SATURDAY, JULY 11 FROM THE T-MOBILE ARENA IN LAS VEGAS
EARLY PRELIMS 2 PM PDT / 5 PM EDT | PRELIMS 4 PM / 7 PM | MAIN CARD 6 PM / 9 PM

I’m not sure things have ever been more meaningless than they are this week. This is the first card the UFC has promoted under the auspices of its new Meta-powered AI bullshit rankings, and you can tell how seriously they’re taking them right off the bat, because the official card list doesn’t reflect those rankings at all. The AI says Paddy Pimblett is barely hanging onto the top ten? Fuck that, he’s #6. Mario Bautista’s #5 now? That’s too goddamn high, he’s #7.

I know that sounds silly, but really, genuinely, engage with the reality that we now exist in an era of the sport where the UFC openly advertises rankings it no longer even reflects. MMA has never been less real and there is no more appropriate way to welcome Conor McfuckingGregor back to our terrible sport.

MAIN EVENT: WHATEVER IT TAKES
WELTERWEIGHT: Conor McGregor (22-6, NR) vs Max Holloway (27-9, #4 at Lightweight)

The last time we talked about a Conor McGregor comeback was just over two years ago, when the UFC pulled a bait-and-switch by lying about Conor’s return only to abruptly switch the fight to an Alex Pereira/Jiří Procházka rematch when they could no longer cover up that Conor was nowhere near fighting shape. I cursed us into this timeline.

Normally, when a main event gets cancelled, I’ll devote a little bit of space to complaining about it before moving on to analyzing the new fight we have in its place. Normally this is because we have an entirely new fight to discuss and, inevitably, I will get my chance to complain about the previously-scheduled fighter when they come back.

But I don’t think I’ll get that chance, because I don’t think Conor McGregor is ever coming back.

Oh, how I wish I had been right.

The assumption that Conor McGregor would stay in his torpor was rooted in the idea that we still occupied a consensus reality where things matter, which was, in June of 2024, still a thing you could hold at least a little hope for. It is two years later. That hope is dead. Every barrier to Conor McGregor’s return has been shattered.

Legitimate drug testing? That’s gone. The UFC infamously severed their ties with the US Anti-Doping Agency in large part because Conor was very visibly on every goddamn steroid known to man during his time away from the sport, and they were insisting, as a drug testing agency, that he be tested for drugs before his return. The UFC does, of course, swear by the legitimacy of their new, in-house testing program, and just like their USADA days, they have a website where you can see how many times everyone’s been tested. Why, Conor’s been tested 14 times in 2026! That’s more than anyone! Sure, there are about 1/5 as many test failures as there were under USADA, and sure, the only people who seem to get caught are conveniently the ones whose loss would be maximally convenient--they’ve published five test failures this year and the biggest hit was Iasmin Lucindo--but I’m sure it’s legit and everything’s fine.

Weight classes? Never been less of an issue. The Featherweight champ was the Lightweight champ and the Lightweight champ is the Welterweight champ and the former Welterweight champion who’s never won a Middleweight fight in his life is about to fight in a 185-pound title eliminator and the former 185-pound champ who became the 205-pound champ just got a 265-pound title fight at the fuckin’ White House. This fight, here, is between Max Holloway, a Featherweight great who is 2-2 at Lightweight in the UFC, and Conor McGregor, who is 1-3 at Lightweight in the UFC, and it’s being contested at Welterweight, and it’s already widely agreed that the winner will probably get a shot at the Lightweight title anyway.

Social expectations of conduct? Last time around we were talking about Conor suckerpunching people and whipping a dolly into the window on a UFC bus, and now he’s been found civilly liable for rape by two separate juries. Once upon a time, that would’ve mattered. Now? Hell, Conor’s not even the only legally-noted attempted rapist on this card. The UFC got tired of lowering the bar over and over, so now the bar is gone. Did you try to incite anti-immigrant pogroms a couple weeks ago? Have multiple juries of your peers looked at you and decided you sexually assaulted someone? Congratulations! This era of the sport was meant specifically for you.

In the aftermath of the White House card there were a few folks that noted the joy of enjoying the sport for the sport, rather than getting bogged down in its philosophical and political muck. I got it. I didn’t agree, but I understood. You could still do that, even with the White House.

But you can’t really do that here, because the muck is the only fucking thing to talk about. I’ve seen people try to discuss the reality of this as a rematch, in the way rematches are used to gauge how two fighters have grown since their first meeting, but Conor’s victory over Max Holloway was in 2013. Forget the fighters: The entire Featherweight division was less than three fucking years old.

There is nothing you can say about Conor McGregor The Mixed Martial Artist In Twenty Twenty Six that isn’t just pulling guesses directly from your own ass. It’s been half a decade since his last fight. It’s been six and a half years since his last win. It’s been ten years since his last Lightweight victory. Barack O-fucking-bama was still in the White House the last time Conor McGregor beat a ranked fighter in their own weight class. Anyone who starts to say a goddamn thing to you about the accuracy of Conor’s counterpunches or his speed or his precision is lying to you, and themselves, and picturing the Conor McGregor from the year fucking Finding Dory came out.

Conor’s contributions to the current age of mixed martial arts are getting knocked out by Dustin Poirier, shattering his own leg in an instant rematch against Poirier and following it by laying on the floor and screaming about how he really won the fight because he knows Dustin’s wife wants to fuck him, leading Michael Chandler on for years only to constantly cancel on him and make him look like an idiot for thinking Conor ever gave a shit about fighting him, and coasting on the triune powers of inertia, unbridled bigotry, and being a complete asshole in an era built by, and for, complete assholes.

And Max? Max is just here, man. Max should’ve been a Lightweight contender after knocking out Justin Gaethje and Dustin Poirier, but the UFC bet big on Paddy Pimblett and wanted to cash in on him, and when that failed, well, hell, Ilia Topuria’s the champ so obviously Max can’t fight him given the way Topuria smashed him at 145 pounds, so far better to make Gaethje your top contender even though Holloway and Charles Oliveira both crushed him. Which worked out gangbusters for the UFC! They got everything they wanted. Justin Gaethje won the title at the White House, Max is sidetracked for Conor, everyone’s chasing the money match again, and #1 contender Arman Tsarukyan isn’t even in the goddamn conversation.

Instead of anything that mattered, Max fought Charles Oliveira for the Bad Mother Fucker Championship, and then when Oliveira took Max down and dominated him for five straight rounds, the audience got mad about it, because daring to use a grappling-based gameplan was an affront to the legitimacy of the Bad Mother Fucker Championship, a title that was used by the UFC to sell Dwayne Johnson’s PROJECT ROCK shoes.

Mateusz Gamrot is fighting down in the rankings. One match down from here, Benoît Saint Denis is being used to try to rehabilitate Paddy Pimblett. Arman is unbooked. Oliveira is unbooked.

And Max Holloway is fighting adjudicated rapist Conor McGregor at Georges St-Pierre’s weight class five years after his last fight because this is how we make our money.

There is no sport here. There is no analysis. Maybe the cocaine and the steroids have joined forces in Conor’s body and now he has superpowers. Maybe he’s so hopped up on the power of getting away with sex abuse that he has the crushing force of a Rumble Johnson. Maybe Max kicks him in the calf once and Conor stops the fight so he can get on his phone and tweet about how immigrants made his leg hurt. Everyone involved in this should feel bad and I hope to god this is MAX HOLLOWAY BY AN INCREDIBLY FUNNY AND GRATIFYING KNOCKOUT so we can just move the fuck on from this once and for-fucking-all because my soul cannot take the Conor McGregor Title Tour we will be stuck with if he somehow wins.

CO-MAIN EVENT: WHATEVER IT TAKES
LIGHTWEIGHT: Benoît Saint Denis (17-3 (1), #5) vs Paddy Pimblett (23-4, #6)

I just don’t care, and that’s devastating, because this is the smartest, best-matched fight they could’ve made for these two men.

They’re both fine. They’re fine! Benoît’s a solid throwback of a savage wrestleboxer who doesn’t care half as much about his health as he really should if he wants to still be able to read by the time he’s 40, Paddy’s a big, aggressive grappling machine who is incredibly difficult to knock out, all of these things are true, none of them matter. We have trod repeatedly on the posies of praise when it comes to both prospects. Their talents have never been the issue, the matchmaking has.

But the UFC keeps trying with BSD. Hot on the heels of his knockout victory over Matt Frevola back in 2023 they decided to strap the jetpack to his aggressively French back and throw him in there with Dustin Poirier in a title eliminator, and he got stomped out in two rounds. They tried to rehabilitate him with a main event in France against Renato Moicano, and Moicano, who has self-described his fighting talents as “I fucking suck,” beat Benoît even worse than Poirier had. He went from having a ton of momentum to looking like a complete afterthought.

So they gave him Kyle Prepolec, a Canadian regional who’d already flunked out of the UFC once. Fine: Tune-up fight, I get it. And they followed that up with Mauricio Ruffy, a legitimate threat and now-top-ten competitor, and BSD handed him his only UFC loss, and it was great! Sending in Beneil Dariush afterward was kind of a lateral move, but at the time, it seemed justifiable--Beneil had just beaten Moicano, so by the transitive property, it was a good match!--and then Beneil showed up overweight and preemptively exhausted and looking like the clock had run out on his career. And then, to emphasize the point, the UFC booked Benoît against Dan Hooker, who still had a visibly damaged face from the hellacious beating Arman Tsarukyan had laid on him two months prior.

So BSD’s back in the top five, and all it took was one and a half real wins in a four-fight span. Paddy? You can’t even give him that.

Paddy Pimblett’s journey to the top was managed the way an ornithologist manages a robin’s egg. Paddy Pimblett’s UFC career has been so gently booked that even Paddy Pimblett himself repeatedly mocked it. Paddy Pimblett beat three guys with 50/50 or worse records, extremely clearly lost a fight to Jared Gordon only to inexplicably win a decision anyway, got matched up with Tony Ferguson at the ass end of the longest losing streak in UFC history, graduated from that to King Green, who was on a winning streak of 1 and it was over Jim fucking Miller, and finally faced Michael Chandler, who, himself, was 1 for his last 5 (now 7!) and that one win was, of course, also Tony Ferguson.

They gave him a title shot for that. Paddy Pimblett beat Michael Chandler, who hadn’t won a fight in three years, and they put him in there with Justin Gaethje for the interim Lightweight championship of the world. Of this world.

People will tell you Paddy vs Gaethje was close, and it was, in the sense that if I am hit by a truck and do not die, I can say that I almost defeated it. Justin beat seven shades of hell out of Paddy, whose best assets in the fight were a) his chin, b) his willingness to repeatedly knee Justin in the dick, and c) Justin’s refusal to stop ducking into the same strike over and over. Paddy hit him! A bunch! It did not matter. Justin practically killed him in the second round but somehow not a single judge scored a 10-8, and somewhere, Jared Gordon’s blood boiled in his bed.

So the UFC astroturfed Paddy to a title shot and it failed. It happens! No shame in it, except for, y’know, how ashamed all of the matchmakers should be for doing it in the first place. What do you do with him now? Do you make him fight down in the rankings? Do you test him against the Rafael Fizievs or Grant Dawsons of the world?

Of course not! You get that fucker back in the top five as fast as fucking possible, and you do it on the Conor McGregor comeback card so we can keep rubbing that fandom off on him like it’s a fucking disease.

I dunno, man. Like I said, it’s a smart matchup. Either BSD beats Paddy and the UFC hypes it as his big signature win or Paddy beats someone who isn’t old and broken down and this is cited as proof that he’s ready for another title shot so we can continue to ignore Arman Tsarukyan forever. On a skill by skill basis it’s practically a mirror match. Both men eschew defense in favor of their own toughness, both men would really like to take you down because their top game is where their most effective offense comes from, both men would really, really prefer it if you not put them on their backs because that’s just unfair.

And I very clearly want Benoît to win, which makes me second-guess all of the reasons I think he could. Paddy’s really, really fucking tough, and Benoît is good at a number of things, but persistent offense and self-pacing have never been one of them. I can easily see him blowing his gas tank trying to get Paddy out of there early and getting Pimbletted in the back half of the fight. Hell, I can see Paddy using his clinch game to drag BSD down and simply deny him the chance to be the aggressor.

But the heart wants what it wants. BENOÎT SAINT DENIS BY TKO.

MAIN CARD: WHATEVER IT TAKES
BANTAMWEIGHT: Cory Sandhagen (18-6, #4) vs Mario Bautista (17-3, #7)

Oh, Cory. Your day will never come. In eight and a half years with the UFC, Cory Sandhagen has only ever lost fights against world champions or title contenders--and he arguably beat T.J. Dillashaw!--but as much as I will always root for him, when you lose all of the big ones, it becomes progressively harder to get mad that you aren’t getting more of them. Cory was supposed to win a title eliminator with ol’ Dilly, and he probably should have, but he didn’t. Cory got his interim title shot against Petr Yan, and he tried, but he couldn’t get it done. Two summers ago they sacrificed Cory to Umar Nurmagomedov, and after Cory shredded Deveison Figueiredo last year they finally gave him a shot at the title and Merab Dvalishvili, and unfortunately, Merab did what Merab does and drowned him. Does Cory deserve the shot at Sean O’Malley he’s been calling for? Absolutely. Is there any universe in which they give it to him instead of Song Yadong and Aiemann Zahabi, whom they’re more confident Sean can beat? Absolutely not.

No, what Cory gets is prospect rejection rematch duty. Mario Bautista is one of the best Bantamweights in the world, and if they could keep him carefully separate from the title picture, they’d be much, much happier. They gave him a shot! They tried to dispose of him by having Mario welcome Patchy Mix to the UFC last year, and then it turned out Patchy had dissolved into a horrifying skeletal approximation of his former self, so they pivoted the other way and gave Mario a shot at Umar with top contendership implications. But Mario failed the Umar test, and just like that, it was back to trying to get Mario killed, this time at the hands of Vinicius Oliveira. Unfortunately for the Lok Dog, the fight reinforced that there are, in fact, levels to this shit, as Mario turned him into a pretzel and choked him out with relative ease. He is, still, one of the best in the world. But he’s a grappler who usually goes to decisions, and by god, that’s just not acceptable.

This match is incredibly fucking cool. They already fought back in 2019, Cory armbarred Mario in one round, and since then Mario’s gotten a lot better at fighting to his strengths and Cory has gotten a lot better at not getting booked into the fights he deserves. Cory and Mario are both the caliber of fighter that could be king, were it not for the tip-top of the mountain just out of their reach, and there’s a very good chance whoever loses this fight is condemned to never sniff a title shot again. I love Mario’s grappling, I love his creativity; I am still going with CORY SANDHAGEN BY DECISION because I think he’s got a few more tools in his bag.

