanna Jedrzejczyk still serves as an example of her composure under duress. She now defends her title in dangerous circumstances against a strong, powerful badass in Andrade who can win the title in front of her home crowd in Brazil, which may be Namajunas’ biggest challenge. Namajunas was also on the bus that Conor McGregor attacked at the Barclays Center in April of 2018 leading up to UFC 223, and she has been very upfront about the mental anguish that event had on her. That moment even connects with her decision to defend the strawweight title in Brazil against Andrade, illustrating not only her strength but also courage. There is no reason Namajunas cannot become of one the marquee stars in mixed martial arts, and a win will further cement her as one of UFC’s signature faces. 2. Alexander Volkanovski Looks to Make Statement Over Jose Aldo in Brazil The Alexander Volkanovski-Jose Aldo fight holds major significance. Although Volkanovski has defeated plenty of legitimate opponents, Aldo is one of the greatest featherweights of all-time. If Volkanovski wins, a title shot against UFC featherweight champion Max Holloway is imminent. Aldo is only 32, there is little doubt that his absolute peak years are behind him. Yet he remains a dangerous opponent, and he has the homecourt advantage with the fight taking place in Brazil. The win would serve as a statement for Volkanovski. But if Volkanovski loses, there is far less certainty in the featherweight division. Even with a win, it is extremely unlikely that Aldo will get another title shot against Holloway, who has already dismantled him twice in a strikingly similar fashion. A win by Volkanovski adds clarity to the division, while a victory by Aldo brings confusion amidst the top contenders. 3. Anderson Silva Looks to Enhance His Legacy ... But Not With This Fight Anderson Silva is back for 237 with a fight against Jared Cannonier. A win for Cannonier would be career-defining, but he is not the story. The legendary Silva also made news on Wednesday by asking for a fight with Conor McGregor, and the pressing question surrounding this fight is what will happens if Anderson wins in convincing fashion. Everyone assumes that the 44-year-old Silva is on the back nine of his career, but he is coming off a great performance in his fight against Izzy Adesanya this past February. If Anderson does win, what is his path from here? Justin Barrasso can be reached at JBarrasso@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @JustinBarrasso. FAST FACTS What: UFC 237 When: Saturday. Early prelims begin at 6:15 p.m.; main card scheduled to start at 10 p.m. (All times ET.) Where: Jeunesse Arena in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil TV: Pay-per-view broadcast. Early preliminary bouts on ESPN+, UFC Fight Pass (6:15-8 p.m.). Prelims on ESPN (8 p.m.).