{"id":756498,"date":"2026-06-24T04:43:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T04:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/756498\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T04:43:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T04:43:09","slug":"usa-today-sports-mma-junkie-rankings-june-23-luana-santos-enters-top-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/756498\/","title":{"rendered":"USA TODAY Sports\/MMA Junkie rankings, June 23: Luana Santos enters top 10"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>June 23, 2026, 10:15 p.m. ET<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\"><a href=\"http:\/\/mmajunkie.usatoday.com\/events\/ufc-fight-night-279-las-vegas-kape-vs-horiguchi-2\/\" data-t-l=\":b|e|k|\u2691u\" class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">UFC Fight Night 279<\/a> took place Saturday at the Meta APEX a week after the notorious White House event.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">In the main event, Manel Kape knocked out Kyoji Horiguchi in a key flyweight bout with potential title shot implications. Sitting at No. 3, Kape holds on to that spot, sitting behind <a data-autotag=\"958e306f-7da5-4cd1-8732-0fa74c32f289\" href=\"http:\/\/mmajunkie.usatoday.com\/fighters\/alexandre-pantoja\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" data-t-l=\":b|e|k|\u2691u\" class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\">Alexandre Pantoja<\/a> at No. 2, and the champion, <a data-autotag=\"d6819177-3639-44c4-a197-f22eff519fd5\" href=\"http:\/\/mmajunkie.usatoday.com\/fighters\/joshua-van\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" data-t-l=\":b|e|k|\u2691u\" class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\">Joshua Van<\/a> at No. 1.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">On the prelims, women&#8217;s bantamweight contender Luana Santos made the leap into the top 10 by defeating Karlo Rosa. Santos moves from No. 15 to No. 7 in this week&#8217;s update.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Check out all of the moves in the latest <a href=\"http:\/\/mmajunkie.usatoday.com\/rankings\/\" data-t-l=\":b|e|k|\u2691u\" class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">USA TODAY Sports\/MMA Junkie rankings<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><img class=\"gnt_em_cp_cw_i\" data-g-r=\"lazy\" data-gl-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/90589145007-hk-7-y-4-s-wk-aa-0-a-2-u.jpeg\" data-gl- decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"June 23, 2026, 10:15 p.m. ET UFC Fight Night 279 took place Saturday at the Meta APEX a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":756499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[202558,64,63,786,785,17425,315656,85,203779,203780,204386,204389,206534,203781,235716,202563,203139,202561],"class_list":["post-756498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-accessfree","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-nv","tag-sourcemma-junkie","tag-sports","tag-sstssportsufc","tag-sstsnufc","tag-tagalexandre-pantoja","tag-tagjoshua-van","tag-taglas-vegas","tag-tagmartial-arts","tag-tagmma-rankings","tag-tagoverall-positive","tag-tagsports-news","tag-typestory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=756498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/756499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}