FLYWEIGHT: Brandon Royval (17-9, #4) vs Lone’er Kavanagh (10-1, #6)

It’s open season on Brandons again. All Brandons must proceed to the back of the boat and depart for their Brandon-shaped life rafts. After winning the Battle of the Brandons and wresting the title of The Brandonest from Brandon (the lesser) Moreno, and following it by derailing the then-undefeated Tatsuro Taira, Brandon Royval was supposed to get a title eliminator with Manel Kape last year. But Royval got injured, and then Kape got injured, and the UFC had Royval fight Joshua Van on barely any notice, and the rest is history. After his loss, Royval finally got that matchup with Manel, and unfortunately for him it ended with Manel punching him stupid in one round. Now Brandon is well and truly out of the title picture, and that means it falls to him to give prospects the jump they need.

Lone’er Kavanagh was supposed to fight Bruno Silva in a barely-ranked bout this past March. Instead, after the aforementioned Moreno’s main event with Asu Almabayev fell through, the UFC decided to send Kavanagh in. Was he coming off a knockout loss to Charles Johnson, who is only barely clinging to the edge of the top fifteen? Yes. Did he deserve a shot at the top five? Nope! Did it matter? Not even slightly. It was competitive but clear, Kavanagh outstruck Moreno and took his spot in the title picture, and now that the UFC has managed to get their Irish-English-Chinese marketing idol into the conversation by feeding him a Brandon, their ravenous appetite must be sated. All Brandons must fall.

More than any particular analysis about Kavanagh’s striking style vs Royval’s clubbing aggression, I just want something nice to happen for Brandon the Greater. The sport was not kind to him and I would like him to get one back. BRANDON ROYVAL BY TKO.

LIGHTWEIGHT: King Green (35-17-1 (1)) vs Terrance McKinney (18-8)

At this point I’m convinced the UFC got what they wanted by jobbing King Green out to Paddy and Mauricio Ruffy and now he’s part of the same non-canonical class of fighter Shara Magomedov and Michel Pereira exhibited the other week. In his last three fights, in order, King Green has fought and defeated:

• Lance Gibson Jr., a Bellator veteran who’d been fighting 22-52 guys named Charon Spain for Muckleshoot Fight Night before his abrupt callup to the UFC

• Daniel Zellhuber, a former UFC marketing darling now losing fights to circa 2025 Michael Johnson

• Jeremy fucking Stephens, who is, inexplicably, still fucking here

This is why sentences like “this fighter is on a three-fight winning streak!” are becoming less and less meaningful. If your winning streak incorporates The Muckleshoot King and a man whose last UFC win was damn near a decade ago, did it really happen?

We’re not going to find out here, because Terrance McKinney exists only for two and a half minutes at a time. For those one hundred and fifty seconds, he is a stone-cold killer with insane power and the willingness to sling headkicks and flying knees and punches that come all the way from his ass, and if he can strangle you on the way, by god, he will. After that? He disappears into dust and dreams. In thirteen UFC appearances, McKinney has never won a fight that lasted beyond two and a half minutes. Everyone who drags him into the deep waters of half the length of Next’s “Too Close,” 1998’s hottest dance song about being embarrassed you have a boner, will, statistically, defeat him.

King, once upon a time, you were a defensive mastermind who could run circles around damn near any Lightweight in the world. Lately, you have been bouncing off the cage and getting punched in the head. I am requesting that you fight like the guy who dodges punches tonight. KING GREEN BY TKO.

PRELIMS: WHATEVER IT TAKES
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Nikita Krylov (31-11, #12) vs Robert Whittaker (26-9, NR)

I did this. This is my fault. I’m so sorry, everyone. I have spent years talking about how giving up your harsh, unpleasant weight cut and moving up to a higher class is the sport’s best basis for success, but I never thought to stop and disclaim “Not you, Robert Whittaker,” and now we are all doomed to a harvest of depression. You already did this, Rob! You were a Welterweight and it sucked shit and you hated it and then you became a Middleweight and it went good up until you started dying a lot! Some of it is the division getting better, sure, but some of it is you decided to focus your fighting style around darting, lancing attacks and then you turned 30 and you slowed down at the same time people figured out that they can just hit you! You were already not a big Middleweight, you are about to be tied as the second-shortest Light Heavyweight in the company and I am so, so very afraid you are about to get lit the fuck up by Nikita Krylov as he punches you from half a foot away.

And yet: You beat the stuffing out of Paulo Costa and now he’s the #4 Light Heavyweight on the planet and he did it by beating the only man in the division who’s smaller than you. So fuck it, I guess, you do what you gotta do. Please don’t make me as sad as I think you’re about to. ROBERT WHITTAKER BY DECISION.

HEAVYWEIGHT: Gable Steveson (3-0) vs Elisha Ellison (5-2)

When you book a fight with a -3000 favorite someone should come to your office and throw you in jail. Speaking of which: Hi, Gable. I knew we were going to get here sooner or later, but christ, I was really hoping for later. For those who don’t know, Gable Steveson is a) an Olympic gold medalist, b) one of the best amateur wrestlers of all time, c) an (alleged) attempted rapist who got away with it in part thanks to his professed inability to perform and in part to a now-closed loophole whereby women in Minnesota couldn’t be considered unable to consent to sex if they’d willingly gotten drunk, and d) a failed professional wrestler who flunked out of the WWE’s developmental program after a combination of his lack of charisma and reputation as a sex criminal led to the audiences completely rejecting him. Fortunately for us, mixed martial arts has no standards.

I wish Gable Steveson were not here. I am sad it has come to this. He is probably still the best Heavyweight prospect on the planet. I wish both things could be mutually exclusive but I am afraid we are going to be stuck with him for some time. Elisha, you have the opportunity to do the funniest shit in the entire world. GABLE STEVENSON BY TKO.

BANTAMWEIGHT: Cody Garbrandt (15-7) vs Adrian Yañez (17-6-1)

I kinda thought we were done with this. Both of these guys, honestly. Adrian, you got a lot of good will for knocking Tony Kelley the fuck out of not just the UFC but mixed martial arts altogether, but for one, we immediately replaced him with much worse people, and for two, it’s been pretty downhill since then. You are 1 for your last 5, and the guy you beat was Vinicius Salvador, a Flyweight so unsuccessful he got kicked up to Bantamweight for screwing up his weight cut AND losing, and in the middle of that you’re going to draws with Ricky Simón, and it’s just a bad scene, man. But Cody? Cody, my guy, what are we doing here? You were supposed to leave! You were talking about your contract being done, like, two goddamn years ago, and now it’s 2026 and you are coming off a fight with Xiao Long where you were the beneficiary of a two-point deduction and people still think you winning the decision was a fucking robbery!

Like, it’s okay. You can stop. It’s a big world out there. Go learn about leatherworking. ADRIAN YAÑEZ BY TKO.

FEATHERWEIGHT: Kai Kamaka III (18-7-1) vs Luke Riley (13-0)

In another of those somehow-this-is-an-even-matching-of-careers moments, Kai Kamaka III, who got cut from the UFC on a 1-2-1 run back in 2021 after only managing to beat--hey, Tony Kelley! How wonderful it is to get a chance to remind you that Tony Kelley sucked shit twice in one writeup--was invited back to the company on less than a week’s notice this past April. Not because of an injury, or a need for a replacement, but simply because the UFC looked at Renato Moicano vs Chris Duncan and said “maybe if we add one more fight to the prelims no one will notice that we tried to convince them Renato Moicano vs Chris Duncan was a legitimate main event.” Luke Riley, meanwhile, is an undefeated contender from Cage Warriors who’s already 2-0 in the UFC after knocking out Bogdan Grad, which leaves him perfectly positioned to fight the guy who was losing decisions to Diego Brandão less than a year ago but made it to the UFC even though they turned Brandão down for the crime of being 39.

LUKE RILEY BY DECISION.

EARLY PRELIMS: WHATEVER IT TAKES
WOMEN’S FLYWEIGHT: Tracy Cortez (12-3, #8) vs Wang Cong (9-1, #12)

Welcome to the war of women the UFC wishes were more successful. They fuckin’ love them some Tracy Cortez. Is it her grappling? Is it her lack of finishes? Is it her incredibly distressing habit of not taking off her fake eyelashes before she gets in the cage? Either way, Rose Namajunas and Erin Blanchfield, both potential contenders, had fights with Maycee Barber fall through and saw Maycee replaced with Tracy, and they both beat her, and she is still here, getting fights on numbered events. Wang Cong was supposed to be the UFC’s 125-pound Zhang Weili, the new female face of their Chinese invasion, and then they put her in a big splashy fight in Macau and she got run through by Gabi Fernandes and everything’s been kind of blurry since then. She beat Bruna Brasil, who has a losing record, and she beat Ariane da Silva, who has a losing record and got released immediately afterward, but then she beat Eduarda Moura, who has a winning record! By one fight. Also Cong missed weight. Manon Fiorot hasn’t fought since October, Valentina Shevchenko hasn’t fought since November, Erin Blanchfield is fighting down in the rankings and there are, as of now, exactly two matches booked for absolutely anyone in the entire top fifteen at Women’s Flyweight.

But Cong and Cortez are one of them, so nothing else matters. TRACY CORTEZ BY DECISION.

MIDDLEWEIGHT: Damian Pinas (9-1) vs César Almeida (7-2)

This fight exists because people need to watch a motherfucker get punched in the head. Motherfuckers getting punched in the head is the only reason César Almeida has a job. They signed him as a 4-0 fighter because he used to do kickboxing and they were still so high on Alex Pereira’s success that signing a guy with four fights who was already in his late thirties seemed like a wise use of time and money, because hey: It worked once. Two years after his UFC debut, Alex Pereira was a two-division champion! Two years after his UFC debut, César Almeida is 3-2 and hasn’t beaten anyone with a winning record. Damian Pinas just got here. They signed him off the Contender Series because he knocks out goddamn near everyone he fights, and they booked his UFC debut against a guy who got knocked out on the Contender Series back in 2024, and, shock of shocks, Pinas knocked him out. He is large, he is scary, he was fighting 4-5 guys just a couple fights ago, and he will continue to terrify anyone until it turns out he doesn’t know what to do if someone moves laterally.

Until then, DAMIAN PINAS BY TKO.

BANTAMWEIGHT: Farid Basharat (15-0, #15) vs John Garza (6-1, NR)

This went from my favorite fight on this entire card to the fight I’m angriest at for reasons unrelated to sex criminals. Farid Basharat is one of the Bantamweight division’s best prospects: An undefeated all-arounder who’s defensively sound and smart enough in his approach to make it to the rankings despite only having one finish in the company. He was supposed to meet red-hot prospect Ethyn Ewing, in what would have been a genuinely fascinating contest between one of the division’s best defensive strategists and one of its best offensive boxers. But Ewing dropped out, and rather than just rebook the fight later, or find someone for Basharat who’s already in the company, they’re bringing in 23 year-old John Garza, a rookie with barely two years in the sport who’s been fighting guys down in Fury FC who don’t even stand out at the regional level. He hits hard, he hits fast, and he hits like someone who’s barely had to worry about people testing his defense.

So he’s fighting for a berth in the top fifteen. God bless. FARID BASHARAT BY DECISION.

MIDDLEWEIGHT: Ryan Gandra (9-1) vs Zach Reese (10-3 (1))

The pattern feeds on itself to survive. Zach Reese was hired because he openly advertised his desire to ignore things like ‘defense’ and ‘strategy’ in favor of simply being a wild-eyed savage who goes for finishes all of the time. Two and a half years later he’s coming off a loss because he can’t beat Michel Pereira and he has yet to record a win over anyone with a successful UFC record. Ryan Gandra just got here four months ago, and he was fighting nobodies one bout before his shot at the Contender Series, and they hired him because he, too, knocks out all of the warm bodies tossed in front of him, and to make sure he succeeded, they started him off against José Medina, who was on a five-fight losing streak that included--shock of shocks--Zach Reese.

Now the models must fight to determine which interchangeable punch-rookie matters the most. None of this means anything. Neither of these guys seems particularly good. ZACH REESE BY SUBMISSION.

FLYWEIGHT: Cody Durden (18-10-1) vs Alessandro Costa (16-5)

This is Cody Durden’s third fight in four months. That’s very silly. That’s a silly thing to do. But it got Cody his first win in two goddamn years and that win was over Jafel Filho, the fighter I have arguably the unhealthiest relationship with, so honestly, who’s to say if it’s actually bad or if I’m just bitter? It worked out gangbusters last time, and all it took was a last-minute replacement fight against an underprepared grappler with bad stand-up fighting at an unfamiliar weight class. Surely, that will translate extremely well to a return to Flyweight against a strong wrestleboxer with real knockout power!

ALEESANDRO COSTA BY TKO.

Welcome to July. You have survived more than half of this year and you should be proud of yourself. It’s a weird month, with the entire world taking the first week of July off and four separate events all being crammed into the 17th/18th, and also Conor’s back so that sucks.

THIS MONTH’S PUNCHSPORTS EVENTS

• UFC 329: McGregor vs Holloway 2, July 11

• UFC Fight Night: du Plessis vs Usman, July 18

• UFC Fight Night: Ankalaev vs Rountree Jr., July 25

• PFL Austin: Eblen vs Kasanganay 2, July 18

• PFL New York: Nurmagomedov vs Colgan, July 31

• ONE Friday Fights 161: Pacio vs Malachiev, July 10

• ONE Fight Night 45: Lessei vs Rabah, July 17

• Rizin Landmark 15: Ota vs Tilenov, July 18

A NOTE FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF BOOKKEEPING

As of this month, I am removing Invicta from the championship rolls. Which sucks! I love Invicta and the industry has never, ever needed a dedicated home for women’s MMA like it does right now. But at this point it’s been 14+ months since the last Invicta event with no news in sight. We’re half a year overdue for the big relaunch they promised, and I certainly hope they return, but even if they do, their only two champions were Jennifer Maia and Elisandra Ferreira and both are now fighting for other promotions, with Maia kickboxing in K-1 and Ferreira having just made a successful 115-pound debut for the PFL. Get better soon, Invicta. We miss you.

IS THERE ANY NEWS

Dustin Poirier got arrested for being drunk and disorderly in an airport and threatening to beat up cops and yelling the n-word in reference to kicking their asses. He’s since posted apologies lamenting how he’s struggled with his drinking since retirement, and no one actually got hurt, so the biggest lasting impact is Sean Strickland having an excuse to say the n-word on social media a bunch now it’s okay. I hope Dustin gets help.

Remember that whole thing over the last year where the Global Fight League announced a completely preposterous event series with a massively expensive roster of aging veterans, AI-generated hype videos and no explanation for how on Earth they were going to make money, and then it folded before it could even begin and no one on Earth was shocked?

We’re gonna do it all over again! The GFL has announced it’s back, for totally real this time, and they’ll be holding it from the venue at Sam’s Town Live, which has just barely one thousand seats, on October 17. We mean it! We’re really gonna do it! Also here’s a link to our cryptocurrency.

Alex Pereira is really, really mad about Herb Dean. He wants you to put in the papers that he’s mad. He celebrates it. It’s hard to avoid a little bit of schadenfreude, here, as Pereira was happy to scab for Tom Aspinall and was decidedly unsympathetic towards his woes, but now that he, himself, has felt the sting of questionably legal blows en route to his TKO loss to Ciryl Gane, he has decided Herb Dean is a stain on the sport and must be fired immediately. He started a petition! Which was especially funny a couple weeks later when Herb turned in an incredibly bad performance during Shara Magomedov vs Michel Pereira, allowing Shara to get away with pulling Pereira’s hair and poking his eye without ever taking a point, despite a stern warning.

Multiple things can be true at once. It is true that Herb Dean makes a lot of mistakes. It is true that we are desperately overdue for a conversation about the reffing, judging and administration of the rules of mixed martial arts. It is also true that Alex going from a fuck-you-got-mine marketing face-of-the-UFC favorite to Dom Cruz levels of referee grudge this fast is really, really funny.

The UFC launched their long-promised, Meta-powered LLM-driven rankings system, and the net result was several days of the website having no idea who the champions were and changing the identity of beltholders every few times you reloaded the page.

But they fixed it! It’s perfect now! Except it’s so weighted towards recency bias that Kevin Borjas is a top ten Flyweight despite being 2 for 6, and Marcus McGhee is #9 at Bantamweight because he beat up John Yannis but Aiemann Zahabi is only #12 because he got knocked out by Sean O’Malley, and Pat Sabatini is now the world’s #7 Featherweight, and Mike Malott is ranked above Yaroslav Amosov at Welterweight despite Malott getting crushed by a man Amosov choked out in seconds, and Joe Pyfer is the world’s #5 Middleweight, and we could keep going but I’m already weeping blood.

Rankings are terrible. And I should know, because we made our own! It takes real work to make something worse than what the rankings already are. But by god, they managed.

WHAT HAPPENED IN JUNE

We kicked off the month in the Apex with UFC Fight Night: Muhammad vs Bonfim on June 6. Ketlen Souza knocked out Ariane Carnelossi, Jeisla Chaves won a ‘why is this in the UFC’ split decision over Yuneisy Duben, we had a very rare three straight submissions as Joanderson Brito choked Jordan Leavitt, Chelsea Chandler armbarred Priscila Cachoeira, and Édgar Cháirez got the rear naked choke on Bruno Silva all in one round apiece, Marcus McGhee took a wide decision over John Yannis, and Alessandro Costa knocked out Matt Schnell in two and a half minutes. On the main card, Iwo Baraniewski leg kicked Junior Tafa to death in a minute and a half, Bryce Mitchell choked out Santiago Luna, Tom Nolan earned his way into the rankings by beating Farès Ziam, Brendan Allen won a really obvious decision against Edmen Shahbazyan that Edmen reacted to with shock anyway, and in the main event, Gabriel Bonfim dominated Belal Muhammad, whose career is just making me sad now.

Rizin Landmark 14 came later that night. After Rizin’s attempts to make the Landmark cards bigger, flashier affairs of late, this was something closer to their baseline, with kickboxing and rookie fights and guys with 0-4 records that are somehow still here. But Yusuke Yachi beat fellow aging veteran Isao Kobayashi, and good ol’ Blackpanther Beynoah damn near decapitated Bilal Kai Haga, and Tony Laramie scored the upset by taking a decision over Yuki Motoya, and in the main event, Shinryu Takahashi finally got his revenge on Hiromasa Ougikubo after their first fight in 2024, this time taking home a unanimous decision and Ougikubo’s Flyweight championship.

On the 13th we had PFL Africa 2, and I’ll be honest, I could tell you things like “Patrick Ocheme knocked out Ayinda Octave” or “Ignacio Campos choked out Wasi Adeshina,” and I’m sure we’ll touch base more on the Africa tournaments later this year when they hold their finals, but what I really care about is Invicta Atomweight champ Elisandra Ferreira moving up to Strawweight, debuting in the PFL, and armbarring Juliet Ukah, a former Featherweight. Good fuckin’ job, Lili.

The next day on the 14th, the UFC went to the White House.

Six days later, we came back to the Apex for UFC Fight Night: Kape vs Horiguchi. Was it bad? Not really! Was it depressing? Man, yeah, kinda. Shane Collins beat Otari Tanzilovi in a fight that didn’t make either of them look all that great, Luana Santos unseated Karol Rosa with a similar performance, Levan Chokheli destroyed Leon Shahbazyan in twenty-three seconds, Gastón Bolaños pulled a decision over Michael Aswell Jr., Mitch Raposo just barely scraped a split over Allan Nascimento, Bia Mesquita looked pretty lousy and almost got knocked out by Melissa Mullins but Mullins inexplicably followed the world-class grappler to the ground and got armbarred for her troubels, and Kevin Borjas missed the Flyweight limit and proceeded to beat hyped prospect André Lima by decision anyway. On the main card, Vinicius Oliveira knocked out Andre Fili in two rounds, Murtazali Magomedov hit the Scottish Twister on Melsik Baghdasaryan, Christian Rodriguez choked out Hyder Amil, Navajo Stirling overcame an early scare to stop an exhausted Ion Cuțelaba, and in your ultimately sad main event, Kyoji Horiguchi pitched a near-perfect game against Manel Kape for two and a half rounds, looked amazing, reminded everyone why he’s one of the best fighters in the world, and then promptly got socked in the chin by Kape and fell over.

The 26th brought us ONE Fight Night 44: Jarvis vs Rungrawee 2 and I dunno, man. I dunno. Every couple months they get rid of more MMA and I wonder when it’ll just be over. Paul Elliott knocked out Regan Upshaw in seconds with a jumping Heavyweight kick and that was pretty neat, I guess. Karen Ghazaryan knocked out Hisashi Ezaki in a round. Lucas Gabriel won an upset split decision over former champ Ok Rae Yoon. George Jarvis knocked out Rungrawee Sitsongpeenong in the Muay Thai main event and some people liked it, I’m pretty sure.

And on the 27th the UFC returned to Baku for UFC Fight Night: FIziev vs Torres, a night where it was awful, awful good to be a UFC fighter whose name ends in a V. The prelims included Farman Hasanov beating Eric Nolan, Abdul-Rakhman Yakhyayev dropping Julius Walker in eight seconds, Nursulton Ruziboev choking out Andrey Pulyaev, Kaan Ofli looking like a different fighter entirely in destroying Javier Reyes in one round, Daniil Donchenko taking out Theodor Berggren and Jean Matsumoto outlasting Bekzat Almakhan to a decision, but the prelim people will remember most was Tahir Abdullayev vs Jefferson Nascimento, a truly baffling fight in which Abdullayev repeatedly complained to the referee that Nascimento was moving around too much, somehow succeeded in getting the ref to admonish Nascimento for not engaging even though he was the only one landing strikes, god away with several cage grabs and a groin shot, may have actually bitten Nascimento in mid-fight, and wound up getting a TKO ruling so early even the commentary team was shocked by it. On your main card, Abus Magomedov choked out Michał Oleksiejczuk, Ikram Aliskerov got a decision over Brunno Ferreira, Asu Almabayev hit the goddamn Suloev stretch on Charles Johnson, Matheus Camilo flattened Nazim Sadykhov in ninety seconds, Shara Magomedov won a pretty bad fight with Michel Pereira before calling for a title shot, and in the main event, Rafael Fiziev turned back the clock and knocked out Manuel Torres.

The month closed later that night with PFL San Diego: McKee vs Isbulaev. The prelims were an all-finishes affair, with Cobey Fehr, Savarjon Khamidov, Khasan Magomedsheripov and Jena Bishop all scoring submission victory, the latter over former UFC contender Ariane da Silva, and Shannon Clark scored the only knockout of the prelims against Ilara Joanne. Up top, Rob Wilkinson won a moustache fight with Abraham Bably, knocking him out in the second, Alexander Shabliy took a dominant decision against Alfie Davis, Liz Carmouche guillotined Viviane Araújo in two rounds before calling for the PFL to make a Women’s Bantamweight division, and in the main event, a game but outmatched Salamat Isbulaev got dominated by A.J. McKee.

WHAT’S COMING IN JULY

ONE is up first this month with ONE Friday Fights 161: Pacio vs Malachiev on July 10, and as is the standard with ONE there are only two MMA fights announced and they’re Eduard Folayang vs Shozo Isojima and the main event, Joshua Pacio defending the ONE Strawweight MMA title against Mansur Malachiev. As is the NEW standard for ONE, I’m typing this on June 28th, this event is less than two weeks away, and those are the only two fights announced. I want ONE to just take a break and get their shit together, man.

The next day, it’s UFC 329: McGregor vs Holloway 2, because everything sure does suck. Ryan Gandra vs Zach Reese in a “why are we still here” matchup. Farid Basharat vs Ethyn Ewing in a “why is this still on the early prelims” matchup. Gable Steveson vs Elisha Ellison in a “why are you not in prison” matchup. Plus Tracy Cortez vs Wang Cong, Cody Garbrandt vs Adrian Yañez, Robert Whittaker moving up to 205 pounds against Nikita Krylov, and a main card of King Green vs Terrance McKinney, Brandon Royval vs Lone’er Kavanagh, Cory Sandhagen vs Mario Bautista, Benoît Saint Denis vs Paddy Pimblett, and, in the main event, Conor McGregor is back, and he’s getting a fight against #4-ranked Lightweight Max Holloway except it’s being contested at Welterweight because nothing matters, especially not being found legally liable for sexual assault.

Our very long weekend begins on July 17 with ONE Fight Night 45: Lessei vs Rabah, which has five MMA fights on it: Ayaka Miura vs Victoria Souza and Jihin Radzuan vs Anastasia Nikolakakos at the again-vacant Atomweight division, Sanzhar Zakirov vs Ruslan Satiev and Lito Adiwang vs Joshua Perreira at Flyweight, and Bokang Masunyane vs Lee Seung Cheol at Strawweight. Your actual main event is a Muay Thai match between Luke Lessei and Mohamed Younes Rabah.

The 18th kicks off with PFL Austin: Eblen vs Kasanganay 2. As of now, only six fights are announced: Andrea Vázquez vs Aleksandra Savicheva, Sergio Cossio vs Kolton Englund, Jesus Pinedo vs Levy Saúl Marroquín, Caolán Loughran vs Julio Arce, Sergio Pettis getting back on the horse against Lewis McGrillen, and your main event was supposed to be a Middleweight title rematch between Costello van Steenis and Johnny Eblen, but with Costello out injured, it’s now a rematch between Eblen and Impa Kasanganay for an interim title.

Middleweight madness continues throughout the day thanks to UFC Fight Night: du Plessis vs Usman. This aggressively silly card includes amazing fights like Allen Frye Jr. vs Alvin “Goozie” Hines, Austin Bashi vs Jose Miguel Delgado, Tommy McMillen vs Alberto Montes, Brad Tavares vs Marc-André Barriault, and Tabatha Ricci vs Fatima Kline. Your anchoring fights are, in all likelihood, Chase Hooper vs Mitch Ramirez, Kevin Holland vs Jacobe Smith, Marlon Vera vs Charles Jourdain, Jared Cannonier vs Christian Leroy Duncan, and, in your main event, #2-ranked former Middleweight champion Dricus du Plessis vs Kamaru Usman, who is 0-1 at the class.

Our long 48 hours of combat sports concludes late that evening with Rizin Landmark 15. As before, this is still a developmental show, so there’s a lot of development talent and subsequent records on it--the 6-5 Namiko Kawabata vs the 4-3 Ayane Hirata, the 19-18-1 Shoji Maruyama against the 2-1 Genji Umeno, the kinds of things you would expect to see from a Rizin card where a bunch of kickboxers are trying their hand at MMA. But we’ve got Rizin’s first stabs at filling the void Seika Izawa left in their Atomweight division, as Saori Oshima faces Lee Ye-Ji and Si Woo Park meets Moeri Suda, and a couple embattled fan favorite bouts, with Hiroya Kondo facing Erson Yamamoto and Karshyga Dautbek fighting ol’ Kenka Bancho himself Kyohei Hagiwara, and your main card is a score of good, old-fashioned Japanese-vs-foreigners bouts, as Tatsuki Shinotsuki faces Korea’s Lee Jae-Hoon, Tenya Yoshimura fights America’s Johnny Case, Shinobu Ota tries to outwrestle Kyrgyzstan’s Yrysbek Tilenov, and in the main event, Jinnosuke Kashimura tries to wrest Rizin’s Bantamweight title away from champion Danny Sabatello, whom Rizin is threatening to fire if he doesn’t start finishing people.

The UFC closes their month out on July 25 by returning to Abu Dhabi for UFC Fight Night: Ankalaev vs Rountree Jr. It is, once again, a night of EMEA-friendly competitors, with highlights including Nurullo Aliev vs Mike Davis, Uran Satybaldiev vs Dustin Jacoby, Islam Dulatov vs Wellington Turman, Ramazan Temirov vs Steve Erceg, Rizvan Kuniev vs Tyrell Fortune, Umar Nurmagomedov vs David Martinez and, playing the role of our honorary Abu Dhabian for the week because his name at least STARTS with a V, Valter Walker vs Thomas Petersen. Headlining the show is former champion Magomed Ankalaev and former challenger Khalil Rountree Jr. fighting to see which of them gets a potential claim on a belt that will probably have an interim or a vacancy in the very near future.

And July ends on the 31st with PFL New York: Nurmagomedov vs Colgan. The PFL’s throwing a bit more at this one than usual, with Montana De La Rosa vs Tatiana Postarnakova, Raufeon Stots vs Lazaro Dayron and Dovletdzhan Yagshimuradov vs Simeon Powell filling out the card, but the big deal are their two biggest stars both gettin gpole position. Striking queen Dakota Ditcheva is in the co-main event against former Bellator titlist Denise Kielholtz, and in the main event, Usman Nurmagomedov defends his Lightweight title--in what might be his last-ever fight for the PFL--against the undefeated Archie Colgan.

CURRENT UFC CHAMPIONS
Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs

Tom Aspinall - 15-3 (1), Either 1, 2 or 0 Defenses Depending On How You Look At It

You know, once upon a time, the UFC would’ve killed for a Tom Aspinall. Entire years of UFC events were spent desperately trying to get a Dan Hardy or Darren Till or Jimi Manuwa into championship pictures so they could cash in on UK superstardom. And somehow, Tom Aspinall just fell into their lap. They didn’t go out of their way to softball him, they didn’t put a ton of effort into marketing him, they just let him mulch everyone in his path. In 2025, Tallison Teixeira has a main event in just his second UFC bout: In 2022 Tom Aspinall had to notch five straight stoppages to get his first crack at the top of the card against Curtis Blaydes, and it ended with his knee imploding fifteen seconds into the fight. When he lost that fight, Francis Ngannou was the reigning UFC Heavyweight Champion of the World. By the time Tom returned in the Summer of 2023, it belonged to Jon fucking Jones. Within one fight Aspinall was a top contender again, and with Jon comically scheduled to defend his title against Stipe Miocic, who hadn’t fought in two and a half years, Aspinall was left in a holding pattern--until Jon injured himself in training. With barely two weeks to prepare, Tom Aspinall fought Sergei Pavlovich for an interim championship. Sergei was the most devastating knockout artist in the Heavyweight division: Tom knocked him out in sixty-nine seconds. Not only did it give him gold, it gave him a golden ticket. The sole purpose of an interim champion is to one day reunify the belts, and that meant Tom had a shot at Jon Jones, one of the biggest fighters in the history of the sport. All he had to do was wait. And wait. And wait. Tom waited so fucking long the UFC made him defend his interim title in a rematch with Blaydes--which he won easily, knocking him out in 60 seconds--on July 27, 2024. Four months later, Jon Jones returned and had his fight with Stipe, who by that point had been effectively retired for almost four years. Unsurprisingly, Jon won. Equally unsurprisingly, Jon and the UFC refused to commit to fighting Aspinall. Jones reportedly held the UFC up for a huge payday, and when they shockingly agreed, he changed his mind. In the end, the most obvious pair of conclusions happened: On June 21st, during the press conference after Fight Night Baku, Dana White announced Jon was retiring and Tom was being promoted to Undisputed Champion; an hour later, coincidentally, news broke that Jon was being summoned for arraignment in July on charges of leaving the scene of an accident after drunkenly crashing another car and leaving another heavily-inebriated half-naked woman behind in it and also threatening the police over the phone when they called him. It is the only way the Jon Jones story could possibly have ended. Tom Aspinall was an interim champion for 588 days, and he made his first undisputed one against Ciryl Gane at UFC 321 on October 26--and, because this division is fucking cursed, it ended in a No Contest after Gane poked him in both of his eyes at once. The UFC has decided this is mostly Tom’s fault, which has nothing at all to do with Tom’s dad talking about how he shouldn’t sign a new contract. A rematch has been vowed, but Tom had to get eye surgery to regain his sight and the UFC doesn’t want to wait when there’s marketing to be done, so Ciryl Gane and Alex Pereira fought for an interim title at the godforsaken White House.

Interim Heavyweight Champion

Ciryl Gane - 14-2 (1), 0 Defenses

Five years ago, the UFC ran into issues with their undisputed Heavyweight champion and chose to end-run around them by putting an interim title on Ciryl Gane. It is 2026, and nothing has changed. With Tom out thanks to Ciryl’s fingertips piercing his eyeballs, Ciryl was rewarded with a big fight against Alex Pereira for the interim belt--again--at the UFC’s big, terrible White House super-event, in the not-so-subtle hopes that the UFC’s continuing attempts to put all their eggs in the Alex Pereira basket would pay off in the form of their first-ever three-division champion. Instead, Ciryl beat the crap out of him. At 205 pounds, Alex was a monster; at 265 he was slower, smaller and no longer possessed the biggest guns in the cage. Ciryl boxed him up and knocked him out in the second round, but in the process of getting the stoppage he dropped elbows on a fallen, shaky Pereira that hit the back of his head, over which Pereira is attempting to a) have the fight’s result reversed and b ) have referee Herb Dean fired. Ciryl Gane, meanwhile, continues to profit from everyone else’s misery. He’s the interim champ again, which means either he’s going to face Tom in a rematch when Tom’s healthy, or the UFC’s going to stop pretending and strip Tom and Ciryl will ascend to the Heavyweight throne on a trail of eyeballs and brainstems.

Light Heavyweight Champion, 205 lbs

Carlos Ulberg - 14-1, 0 Defenses

It’s so hard not to skip to the punchline on this one. Carlos Ulberg’s combat sports career is more mixed than MMA alone would lead one to believe. He started as a mixed martial artist all the way back in 2011, but after winning his debut fight, he decided to give fighting a break for almost half a decade. Then it was boxing, and then it was MMA again, and then it was kickboxing, and for a brief period of time it was both at once. The rise of Israel Adesanya led the UFC on an all-out talent search for big, credible strikers from Oceania, and that is how despite being just 3-0 as a mixed martial artist, Carlos wound up on the Contender Series in 2020, and just a few months later, in March of 2021, he was debuting in the UFC. They hyped him, they gave him a spot on the pay-per-view prelims, they booked him against the 1-1 Kennedy Nzechukwu and despite having half his experience Ulberg was the heavy betting favorite, because everyone knew they wanted him on top. Which was unfortunate, because Kennedy knocked him out in two rounds. Carlos described the loss as the most important moment of his career--half for the lesson of the loss itself, half for the $50,000 bonus that gave him his first taste of actual profit as a professional. He vowed to take his career more seriously, he vowed to prepare for his fights as though every one mattered rather than simply being happy to be in the UFC, and four years later, he was the top contender for the Light Heavyweight crown. A testament to determination and a good mindset? Absolutely! But also a bit of a testament to the careful cultivation and protection of a prospect. Carlos did his job and beat everyone the UFC put in front of him, but the people put in front of him tended to be carefully picked. At one point he beat a genuine prospect in Nicolae Negumereanu, and the UFC followed it up by giving him Ihor Potieria, the man Nicolae had just knocked out in his previous fight. Stiff prospects like Aleksandar Rakić and Azamat Murzakanov flew past in the background, but Da Woon Jung and Alonzo Menifield had to be destroyed. The UFC spent a year and a half trying on three separate occasions to book Ulberg against Dominick Reyes, and by the time they finally got there, it was, somehow, impossibly, a title eliminator. But Ulberg won, just as he’d won every fight since his meeting with Kennedy Nzechukwu, and he proceeded to his title fight with Jiří Procházka for the championship Alex Pereira had left behind to try his hand at the Heavyweight division. It was fun, it was fast, it was dramatic and it was definitive. In just a hair under four minutes, Jiří was flat on the canvas and Carlos Ulberg, five years after his debut, was the Light Heavyweight champion of the world. He also very visibly tore his ACL in half right in the middle of the fight and could barely move. If Jiří had simply backed away, hacked a few leg kicks and kept his distance, the fight would’ve been stopped between rounds, but he chose to engage and got flattened by a left hook counter for his troubles, and the result was a brand new titleholder who proceeded directly to the emergency room after the fight and had knee surgery less than a week later. For the third time in six title reigns, the new champion has an injury so bad it will prevent them from defending their title for at least the rest of the year. Will we get an interim title? Will yet another champion have to give up the gold? Will Paulo fucking Costa wind up technically a 205-pound champion? Stay tuned.

Middleweight Champion, 185 lbs

Sean Strickland - 31-7, 0 Defenses

After all of that time, we are back where we were. When Sean Strickland got his first shot at the UFC Middleweight Championship back in 2023, it was under particularly thin circumstances. Strickland had just come off back-to-back losses against Alex Pereira and Jared Cannonier, his title prospects seemed slim, and a short-notice victory over the then-unheralded Nassourdine Imavov and one-fight UFC veteran Abus Magomedov seemed unlikely to get Strickland anywhere. But then Dricus du Plessis wanted another month to prepare for Israel Adesanya, and the UFC wanted to keep their pay-per-view main event, and suddenly, Sean Strickland was beating one of the sport’s biggest stars and becoming its top Middleweight. It was a stellar performance, it was a career-defining victory, and it was one of the shortest title reigns in UFC history, as just four months later Strickland lost the belt to du Plessis in his first defense. But it was a split decision, so his argument for a rematch was sound, and after a pretty dubious win over Paulo Costa, Strickland got du Plessis back in the cage, where he vowed vengeance, justice, and a return to greatness. Dricus beat him 50-45. It would be a full year before Strickland returned, and in that time, the Middleweight division had changed shape. Nassourdine Imavov was in pole position. Israel Adesanya was a shadow of his former self. Anthony Hernandez was the fastest-rising contender in the class. And Strickland’s nemesis Dricus du Plessis had lost his title to Khamzat Chimaev. On February 21, 2026, on the back of a bunch of bigot bullshit that was growing ever-more tired by the day, Sean returned to the cage and walked right through Hernandez, not just beating him but knocking him out in the third round, and just like that, Imavov’s work didn’t matter, Dricus beating Sean twice didn’t matter. The UFC has its favorites, and Sean got the shot. Khamzat, as he did, hadn’t fought in nine months, and had been busying himself making threats about moving to Light Heavyweight and chasing a superfight with Alex Pereira, who had, himself, already moved up to Heavyweight altogether. Chimaev swore he would outwrestle Sean, smash him, and move on with his life. And for one round, he looked completely correct. After the first, suddenly, Strickland evened things up. Khamzat was never able to assert his wrestling game again, so the rest of the title fight became a boxing match, and in that sense, it was surprisingly even, with Khamzat arguably landing the bigger punches but Strickland landing at a higher clip, and the scorecards were split right down the middle. But the coinflip went Sean’s way. For the second time, Sean Strickland is a world champion, and we are all bastards for it. A rematch seems almost inevitable, but Sean has a shoulder injury to rehabilitate, so we’ll see what the future holds.

Welterweight Champion, 170 lbs

Islam Makhachev - 28-1, 0 Defenses

The prophecy has been fulfilled. Khabib Nurmagomedov was considered by many to be the greatest Lightweight of all time, but in the later stages of his career he began to repeatedly reference his lifetime friend and training partner Islam Makhachev as not just his successor, but the man who would break the mold he’d left behind. And the fanbase was more than willing to buy another Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov protege coming in and wrecking shop--until he got knocked out by Adriano Martins. Khabib’s aura of invulnerability came from the simple, so-obvious-more-people-should-try-it factor of simply never losing a damn fight. When Islam got torched in under two minutes by a man that couldn’t beat Donald Cerrone, that aura vanished. A lot of folks still thought he could be a champion, but most felt the greatest-of-all-time lane was closed to him. It turns out there’s another way to regain that sense of unbeatable awe, though: Just don’t lose for so goddamn long people forget it ever happened. In the ten full years since that Martins bout, Islam has not lost a single fight. Most of the time, he hasn’t even lost a round. He worked his way up the Lightweight ladder and began to rack up incredible achievements. He tore through top prospects with virtually no effort, he choked out one of the best MMA grapplers ever in Charles Oliveira, he outlasted and later knocked out one of the two men with a claim to the all-time Featherweight crown in Alexander Volkanovski, he choked out Dustin Poirier and he broke the Lightweight title defense record after stomping Renato Moicano. And then he traded in his record-breaking reign to challenge for Welterweight gold. Jumping divisions is always difficult, but the 15-pound leap from Lightweight to Welterweight is a mountain, and no Lightweight champion had ever managed it. Even BJ Penn, the canonical first man to hold gold at both, had to do it in reverse: He failed at both of his attempts to win Lightweight gold and shocked the world by abruptly taking it at Welterweight instead, and it would be five more years before he finally got his shit together and won a title in the division that made him famous. His subsequent attempts all ended in defeat, half because Matt Hughes and Georges St-Pierre were both great and half because BJ was just a Lightweight. Even though Islam was Islam and widely agreed to be a monster in the cage, Jack Della Maddalena had won the Welterweight title with some of the cleanest boxing the UFC had seen, and his championship victory over wrestler Belal Muhammad had people convinced that Islam, at best, would struggle. They met in the main event of UFC 322 on November 15, 2025, and there was absolutely no struggle. Islam kicked Jack’s leg to pieces, landed some surprisingly big punches, and took the fight to the ground almost at will, and by the time the fight ended, it felt like Jack never had a chance. The shadow has been stepped out of. Islam Makhachev is a two-division champion. And now he has a brand new horde of contenders beating down his door. He’ll try to notch his first defense against Ian Machado Garry at UFC 330 on August 15.

Lightweight Champion, 155 lbs

Justin Gaethje - 28-5, 0 Defenses

This has been a long, long time coming. Justin Gaethje has been right on the edge of the top for so long he banked two half-championships on his way up the mountain. Back in 2016, before the UFC even signed him, he was the champion of the World Series of Fighting--now known as the Professional Fighters League, much to our collective sadness--and was widely considered one of the best Lightweights in the world before ever setting foot in the Octagon. Back in 2020 he fought Tony Ferguson, then arguably the scariest Lightweight in the world, and beat him so horrifically that his career never recovered, and that netted Gaethje his first interim belt, which he promptly lost to Khabib Nurmagomedov in the latter’s retirement bout. Back in 2022, Gaethje got his second shot at the undisputed title against Charles Oliveira and he wound up strangled in three and a half minutes. Three and a half years after that, Gaethje was still right there at the precipice of the top, Ilia Topuria needed a break from the sport, and the UFC needed an aging veteran to propel their marketing star Paddy Pimblett to the top, and at UFC 324 on January 24, 2026, they threw Paddy’s big party and Justin crashed it. The UFC will tell you the fight was close, and it was in the sense that it went the whole way and one judge only gave Justin three rounds, but Paddy got brutally beaten and dropped repeatedly. With their desired player having failed his final exam, the UFC booked Gaethje into the main event of their big, terrible White House card against the finally-returning Ilia Topuria, who vowed to put Gaethje out within two rounds and resume his journey to a Welterweight showdown with Islam Makhachev. Instead, the two men had a goddamn war, with both hurting each other repeatedly and Topuria, arguably, giving away a TKO victory in the second round after crumpling Gaethje with bodyshots and choosing to roll for an armbar rather than pound him out. Gaethje broke Topuria’s face and left him nearly blind, and by the end of the fourth round, Topuria had nothing left and his corner threw in the towel. It took ten years, two interim belts and two failed shots, but finally, Justin Gaethje is the champion of the world. Which makes whatever happens next really fucking weird. They could run a Topuria rematch, but the ending was definitive and Topuria never defended the belt in the first place. They could have Gaethje fight rematches with Oliveira or Max Holloway, both of whom stopped him in the recent past, but Gaethje is hesitant about them and Holloway is booked against Conor McGregor. I’m sure they would LOVE it if Conor won so he could fight Gaethje instead, but that seems drastically unlikely. Arman Tsarukyan is, as ever, the #1 contender, but we know the UFC doesn’t care about that. My guess: Paddy Pimblett rematch.

Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs

Alexander Volkanovski - 28-4, 1 Defense

And just like that, 2024 never happened. For eleven years Alexander Volkanovski was the best Featherweight on the planet, and most of that time was simply waiting for everyone else to notice. He was short and he won by decisions a lot and the world was entirely into Max Holloway so he skated under the radar right up until the moment he finally beat Max. And that wasn’t enough to convince people, so Volkanovski beat him again. And that somehow made the world doubt him even more, so he beat Max a third time. By 2023 Volk was second only to all-time great José Aldo in Featherweight title defenses--and he’d beaten Aldo in a fight, and his only actual loss was an all-timer of an effort against Islam Makhachev that still stands as the closest Islam has come to losing his title as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world, so it was very, very easy to accept Alexander Volkanovski as the greatest Featherweight on the planet. And then he took a rematch with Islam with only one week to prepare and got knocked out in three minutes, and then he came back less than four months later and got flattened by Ilia Topuria, and in the space of two fights the audience went from celebrating him as the best around to calling for his retirement. Volkanovski took an entire year off to heal and rebuild, which was enough time for Ilia to get bored and vacate the belt to go chase Lightweight greatness, and the Topuria/Volkanovski rematch became Volkanovski vs Diego Lopes at UFC 314 on April 12 to fill the vacant throne instead. It was somehow both close and clear. Lopes gained steam in the middle stanza of the bout and at one point dropped Volk, but Volk got right back up and resumed punching him in the face, and by the end of the bout he’d outlanded him more than two to one. The judges sided with him, the audience sided with him, and Alexander Volkanovski became not just one of the rare few to win back a UFC title, but the first man over 35 to ever win a UFC belt in the sub-170 weight classes typically reserved for young lions. His logical next contender should’ve been Movsar Evloev, but the UFC was busy trying to get him to fight an unranked, debuting Aaron Pico, thus clearing the way for a rematch with Yair Rodríguez in Guadalajara for Noche UFC 3 in September. Except the Arena Guadalajara wasn’t done yet, so Noche UFC 3 got moved to the most Mexican of places, Las Vegas, in October, and Alex’s manager said he had an eye injury that needs time to heal, so he took the rest of 2025 off. Good news, though: That left time for the UFC to get new contenders going. Lerone Murphy wound up fighting and knocking out Pico! Aljamain Sterling beat Brian Ortega! Hell, Movsar Evloev is still right there! The UFC looked at all of them and gave them all the finger. At UFC 325 on January 31, fresh off his title victory over Diego Lopes, Alexander Volkanovski had his first title defense against Diego Lopes. Unsurprisingly, the guy who beat Diego Lopes beat Diego Lopes again. The UFC had Evloev and Murphy fight in March and Evloev won a contentious decision, and now Jean Silva is lobbying as hard as possible for the fight, so we’ll see who gets it.

Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs

Petr Yan - 20-5, 0 Defenses

Petr Yan’s road to the top has been incredibly circuitous. When Yan initially won the Bantamweight title back in 2020, no one was particularly surprised. He’d been one of the best in the world for years, he’d put together a six-fight winning streak on his road to the title shot, and the UFC had fed aging legend Urijah Faber to him in an attempt to make him a known quantity. Felling an even greater legend in José Aldo and taking the belt felt like an entirely expected passing of the torch, and a long reign as the division’s standardbearer seemed all but assured. And then, as they so often do, things went wrong. In quite possibly the most infamous title change in UFC history, Yan became the first champion to ever lose his title by disqualification after drilling Aljamain Sterling in the face with an illegal knee. Yan’s team cried foul and the world turned on Sterling, but when they had their rematch a year later, Sterling beat him by decision and that was that. But it was a split decision, and it was close, so the UFC gave Yan another theoretical title eliminator with Sean O’Malley, and this time the world was almost unanimously convinced Yan won--except for two of the three judges, who split in O’Malley’s favor. To top it off, Yan’s attempt to stay in the contendership conversation ran into the brick wall that was the rising Merab Dvalishvili, who handed him the most one-sided loss of his entire life. In the space of two years, Petr Yan went from being perceived as a generational champion to 1 for his last 5 and seemingly eliminated from contendership. After a year off to cope with injuries, reassess his career and figure out how to turn things around, Yan proceeded to take the path that most commonly leads to success: Just fucking beating everyone. He battered Song Yadong, he outpunched Deiveson Figueiredo, he won an exceedingly weirdly-booked matchup with Marcus McGhee, and suddenly, he was on a winning streak and right back in contendership. It might have taken him longer to get an actual title fight were it not for Merab Dvalishvili being a crazy person. Merab was on the greatest championship run the division had ever seen, and after clearing out most of his to contenders and recording a blistering three defenses in a single year, he announced his intention to break a UFC record and cement himself as the greatest 135-pounder of all time by recording a fourth--just two months after the last one--and Petr Yan was available and ready. The world saw the fight as a foregone conclusion, given how one-sided their first match had been, and the world was wrong. Yan put on the best performance of his career, not just battering Merab but outwrestling him, and in one of the best career comebacks we’ve seen, almost five years after he’d given it away, Petr Yan got his title back. He’s on top of the world again, and in all likelihood, the rubber match with Merab will be next. But it’s gonna have to wait until the second half of the year, because Yan’s having back surgery.

Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs

Joshua Van - 17-2, 1 Defense

It would be disrespectful as hell to Joshua Van to say that no one saw this coming, as many people perceived it as a possibility, but I don’t think anyone saw it coming like this. Van was the Flyweight champion of the Fury Fighting Championships when the UFC came calling, as a 21 year-old regional titleholder with a penchant for collecting knockouts despite fighting at 125 pounds so thoroughly ticks all of their boxes that Van couldn’t have been a more perfect fit without also having a history of racist tweets, and his Contender Series debut was set for August of 2023. But the UFC needed someone to fill in against Zhalgas Zhumagulov, so Van got called up to the big show early and proceeded to justify their faith by beating Zhalgas, and then beating the man he was originally slated to Contend against, and then facing off with Legacy Fighting Alliance champ Felipe Bunes and handing him the first TKO loss of his entire career. In the space of six months, Van went from a little-known regional fighter to a borderline-ranked Flyweight in the UFC. And then he got atomized by Charles Johnson. It was the second loss of Van’s career, the first time he’d ever been knocked out, and the snapping of an eight-fight winning streak, and in many cases, that would’ve permanently ended his momentum. But Van was smart enough to learn from his mistakes, and the UFC was invested enough in him to bring him back up to speed with a gentle hand, and eleven months later he was on a four-fight winning streak again and had successfully made his way to the top ten after knocking out Bruno Silva, which left him in the perfect position to take advantage of an abrupt opportunity. Top contender Brandon Royval had just lost his opponent and needed a replacement, and Van was game to fight for the second time in three weeks if it meant a shot at the belt. It was a close bout, and if Van hadn’t knocked Royval down at the end of the third round he may well have lost, but he did, so he didn’t, and suddenly the prospect was next in line for the title. All but one month of Joshua Van’s UFC career took place during Alexandre Pantoja’s reign as the Flyweight king. His streak was monstrous and he was a sizable favorite coming into his defense against Van, but many were waiting to see if Van’s boxing could defuse Pantoja’s aggression. As it turns out: We’re gonna have to wait a bit longer. Twenty-six seconds into the bout Pantoja busted his own arm on the mat after a head kick gone awry. So Van’s the champion, but it’s under some real weird circumstances, and it means a number of people are immediately gunning for him. Alexandre Pantoja presumably has a rematch as soon as he’s back, but Tatsuro Taira just pounded Brandon Moreno out and got his crack at Van at UFC 327 on April 11. It was an amazing fight, but ultimately, Van got the knockout in the final round.

Women’s Bantamweight, 135 lbs

Kayla Harrison - 19-1, 0 Defenses

Every once in awhile the inevitable turns out to actually be inevitable. Ronda Rousey parlayed a 2008 bronze medal in Judo into mixed martial arts stardom; Kayla Harrison took the gold medal in 2012 and 2016. The world was already asking her about MMA before the second. The UFC made a play for her, but there was a problem: By the standards of female fighters Kayla was huge. Ronda had competed at 70 kg in the Olympics, which translated to about 154 pounds, well within the range of weight cutting for the insane standards of combat sports and Women’s Bantamweight. Kayla competed at 78 kg, which was almost 172 pounds. Even at a twenty-pound weight cut, her division simply did not exist in major mixed martial arts organizations. So she had to find one that would build it. The Professional Fighters League needed star power, and Kayla was their gal. They founded the first Women’s Lightweight division in a major American organization, and it was populated mostly by Bantamweights and Featherweights who were trying the best they could. For four straight years, Kayla was their recurring, undefeated champion. She won the 2019 and 2021 tournaments, and in 2022 she made it to the finals and looked poised to take it for a third time, as her only competition was Larissa Pacheco, whom she’d already beaten twice. In a massive upset, Larissa took a decision off of her. It was shocking, it was unexpected, and it was also more or less fine, because Kayla was more or less done with the PFL. She took one more fight against Aspen Ladd as a one-off, but her future was with the UFC. Even with her loss to Pacheco, the world was sure she was a future UFC champion--as long as she could stomach the weight cut. And it did, visibly, kill her! But she made it. She choked out Holly Holm in her debut, she took a decision over Ketlen Vieira in a title eliminator, and all she had to do after that was wait. Julianna Peña was a +500 underdog in her own title defense against Kayla, and that turned out to be just about right. On June 7, 2025, at UFC 316, Kayla achieved the inevitable, ragdolled Peña and tapped her out in just two rounds. She’s the best in the world and she’s going to get her shot at the superfight everyone wanted in the first place, as Amanda Nunes is coming out of retirement to face her later this year--actually, this got delayed so much it’s only now finally booked for UFC 324 on January 24, 2026--maybe never? A couple weeks before the superfight Kayla had to pull out for apparently fairly major neck surgery. No word on when she’ll be back or what on Earth happens now.

Women’s Flyweight, 125 lbs

Valentina Shevchenko - 26-4-1, 2 Defenses

After almost two years of suffering, we have gone back to the start. At the end of 2022 Valentina Shevchenko was so thoroughly ensconced as The Greatest Women’s Flyweight that a sizable segment of the fanbase had built an honest-to-god antipathy for her over it. Sure, she won, all the time, and sure, her only losses in almost a decade and a half came to the greatest of all time in Amanda Nunes, and sure, Shevchenko arguably won their second fight, but familiarity breeds contempt, and after watching the purported greatest struggle with a split decision to Taila Santos that could easily have gone the other way, too, a big chunk of the mixed martial world was ready to move on from Val. And then, unexpectedly, it did. Valentina was a -900 favorite when Alexa Grasso shocked the world, choked her out, and took her title away on March 4, 2023. An instant rematch was obligatory, given Val’s long history on top, so half a year later they ran it back at Noche UFC in 2023, and, awkwardly, it ended in a draw. If the rematch had been obligatory, the threematch was mandatory, but a hand injury on Val’s part and the UFC’s desire to put an entire season of The Ultimate Fighter behind their promotion meant a full twelve months passed before they got back in the cage. That’s a long goddamn time, and it left a lot of air, and that air was filled by doubt. Alexa won the first fight, after all--but she was on her way to losing a decision before Valentina made a costly mistake, threw one of her trademark nowhere-close-to-landing spinning back kicks, and got immediately jumped on and choked out for her troubles. Alexa didn’t lose the second fight--but based on the scorecards, she should have, and would have, were it not for one judge handing her a completely indefensible 10-8 in the final round. When the third fight came on September 14, 2024, it was seen as Alexa’s chance to cement her legacy: Either she was the superior fighter and the herald of a new generation for Women’s Flyweight, or the whole thing was just a weird episode. Unfortunately for Alexa, it was the latter. Valentina dominated her. She outstruck her and outwrestled her with almost comical ease, the fight was a complete shutout, and despite their series being now tied at 1-1-1, no one has any doubts about the winner, nor any desire to see them fight again. Once again, much to the internet’s chagrin, Valentina Shevchenko is a champion. And--only two years late--she defended her title against Manon Fiorot at UFC 315. It was close, it was contentious, and it was also a fight the audience does not want to see again. Her next fight was a long-awaited champion vs champion affair against Zhang Weili at UFC 322 on November 15, 2025. After years of watching Zhang dominate her competition, the world felt she had genuine double-champ potential and could be the woman to unseat Valentina. As it turned out: Not even close. Val dominated her in every aspect of the game, Zhang got completely shut out, and her Flyweight hopes are dead in the water. Valentina has multiple title defenses again and is now tied with Amanda Nunes and Anderson Silva for the fourth-most wins in title fights in UFC history. We’ll have to see who they give to her next, but Natália Silva feels like a safe bet.

Women’s Strawweight, 115 lbs

Mackenzie Dern - 16-5, 0 Defenses

On a long enough timeline, the house always wins. Mackenzie Dern signed with the UFC as a 5-0 fighter all the way back in 2018 and they’ve been trying to get a belt on her ever since. She came into mixed martial arts with a pre-existing pedigree as one of the more decorated women in the history of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu: Gi championships, no-gi championships, pan-Am championships, Asian open championships, world championships, ADCC championships, she took them all. And the UFC marketed her as a grappling champion who was bringing some of the best submission offense in the sport to the Strawweight division! But they also marketed her as an extremely conventionally attractive woman who frequently wore bathing suits. It was one of the touchiest things to comment on with her career: Where other women would have to struggle for their matchmaking and featured spots, Mackenzie’s opportunities kept coming, and they were almost always on the main broadcast and, on multiple occasions, in the main event slots women almost never received. And she needed them, because despite being legitimately quite good, she just wasn’t great. She could make it into the top fifteen, and sometimes even brush the top ten, but every time they tried to get Mackenzie into title contention, she’d falter. It was Amanda Ribas in 2019, it was Marina Rodriguez in 2021, and between 2022 and 2024, Mackenzie had the worst run of her life, winning only one out of four bouts, getting shut down by Yan Xiaonan and Amanda Lemos, and taking the first stoppage loss of her career after being knocked out by Jéssica Andrade. She managed to get her way back up the ladder again by outgrappling Loopy Godinez and submitting a struggling Amanda Ribas in a six-years-belated rematch, but with so many losses to top contenders, her path to the title still seemed closed. Then a funny thing happened: Zhang Weili gave up the Strawweight belt to move up to Flyweight and challenge Valentina Shevchenko. Suddenly, the door was wide open. And conveniently, the UFC had booked all the women who beat Mackenzie into other matches, leaving Mackenzie with just one contender left--and it was Virna Jandiroba, a career grappler whom Mackenzie had already beaten back in 2020. The two met at UFC 321 on October 25, and after seven years of effort, the UFC finally got its way. Mackenzie beat Virna again, fair and square, in a close and hard-fought but ultimately clear decision. She is, at last, the Strawweight Champion of the World. And she’s in the exceptionally weird position of being a newly-minted champion that has very recently lost to several of her own top contenders. One would think, Zhang Weili having been soundly thwomped by Valentina Shevchenko in her bid for 125-pound supremacy, she would be back at Strawweight to reclaim her crown. Instead she’s MIA and Mackenzie will defend her title against Gillian Robertson at UFC 330 on August 15.

NOTABLE CHAMPIONS ACROSS THE WORLD

Rizin Lightweight Champion, 156 lbs

Luiz Gustavo - 16-4, 0 Defenses

Sunrise, sunset. Luiz Gustavo is not new to Rizin. He made his debut all the way back in 2018, when he was an undefeated, 8-0 22 year-old who’d only barely started fighting real competition down in Katana Fight. Rizin threw him straight into a main event in the hopes of completing the ascension of their rising star Yusuke Yachi, who’d just capped off a six-fight winning streak that included torch-passing matches with Japanese legends like Satoru Kitaoka and Takanori Gomi. Gustavo was supposed to be Yachi’s victim. Instead he knocked Yachi out in two rounds. Suddenly, Gustavo was the star and the man folks had flagged as Rizin’s next big Lightweight champion. He proceeded to go 1-3 over the next year, which culminated in the first knockout loss of his life against Patricky Pitbull and, ultimately, an almost three-year hiatus while the world struggled with COVID. When Rizin tried to get back to its wholly-international ways in 2022, they had Yusuke Yachi waiting for a rematch, and once again, Gustavo knocked him dead in two rounds. In two years Luiz had a winning streak and a shot at longtime champion Roberto “Satoshi” de Souza, and the world expected a classic striker-vs-grappler clash. Satoshi shocked him with a right hand and knocked him out in twenty seconds. Having lost his shot, and followed it with an unsuccessful bout against Shunta Nomura, Gustavo’s hopes for the top of the heap were so distant that Rizin booked him into a fight with living legend Kazushi Sakuraba’s son, the 2-1 Taisei. Gustavo punched him out in seven and a half minutes. Barely two months later, Rizin needed a challenger to stand opposite Ilkhom Nazimov, the man who had unseated Satoshi during their big New Year’s Eve special, and Luiz was available. Once again, the world underestimated him, and once again, they were wrong. Luiz punched Nazimov out in two minutes to finally take his title home.

Rizin Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs

Razhabali Shaydullaev - 18-0, 3 Defenses

I asked how long the second reign of Kleber Koike Erbst would last, and as it turns out, the answer was sixty-two seconds. Razhabali Shaydullaev’s rise through the sport has been impressively meteoric. Four years ago he was a rookie fighting on Batyr Bashy cards in Kyrgyzstan as a predominantly grappling-based fighter. Three years ago he was disposing of journeymen in the developmental leagues of Russia’s Absolute Championship Akhmat. Two years ago he was choking out top contenders in South Korea’s Road FC. One year ago he got signed to Rizin. In just six months he choked out a DEEP champion, submitted a Bellator champion and smashed through a K-1 Kickboxing champion with virtually no resistance. He was the favorite against Erbst, but few thought it would be an easy night, with Erbst having been finished only once in his entire career, and even that was an armbar all the way back in 2009 when he was still a rookie. Shaydullaev, as he has been doing for the entirety of his run thus far, destroyed Erbst. He walked through him and flattened him in just barely over a minute. Rizin’s got another gaijin champion, and given how good he’s looked, they may be stuck with him for awhile--or, worse, they might lose him to the UFC sooner than later. With Mikuru Asakura’s victory over Chihiro Suzuki on the same night he’s the logical next contender, but that would just be stupid, so instead it was Shaydullaev making his first defense against Viktor Kolesnik at Rizin 51 on September 28: He knocked Kolesnik out in just thirty-three seconds. His successful murders got him the main event of 2025’s Japanese New Year’s MMA special, where Rizin secretly hoped their big national star Mikuru Asakura would get the job done; Shaydullaev chain-suplexed him, grounded him, and laid an unconscionable amount of ground and pound on him in one of those Japan-likes-to-let-its-heroes-die moments before the ref finally called the fight in just shy of three minutes. Shaydullaev’s the best guy in the company, and now there’s a question of what’s left for him to do. For now, inexplicably, the answer was carrying the murder of the 5-2 Yuta Kubo at Rizin Landmark 13 on April 11, which is wild because they already fought at the end of 2024 and Shaydullaev destroyed him in seven and a half minutes. Try to control your shock: This time it only took Shaydullaev four.

Rizin Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs

Danny Sabatello - 18-4-1, 1 Defense

When Naoki Inoue won Rizin’s Bantamweight title I wrote that Rizin was one step closer to its dream of an all-Japanese championship roster, and it’s fitting that as gaijin once again take over the majority of the championship belts in the biggest organization in Japan, Danny goddamn Sabatello is one of the men to do it. Sabatello has been dogged by a reputation as a grinding wrestler without a ton to offer since 2020, when he got the call to compete on Dana White’s Contender Series, won, and was notably not offered a contract on the grounds of Boring Grappler. He made the move to late-stage Bellator instead, where he attempted to establish himself as their own personal Chael Sonnen: An indefatigable wrestling machine whose mouth ran just as hard as his double-legs. But it never quite caught on. The talk seemed a bit forced, the wrestling wasn’t that fun to watch, and all his 1980s wrestling promos about the bums in Bellator’s Bantamweight Grand Prix ended with an elimination at the hands of Raufeon Stots. Sabatello swore he’d won and that he’d get revenge; instead he ended his Bellator tenure getting choked out by Magomed Magomedov, decisioned again by Stots, and losing out on a shot at the PFL after going to a draw with Lazaro Dayron, who would’ve won the decision were it not for a point deduction. It was a bit of a shock when Sabatello signed with Rizin in 2025, but it seemed to have paid off when he scored his first knockout in six years during his debut against Shinobu Ota and swore he’d reinvent himself as Japan’s new American superstar. Then he went back to wrestling. It was still enough to get him his shot at Inoue’s belt at 2025’s New Year’s special, and despite the common wisdom of judging favoritism, a very close split decision went Danny’s way. It took three years longer than he intended, but Danny Sabatello is holding gold. Now we see if he can, in fact, become Big In Japan. His first title defense was against Joji Goto at Rizin Landmark 13 on April 11, and, unsurprisingly, he wrestled Goto to a broad decision. He’ll try to do it again when he meets Jinnosuke Kashimura on July 18.

Rizin Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs

Makoto Takahashi - 23-5-1 (1), 0 Defenses

Oh, buddy, Rizin has wanted this one for years. Anytime a fighter with an above-average winning rate successfully gets their name replaced with a nickname it means the marketing power is strong with them, and within one fight in Rizin, no one called him Takahashi anymore. Japanese MMA is perpetually desperate for young national stars, and they knew almost immediately that Makoto Shinryu was their guy. By July of 2023 Shinryu was already 16-1-1 despite having just turned 23, he was the most-hyped male prospect in the country, and he was uniquely positioned to take over the world, as Rizin and Bellator were in the middle of their historical co-promotion days, and Bellator was inaugurating its Flyweight title with a match between Shinryu and top dog Kyoji Horiguchi. It ended with Kyoji unintentionally poking Makoto in the eye in twenty-five seconds. It took half a year to get the rematch together, and this time it was for Rizin’s Flyweight title, and Kyoji choked Shinryu out in two rounds. This marked the beginning of Shinryu’s career hitting speedbumps, as after almost seven years of constant victory, it’d be two years before he managed back-to-back wins again. Hiromasa Ougikubo, Jose Torres and Yuki Motoya all turned Shinryu away by decision, the last of which knocked him out of the Flyweight Grand Prix to fill the throne Horiguchi abdicated to return to the UFC. Ougikubo ultimately won the tournament and the title, but wins over Hiroya Kondo and Nkazimulo Zulu were enough for Rizin’s brass to put Shinryu right back in the title conversation, because, well, that’s what they wanted in the first place. They were right, too. Three years after his first failed attempt at grasping gold, Shinryu took Ougikubo the distance and took his belt home. There may have been detours along the way, but he’s got the title everyone felt he was destined for. Now we get to watch him try to keep it.

Rizin Women’s Super Atomweight Championship, 108 lbs

VACANT - The source of life and death

The world has long wondered who or what could beat Seika Izawa, and as it turns out, the answer is childbirth. At Rizin Landmark 13 on April 12, 2026, Seika took to the ring and announced her pregnancy and, accordingly, her hiatus from the sport. After four straight years as the undisputed best Atomweight in the world, the queen has abdicated the throne. She vowed to one day return and take back the belt from whichever unlucky woman gets it in her absence, but obviously there’s no timeline for said return, nor should there be. All eyes now turn to the rest of Rizin’s Atomweight division, which is, like, four people. Ayaka Hamasaki’s back in Rizin, but she got armbarred pretty easily by the debuting Natasha Kuziutina. Moeri Suda and Saori Oshima are always around on loan from DEEP. I’m sure they’d love to belt up RENA, but she spends half of her time closer to Strawweight. It’s a loss for mixed martial arts, we are all happy for Seika and wish her well, and god bless Rizin, which can never, ever have a full complement of champions.

ONE Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs

ONE Light Heavyweight Champion, 225 lbs

ONE Middleweight Champion, 205 lbs

VACANT - The inevitable end of hubris

We were always destined to end here. ONE’s heavier title belts have always been more suggestion than reality. All three have seen at most five champions apiece in their decade-plus of existence--in Light Heavyweight’s case it’s just four, which makes sense, as after ten goddamn years there have been exactly five Light Heavyweight title fights. The belt-padding era began in earnest when ONE made Reinier de Ridder the double-champion over a division that barely existed, and when he fell on hard times with ONE management, they one-upped him by having Heavyweight champion Anatoly Malykhin drop to 225 and 205 thereafter just to beat him out of the company entirely. Over the past two years there was exactly one championship fight across all three weight classes, and it saw Oumar “Reug Reug” Kane take Malykhin’s Heavyweight title away, and it was a portent of the future that Marcus Buchecha won #1 contendership on that same night and opted to leave the company rather than fight for its title. Kane and Malykhin wouldn’t have their scheduled rematch until May 15, 2026, when Malykhin got his revenge by knocking out an exhausted Kane in the fourth round. Having won back his belt, he retired immediately, and in so doing rendered 1/3 of ONE’s MMA championships vacant. I’d bet we will, eventually, see another Heavyweight champion in ONE; I doubt we’ll ever see the other two belts again.

ONE Welterweight Champion, 185 lbs

Christian Lee - 18-4 (1), 0 Defenses

ONE Lightweight Champion, 170 lbs

Christian Lee - 18-4 (1), 1 Defense

It took three tries, but by god, Chatri gets what Chatri wants. Christian Lee, the male half of the first family of ONE Championship and its homegrown golden boy, was very mad about losing his lightweight championship in a controversial decision to Ok Rae Yoon last year. He demanded the decision be reviewed and overturned and his championship reinstated. Unsurprisingly: This did not happen. After months of complaining and just shy of a year of waiting, the two had their long-awaited rematch and Lee left nothing to chance, knocking Yoon out in six minutes to reclaim his belt. Having finally retrieved his title, Lee, being a responsible champion, proceeded to immediately challenge ONE’S 185-pound champion, Kiamrian Abbasov, for his title, a move that was definitely in no way influenced by ONE’s repeated attempts to get his sister Angela Lee double-champion status. Fortunately for Christian, Abbasov horribly botched his weight cut: He came in overweight, lost his title on the scale, and was visibly depleted in the fight. Which is particularly lucky, because Abbasov beat Lee senseless in the first round to the point that a standing TKO would not have been an unreasonable stoppage. But whether from his failed weight cut or simply from punching himself out, Abbasov was exhausted by the second round, and Lee mounted a gutsy comeback and ultimately stopped him with ground-and-pound in the fourth round. After three attempts, ONE has succeeded in getting two belts on a Lee. Unfortunately, it was followed by tragedy. After the passing of his younger sister Victoria, Christian took the whole of the year to, understandably, grieve. ONE planned his comeback for February of 2024, but, y’know, that clearly did not happen. ONE held an interim title fight between Alibeg Rasulov and Ok Rae Yoon to welcome him back--but that didn’t exactly happen either, as Rasulov failed hydration tests, became ineligible to win the title, then won the fight anyway. Lee vs Rasulov was scheduled for October. And then November. It finally happened on December 7, 2024--and it ended in a No Contest after two rounds thanks to Christian unintentionally gouging Rasulov’s eye. They ran it back almost a full year later at ONE 173 on November 16, and this time Lee knocked him out in the second round, marking Lee’s first win in three years.

ONE Featherweight Champion, 155 lbs

Tang Kai - 20-4, 2 Defenses
Tang Kai has been flying under the radar for some time, and in hindsight, that was clearly a mistake. He made his professional debut as a 20 year-old collegiate wrestler and won a rookie featherweight tournament in China’s WBK (after investigating, we THINK it’s World Battle Kings), but his stylistic limitations became apparent when he moved up to Kunlun Fight--and stopped fighting rookies. Dominant decision losses to ACA standout Bekhruz “Ong Bak” Zukurov and Road to UFC runner-up Asikeerbai Jinensibieke made Kai’s weaknesses too apparent to ignore, and he made the tough call to commit to his dream, pack up his life, and move away from home to start training with real fight camps, most notably Shanghai’s Dragon Gym and Phuket’s legendary Tiger Muay Thai. It’s worked out quite well: He hasn’t lost a fight in five years. Three knockout wins in China’s Rebel FC got ONE’s attention, and since debuting with the organization in 2019, Kai has soundly defeated everyone in his path. He claims his wrestling base makes him impossible to take down and he proves it by using it almost entirely defensively, vastly preferring to bludgeon his opponents on his feet. His fight against Thanh Le, while blistering and difficult, was proof: He evaded every takedown attempt, widely outstruck him, dropped him with punches and leg kicks alike, and took the belt he’s held for two years. And then, absolutely nothing else happened. It took ONE almost a full year to book another match for Tang Kai, and it was just an instant rematch with Thanh Le with no fanfare, and it was delayed by eight full months thanks to an injury. So after more than a year and a half without a fight, Tang Kai finally fought Thanh Le again, and this time, he knocked him out in three rounds. Congratulations, Tang Kai: You are back at square one. His position hasn’t improved much, either. He was supposed to defend his title against Akbar Abdullaev on January 10, and Abdullaev pounded him out in the fifth round, but he also missed weight by a pound and a half and thus was ineligible for the championship. So, hey: Still a world champion! You just got knocked out a little bit. It’s fine. ONE cut Abdullaev anyway rather than give him another shot. After almost another year and a half of inactivity Tang Kai finally defended his title on May 15, this time knocking out Shamil Gasanov.

ONE Bantamweight Champion, 145 lbs

Enkh-Orgil Baatarkhuu - 14-3, 0 Defenses

By god, ONE had an MMA title change hands in 2025. Enkh-Orgil Baatarkhuu is one of the precious few success stories for ONE’s feeder system. He was a 5-2 champion in the small (but competitive!) regional scene in his native Mongolia, which put him on ONE’s talent-scouting radar for their Warriors of the Steppe tournament in 2022. Enkh won two fights in six days to earn his contract with ONE, where he quickly discovered that no matter where you go in the wide world of sports, being a grappler-type Pokemon makes companies less invested in promoting you. Enkh went 6-1 across two years--8-1, if you count those aforementioned tournament wins--and finished most of his opponents, but title contention eluded him in no small part thanks to ONE’s turn away from mixed martial arts as a whole. It wasn’t until December 6 that Enkh finally got his long-belated shot at Fabricio Andrade’s Bantamweight title, and the first round and a half looked pretty thoroughly one-sided in Andrade’s favor, as most had figured it would be given the gap in Enkh’s striking game, and Andrade battered him to a near-stoppage on a couple occasions. But Enkh, as it turns out, is tough as shit. He weathered the storm and used his grit, his power and his wrestling to turn the tables, and towards the end of the fourth round, an exhausted Andrade gave up the ghost and got himself strangled. Enkh-Orgil Baatarkhuu is ONE’s Bantamweight champion, and his very first act as a champion was to call for a cross-class title match with Tang Kai, because weight classes aren’t real. Instead, a measly eight months after winning it, his first defense will be against the undefeated Elbek Alyshov on July 31.

ONE Flyweight Champion, 135 lbs

Avazbek Kholmirzaev - 16-2, 0 Defenses

There’s a certain kind of tragedy in winning a championship during what certainly seems to be the waning days of a promotion’s time with mixed martial arts. Avazbek Kholmirzaev is by no means new to ONE, his title victory came a whole eleven fights into his time on their roster, but he spent a great deal of that time nigh-unto invisible. He got his start in his native country’s Uzbekistan MMA Association, but like so many of his countrymen, the successes that built his career came from the bigger, more popular Alash Pride FC, Kazakhstan’s biggest promotion, which is large, well-populated, and also the kind of bullshit record-padding organization that books main events between promising prospects and 5-11 guys who mysteriously always lose within three minutes. But he was on the positive side of the equation, and he knocked people out with spinning kicks, so ONE scouted him for their expansion across the East and he proved to be a natural fit--for the prelims. Avazbek almost never left the first few fights of the cards he was booked on, right up to his championship-opportunity-earning victory over no less than the 11-10 Jeremy Miado this past December curtain-jerking an Amazon Prime card, and an unkind man would probably intimate that his shot at Yuya Wakamatsu’s Flyweight Championship was an attempt to get Yuya a win, being as it was ONE’s big Ariake Arena show in Tokyo and they were attempting to showcase as much of their Japanese talent as possible. It was going well for Yuya right up until he ate a spinning elbow to the dome and went down in a heap just moments before the second round was about to end. Avazbek is a champion and he should be duly proud, and now we’re just left to see what being an MMA champion in ONE means in 2026.

ONE Strawweight Champion, 125 lbs

Joshua Pacio - 23-5, 1 Defense

It’s been a difficult couple of years for Joshua Pacio. “The Passion” stands as a true veteran of ONE Championship, having made his debut--and his first, unsuccessful attempt at winning the Strawweight title--all the way back in 2016. Pacio established himself as both a fan favorite and a solid promotional favorite for the company, and when he lost his second bid for the title against Yosuke Saruta in 2019, ONE, in a trick they’d become very friendly with over the years, gave him an instant rematch anyway. Pacio knocked Saruta out in the rematch and became easily the greatest 125-pound champion in ONE history, ultimately defending the title three times--including a trilogy match against Saruta. By 2022, Pacio was a crown jewel for ONE’s lineup. Which is when he promptly got wrestled into paste by UFC cast-off Jarred Brooks. Rather than having him defend the title, ONE booked Brooks into grappling matches, and in the meantime Pacio fought and defeated undefeated prospect Mansur Malachiev to earn himself a rematch. Multiple delays ensued, but on March 1, the Brooks/Pacio rematch finally came. Fifty-six seconds in, Pacio attempted a standing kimura on Brooks, who hoisted him off the ground, suplexed him, and knocked him out. Unfortunately, this was a problem. Under ONE’s ruleset, slams that land headfirst are illegal. ONE has been regularly criticized for this--less for the rule itself as for ONE’s tendency to selectively enforce the rule, using it to benefit fighters they would like to succeed. ONE, of course, denies this vehemently. However you draw your own conclusions, at the end of the day Jarred Brooks was disqualified, and thus, by DQ, Joshua Pacio is now a three-time Strawweight champion. He almost immediately announced he has torn his ACL and was out for an entire year. On February 20th, 2025, Pacio and Brooks finally fought again and it was weird, but definitive. Jarred Brooks seemingly exhausted himself after a round and Pacio pounded him for the entire second round, which eventually elicited a mercy stoppage from the ref. ONE has only one 125-pound champion again. So he, of course, challenged for the 135-pound title next. Pacio vs Wakamatsu happened at ONE 173 on November 16 and ended in Pacio getting smashed in six minutes. He’ll try to defend his actual belt against Mansur Malachiev on July 10.

ONE Women’s Atomweight Champion, 115 lbs

VACANT - The planting ground for broken dreams

On June 23, Denice Zamboanga vacated the Atomweight title after she had a baby. On one hand: Mazel tov. On the other, for those keeping track, this means Stamp Fairtex was the champion, then she got hurt, then Denice won the interim belt a year and a half ago, then Stamp fell out of their unification bout with an injury so ONE promoted Denice to undisputed champion, and that was more than a year ago, and now it’s ended with the belt going to nobody. There has been one championship fight in the last three fucking years and it was for an interim belt and one of the women in said fight hadn’t recorded a win since January of 2021. I am once again pleading with ONE: Just stop doing MMA. Let my people go.

PFL Heavyweight Championship, 265 lbs

Vadim Nemkov - 19-2 (1), 0 Defenses

When the PFL announced that it was going to crown a standing Heavyweight champion, they had a raft of interesting options. Oleg Popov, their 2025 tournament champion, had a strong argument. Denis Goltsov, 2024 champion and the only man in almost ten years to beat Popov, could’ve called dibs. Hell, the PFL still technically has Francis Ngannou, the best Heavyweight on the planet, under contract. They, of course, did not choose any of those men. They chose Renan Ferreira, the 2023 tournament champion whose only fight in almost two years was a TKO loss to Ngannou, and Vadim Nemkov, Bellator’s best Light Heavyweight. Nemkov, a Fedor protégé, hadn’t lost since 2016, when he got himself punched out by Jiří Procházka and narrowly edged out by Karl Albrektsson, and it’s a testament to both his skills and the world’s dim view of the Heavyweight division that when the PFL acquired Bellator and Nemkov announced he was leaving 205 for the 265-pound world, instead of the expected fretting about how a 6’1” man would contend in the world of the big boys, more or less everyone said “Yeah, that’s fine.” And lo: It was. Nemkov choked out 2021 PFL champ Bruno Cappelozza, and then he choked out the ever-pained Timothy Johnson, and when he fought Renan Ferreira at PFL Champions Series 4 on December 13, 2025, shockingly, he choked him out, too. Nemkov’s now the only major Heavyweight champion in American MMA outside of the UFC. Hopefully it pays off.

PFL Light Heavyweight Championship, 205 lbs

Corey Anderson - 20-6 (1), 0 Defenses

One of the best Light Heavyweights in the world isn’t in the UFC, and they have only themselves to blame. Corey Anderson was the precise kind of fighter the UFC wanted when they first got ahold of him in 2014: Big, young, athletic, talented, undefeated. He had all the makings of a future champion, and his victory on The Ultimate Fighter 19 (jesus christ) cemented him as a prospect to watch. Unfortunately, he had also barely been in the sport for a year and only had four professional fights to his name. In short order he’d suffered his first loss, and a couple years later, a pair of back-to-back knockouts in 2017 sent him to the realm of afterthoughts. But a recommitment to his wrestling style, an extremely well-aged victory over Glover Teixeira, and a devastating knockout over Johnny Walker got Anderson back in the title picture, and in 2020, he fought Jan Błachowicz to determine the #1 contender to the soon-to-be-vacated belt. They’d done battle once, five years prior, and Corey had won a clear decision. This time, Jan flattened him in three minutes. Despite his top-ten ranking and the four consecutive fights he’d just won, the UFC decided to dump Corey, sending him from main event to unemployment in a week. Corey went straight to Bellator and proceeded to become one of its best stars, and he would have become the first man in America to beat Vadim Nemkov had they not banged their heads together and ended the fight prematurely. Corey lost the rematch, but he became the last man to hold Bellator’s Light Heavyweight title after beating Karl Moore, and on October 3, Corey had a champion vs champion match against the PFL’s 205-pound tournament champion, Dovletdzhan Yagshimuradov. Corey had pounded him out in Bellator four years prior, and while he didn’t get the stoppage in the present, he did get the win, and in so doing he became the inaugural PFL Light Heavyweight Champion. What that actually means going forward, we’ll have to see.

PFL Middleweight Championship, 185 lbs

Costello van Steenis - 18-3, 1 Defense

For years, the Professional Fighters League has threatened to crown standing champions. Did they carry through any of their major tournament winners? Nope. Did they bring out their holdout Bellator champions? Not exactly! Did they at least make a big hubbub about finally going through with it? Of course not. Instead, just five days before PFL Champions Series 2, their promotional debut in South Africa, they abruptly announced that Bellator champ Johnny Eblen was suddenly the first-ever PFL Middleweight Champion, and his match with Costello van Steenis was the first-ever defense of the title. Costello, himself, was a Bellator veteran who’d been absorbed in the PFL buyout, but he’d always played second fiddle in the organization, unable to get through the John Salters and Douglas Limas of the world, and thus said world was mostly overlooking him as a challenger. The first three rounds of Eblen gradually grinding him into dust bore out that expectation, but then a funny thing happened: The inexhaustible wrestler got tired. Eblen found himself punched up by van Steenis in the fourth round, and he seemed to be pulling it together again in the fifth, but right before the bell could ring van Steenis managed to take his back and sink in a choke, and with just seven seconds separating him from an almost-certain decision victory, Eblen passed out. Costello van Steenis is the first man to truly hold a standing PFL Championship, and he became the second man to defend one after knocking out Fabian Edwards on March 20.

THE PFL WELTERWEIGHT CONUNDRUM

Yeah, I don’t quite know what to do here. On February 7, the (technically) final Welterweight champion of Bellator, Ramazan Kuramagomedov, beat 2024 PFL tournament champion and undefeated favorite Shamil Musaev and became the first official PFL Welterweight Champion. In his post-fight interview he immediately retired. On one hand, the PFL still lists him as their officially reigning champion. On the other, the PFL’s Youtube channel has a video on it named RAMAZAN KURAMAGOMEDOV ANNOUNCES THIS WAS HIS LAST FIGHT and in their own description phrase it as “announcing his retirement.” Does the PFL have a Welterweight champion? I don’t think even they know. So, as of March 1, 2026, I’m leaving ol’ Matthew Lesko here until the PFL clarifies its own title situation and I am on pins and needles to see how long it’ll take before I remove this section. UPDATE, JUNE: The PFL has announced that Ramazan has officially been stripped, which sure does feel like a ‘you can’t quit, you’re fired’ kind of move, and Thad Jean vs Shamil Musaev on July 25th will crown the second Welterweight champ. Matty Lesks can stick around for another two months, as a treat.

PFL Lightweight Championship, 155 lbs

Usman Nurmagomedov - 21-0 (1), 1 Defense

The Nurmagomedov family is trying to run the sport, and Usman is their B-league beachhead, but that assault has proven to be an awful lot rockier than the rest. As the kid brother of Umar and the cousin of Khabib, Usman had great expectations thrust upon him very early in his career, and he dealt with them the way regional talents with great camps traditionally do: Squashing severely overmatched competition until you get a contract from one of the big companies. Bellator won the Usman bidding war and brought him over in 2021, and he proved to be one of the breakout stars of their final days, blitzing his way up the Lightweight ranks, knocking off several contenders and ultimately beating Patricky Pitbull to win the 155-pound championship and securing his reign by retiring former star and UFC champ Benson Henderson. It was 2023, and even though Bellator’s upcoming death was clear, Usman was a name and widely considered one of the best Lightweights in the world. Unfortunately, then, things got weird. He was a massive, -2200 favorite to beat Brent Primus in the waning days of Bellator, and he did--and it became the first non-win of his career after failing a drug test for something that was never disclosed. He carried Bellator’s title over into its new life as a colony of the PFL, and he immediately ran into controversy after barely scraping a majority decision off of Irish superprospect Paul Hughes. The world wanted a rematch for the inaugural PFL Lightweight Championship fight, and on October 3, at the PFL’s big Dubai show, they got it--and this time, it waws even closer, with media scorecards split right down the middle. This, by itself, is not that unusual, nor is one fighter winning a controversial decision unusual. It is unusual when the decision is not only unanimous, but one judge scores the entire fight as a 50-45 shut-out. So Usman’s last two wins were dubious, and his future as part of the PFL depends on how they treat their own championship, but for now, he is the damn champion. He notched his first title defense by choking out Alfie Davis on February 7, and he’ll shoot for a second--and possibly the end of his PFL contract--against Archie Colgan on July 31.

PFL Women’s Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs

Cris Cyborg - 29-2 (1), 1 Defense

Are you noticing how all of the inaugural PFL champions are just Bellator’s champions? Funny, that. Cris Cyborg is the greatest Women’s Featherweight of all time, and we all just kind of have to deal with that, because Women’s Featherweight has only barely ever existed. Strikeforce set the standard back in 2006 because Gina Carano was one of their biggest stars, and that star lasted right up until 2009, when they attempted to put a belt on her and failed because Cris Cyborg punched the shit out of her. In the following sixteen years Cyborg’s only lost one mixed martial arts fight, and it took Amanda Nunes, the greatest Women’s mixed martial artist of all time, to do it. Aside from that one loss, she’s run the table. She was the Strikeforce Featherweight Champion until it closed, and then she was Invicta’s Featherweight Champion until they let the UFC have her, and then she was the UFC’s Featherweight Champion until Amanda dropped her, and Cyborg promptly went to Bellator and won their title, too. When the PFL brought her over in the Bellator buyout, they set her up for an interpromotional superfight against Larissa Pacheco, a two-time PFL tournament winner and the only woman who’d ever beaten Kayla Harrison. On one hand, Pacheco’s one of just six women to ever make it to the final bell with Cyborg. On the other, she lost 4-1. In the ultimate act of promotional cowardice, the PFL promoted Cyborg to champion status three days before her appearance at the PFL Champions Series on December 13, 2025, meaning her fight with Sara Collins was, technically, a title defense. It was as one-sided as you’d expect. In theory, this is great! The biggest female fighter outside the UFC has a belt and the PFL is bringing back a division the UFC threw in the garbage. In practice, Cyborg didn’t even get out of her post-fight interview without noting that after her next fight she’s going to retire from MMA in favor of focusing on her boxing career. Unless she changes her mind--again--her swan song will come against UFC cast-off Ketlen Vieira on August 22.

SATURDAY, JUNE 27 FROM THE NATIONAL GYMNASTICS ARENA IN BAKU, AZERBAIJAN
EARLY START TIME WARNING | PRELIMS 6 AM PDT / 9 AM EDT | MAIN CARD 9 AM / 12 PM

There’s exactly one main section I wound up pulling out of the White House write-up this month: A rumination on the way the UFC’s repositioning of itself as a faux-regional promotion whose two primary products are a) a developmental talent show they don’t expect their fans to pay real attention to and b) traveling shows that take money from countries to create locally-friendly shows that’ll totally put those small countries like Australia on the map. Watching them have to turn that on its head and figure out how to program a regional-appeal for their own American backyard was fascinating, in a this-is-what-America-is-to-them sense, but there was already too much going on in that essay and I just didn’t think it fit.

And now we’re in Baku, where the government paid the UFC millions of dollars to bring them a card where only two out of thirteen fights are between ranked, relevant fighters, but ten out of thirteen feature a fighter whose name ends with a V. Thank you, Baku.

MAIN EVENT: THE CHURN
LIGHTWEIGHT: Rafael Fiziev (13-5, #11) vs Manuel Torres (17-3, #15)

Rafael, you are too damn young to be in the ‘old veteran getting put out to pasture’ position.

The first time we talked about Raffy Fizzy in these writeups it was mid-2022, he was 5-1 in the UFC, he hadn’t lost a fight in more than three years and he was about to cement his place as a top ten Lightweight by not just beating but knocking out Rafael dos Anjos, which was, at the time, incredibly impressive. His striking seemed a step above everyone in the division, his back-pocket wrestling had progressed nicely while no one was paying attention, and a giant swath of the audience saw him as a future title contender. He was booked into a fight with Justin Gaethje as a -250 favorite.

It’s four years later. Rafael is 1 for his last 5. What the hell happened?

Well, part of it is just incredibly bad luck. Losing a decision--and not even a unanimous decision, a majority decision--to Justin Gaethje, current #1 Lightweight on the planet, is nothing to feel too bad about, and with a solid rebound Fiziev would’ve been right back in the mix. That looked like it was in the cards, too, as he met Mateusz Gamrot, defended almost all of his takedowns and unanimously won the first round. Two minutes into the second round Fiziev blew his ACL. A year and a half of his prime disappeared on the spot. When he was finally healthy, rehabbed and ready to go, the UFC looked at his two straight losses and 18 months of inactivity and very sensitively booked him into a short-notice fill-in match...against Justin Gaethje, the man who had beaten him two fights prior. Unsurprisingly, Fiziev did not win. He averted a career crash by knocking off Ignacio Bahamondes, and that was supposed to propel him into a top contendership match with Charles Oliveira, but Fiziev’s injuries cropped up again, and he instead followed months of recovery with a severe drubbing at the hands of Maurício Ruffy.

And that’s the other reason he’s in this particular hole. The Lightweight division has changed an awful lot in a very short time. When Fiziev stepped into the cage for that first fight against Gaethje, the division’s top ten included Dustin Poirier, Beneil Dariush, Michael Chandler, Rafael dos Anjos and Jalin Turner. Drew fucking Dober was #14. Arman Tsarukyan wasn’t in the conversation. Max Holloway and Ilia Topuria were still Featherweights. Maurício Ruffy hadn’t even joined the UFC. No one had heard of Quillan Salkilld.

No one was paying attention to Manuel Torres.

It was hard to blame them. He wasn’t one of those smart prospects a bunch of hardcore fans were salivating for, he wasn’t fighting through Fury FC or the Legacy Fighting Alliance, he’s one of the few Mexican prospects to not have a stint with Combate Americas. He competed on regional cards. He got heel hooked by a guy named Mahatma for Club Hardcore Fighter. He had his knee ripped up for Crixus MMA, which closed after five events. One fight before his Contender Series debut, Manuel was beating up a 10-11 man named Carlos Cañada for the ULTIMATE WARRIOR CHALLENGE. But he rattled off three straight first-round finishes in the UFC after just a year and a half! That’s top-fifteen worthy, right?

As it turns out: No. Beating Frank Camacho and Nikolas Motta and Chris Duncan does not prepare you for the top of the heap. The UFC gave Manuel a borderline-ranked shot at the much-maligned, Mexico-focused mega-event at The Sphere©, and it ended with Ignacio Bahamondes knocking him flat in four minutes. Ignacio, who, as we know from the previous paragraph, would himself fail to beat Fiziev and achieve a top-ten ranking, was the brick wall in Manuel’s path.

Except it’s a year and a half later and Manuel’s ranked and fighting the guy who beat the guy who beat him. Once again: What the hell happened?

Here’s the thing about Lightweight: That dramatic change we talked about? It wasn’t entirely natural. For every Poirier retirement, there were a handful of attempts to churn older veterans and rid themselves of meddlesome wrestlers. Drew Dober has dozens of UFC bouts, but when they put him in front of Manuel Torres, he had lost two in a row, was 1 for his last 4, and had gotten the absolute shit beaten out of him in all three of those losses. Manuel knocking him out in two minutes wasn’t a surprise, it was a foregone conclusion. Grant Dawson spent years as an undefeated UFC Lightweight repeatedly denied chances to fight up in the rankings because of his wrestling-heavy style, and once King Green torched him, they tried to book him right back into the ground. By last December, Dawson, who had one loss in thirteen UFC appearances, had put together another three-fight winning streak and gotten his ranking back.

They booked him against the unranked Torres on a one-fight winning streak and Torres smashed him in half a round.

And, like, look: It’s fighting. You can only get so upset about fighters being forced to fight. Management did not book Manuel’s fist upside Dawson’s jaw. But you can glean an awful lot about how fighters are booked, and who is or isn’t favored, by looking at the patterns in their matchmaking.

For instance, this fight wasn’t supposed to happen. Remember this past April, when Beneil Dariush, former contender turned late-thirties hard luck story who can’t stop missing weight and getting knocked out over and over, was marched out to Australia to fight Quillan Salkilld, despite Quillan being a young, in-his-prime knockout machine and Beneil being a human target who’d been knocked out in sixteen seconds less than six months prior?

Yeah! That! That only happened because Manuel got injured. Manuel was supposed to catch that body on the undercard of Procházka vs Ulberg. So what do you do? Do you book Torres against a Salkilldian killer of a prospect? Do you make him defend his spot against a young, hungry guy?

Why would you, when you have another aging, expensive veteran on a skid who got brutally knocked out in the last half-year?

It’s crass and cynical and gross and it also makes complete sense, which makes me hate it even more. I have spilled too much ink on my yearning for the days when the UFC booked fights that were good for the division regardless of who won, rather than fights built to benefit a marketing favorite, and by that metric, this is a really smart match-up. Manuel is distinctly unlikely to wrestle Fiziev, he’s going to fight to his strengths, which virtually guarantees the kind of striking battle the c-suite considers the only acceptable form of fighting, and any eventuality works to their benefit. If Manuel blasts Fiziev out, it gives him his first recognizable victory and puts him in the conversation for a top ten bout. If Fiziev beats back another young prospect, it gives him a new lease on life at Lightweight and gives the Azerbaijani crowd a main-event victory for a hometown hero.

Good matchmaking is good matchmaking whether I like it or not. Torres is solid and dangerous as hell, but he’s also a very straightforward fighter, and I want to believe Fiziev is still fast and technically sound enough to deal with it. RAFAEL FIZIEV BY DECISION.

CO-MAIN EVENT: THE ALTERNATE UNIVERSE WHERE NOTHING MATTERS
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Shara Magomedov (16-1) vs Michel Pereira (32-14 (2))

You know? I’m fine with this.

Shara Magomedov has always occupied this inexplicable, noncanonical space in the annals of the UFC. Too talented to ignore, too good to fire, too likely to suckerpunch men in shopping malls: Too illegal to book outside of the Middle East. He’s got one eye, dude. Michael Bisping got away with being a one-eyed UFC fighter and then he bragged about it and ruined it for every cyclops of the future. For all of the UFC’s repeated assurances that Shara can absolutely totally fight in America and there’s nothing wrong and only a crazy person would say he can’t get licensed, as of this weekend, his seven UFC fights will have taken place in, respectively,

• Abu Dhabi, UAE

• Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

• Abu Dhabi again

• Abu Dhabi for a third time

• Riyadh’s back!

• Oops! All Abu Dhabis

• Baku, motherfuckers

And that’s a real bitch if you’re trying to make him relevant to anything real. Which they did! Just two fights ago they inexplicably booked Shara against Michael “Venom” Page, a man the UFC seems to actively resent having hired because they took him from getting ranked at Welterweight after taking a round off Ian Machado Garry and threw him in at Middleweight against the undefeated guy who can’t fight outside of a small vertical slice of the globe. But the campaign failed, Shara lost his unblemished record, and the UFC just sort of admitted defeat and gave up and had Shara beat up the 6-10 (1) Marc-André Barriault for shits and giggles and now it’s Michel Pereira.

Which is fine, because Michel Pereira doesn’t and arguably has never existed.

Can you prove Michel Pereira is real? A guy who does capoeira kicks but has more decisions than knockouts? A guy who did a moonsault kneedrop on his opponent’s forehead in a real fight? A guy who gained a ton of credibility as a Middleweight contender after buzzsawing three men in three minutes only for everyone to conveniently forget that Ihor Potieria and Andre Petroski aren’t real contenders and everyone in or remotely close to the top fifteen was going to beat him?

Weird knockout artist Michel Pereira, who is supposed to be a terrifying Middleweight knockout threat while also being the last man to ever record a loss against 2005’s hottest prospect, former Featherweight sensation Diego Sanchez?

Forty-three second Kyle Daukaus victim Michel Pereira?

Demonstrably-worse-than-Cody-Brundage Michel Pereira?

Yeah! That’s fine. Put him in there with Shara. Let the guy who can’t fight anywhere with an athletic commission that has at least one optometrist get in the cage with the world’s most dangerous knockout artist who can’t knock out Zach Reese. That’s a genuinely good use of both of these guys. Let them spin at each other threateningly at a ratio of 720 degrees per jab. Let the centripetal force power the lights of Baku.

Start a whole Elseworlds imprint of the UFC around these two. Put Junior Tafa in it so his continued presence makes sense. Put Charles Johnson in it so he can stop being simultaneously the most and least successful Flyweight in the world. Put Yair Rodríguez in it so he can find ways to not take fights in two places at once. Put Bryce Mitchell and Umar Nurmagomedov in it so they can talk about how the Holocaust was fake somewhere no one has to hear about it anymore.

Anything that keeps them over there. SHARA MAGOMEDOV BY TKO.

MAIN CARD: SMALL CONUNDRUMS
LIGHTWEIGHT: Nazim Sadykhov (11-2-1) vs Matheus Camilo (10-3)

Nazim, you were almost heading this thing up. 2025 was almost a breakout year for the Black Wolf. Sadykhov had been heralded as a can’t-miss prospect by all the Ray Longo aficionados out there, but going to a draw with Viacheslav “Slava Claus” Borshchev and going almost a year and a half without a fight thanks to injuries and scheduling issues dampened his hype almost completely. But Nazim surged back at the start of 2025 and, in the space of just five months, stopped the highly-hyped Ismael Bonfim and knocked out Nikolas Motta, a man who now, technically, has a knockout win over a top fifteen Lightweight. It took a little longer than expected, but Nazim was finally living up to the high expectations the world had for him. Right up until December, when Fares Ziam handed him his first-ever knockout loss. No longer borderline-ranked, no longer chasing the big time, Nazim’s just fighting to get back in the conversation.

Matheus Camilo, on the other hands, is fighting to get mentioned in it for the first time in his life. He wasn’t a hyped prospect, he wasn’t even a Contender Series signing--he got signed because of someone else’s misfortune. Dorobshokh Nabotov, a prospect out of Tajikistan, staged a series of publicity stunts that concluded in getting the microphone at a UFC press conference to ask for a shot in the company. Dana had company buddy Chan Sung Jung book him as a try-out, and Matheus Camilo got the call to test him, and Nabotov was found wanting. Camilo took Nabotov’s undefeated record, his UFC contract, and his shot at mainstream approval. He immediately spent it getting choked out by Gabe Green. A few months later Camilo righted the ship with a decision over Nazim’s former foe Slava Claus, but he’s 1-1 and on shaky ground, and booking him to fight the Azerbaijani fighter in Azerbaijan means they either have faith he can pull off another upset or they’re content to let him get crushed for the hometown crowd’s approval.

I’m banking on the Sadykhov revenge tour. NAZIM SADYKHOV BY SUBMISSION.

FLYWEIGHT: Asu Almabayev (23-3, #8) vs Charles Johnson (19-8, #14)

Flyweight is both a land of impossible riches and terrible tragedies. Asu Almabayev is one of the best 125-pound fighters in the entire world. He wrestles, he grapples, he jumps on chokes, he can bother someone for three straight rounds without looking even remotely tired and, as we just saw in his last appearance, he can violently strangle Alex Perez. Asu only has one loss not just in the UFC, but in the last nine years of his career. That loss? Manel Kape, the current top contender, and Kape did it by chaining together eyepokes into one unholy, ocularly-abhorrent combination, which was clearly visible on replays but was not overturned because our sport is fake. Asu is one of the best, but he is boxed out of the top, and he lost his shot at it by a fingertip.

Charles Johnson is in a much weirder, much funnier spot. Despite my years of recorded love for InnerG’s fighting, he is, demonstrably, not one of the best Flyweights in the world. He’s only narrowly above a 50/50 UFC average at 8-6, he hasn’t put together back-to-back wins in years, his long, solid winning streak ended at the hands of Rizin vet Ramazan Temirov, and he’s only just rebounded after getting obliterated in one round by the aforementioned Alex Perez. And yet, Charles cannot be an afterthought, because that same string of bad luck also includes knockout victories over Lone’er Kavanagh, the recently-minted #6 in the world, and Joshua fucking Van, the current world champion. Van only has one loss in an eleven-fight UFC run, and it was Johnson knocking him on his ass.

That’s the kind of thing you have to capitalize on as a journeyman, and Johnson’s fucking trying. This is a real tough matchup for him, Asu’s pressure game is very, very good and he’ll likely run Johnson right into the cage and grind him into dust, but I put up with O’Malley vs Chito 2 as a completely undeserved marketing-favorite’s-revenge title fight that passed up much more deserving contenders, and by god, let’s do that again but this time it’s for a guy I like so it’s okay. CHARLES JOHNSON BY TKO.

MIDDLEWEIGHT: Ikram Aliskerov (17-2) vs Brunno Ferreira (15-3)

For mysterious reasons that definitely aren’t related to his tendency to knock people out, the UFC is real invested in Ikram Aliskerov’s future. Despite his being a relative unknown after beating the likes of Phil Hawes and Warlley Alves, when the first attempt to book former champ Robert Whittaker and Khamzat Chimaev fell through back in the summer of 2024, the UFC decided to put Aliskerov in for Khamzat and hope that, somehow, it would all work out for the best. And it did! In the sense that Bobby Knuckles dusted him in under two minutes and for us Whittaker fans, that’s the only thing left to keep us warm. They let Aliskerov crush André Muniz to get his groove back, they actually tried to book this fight an entire year ago, and when that failed they had Aliskerov beat The Iron Turtle himself, Jun Yong Park, who had, funnily enough, already lost a fight to Muniz.

If you beat someone and they follow that up by booking you against someone who already lost to the guy you beat: Congratulations! Management likes you. If you’re Brunno Ferreira, and you’ve just failed the UFC for the third time after getting stomped out in 107 seconds by Robocop Rodrigues, and in response to your loss they not only book you against an unranked opponent on a winning streak, but one they already tried to match you up with once? Brunno, buddy, I’m sorry, they’re plotting your demise. What’s even sadder: Brunno was supposed to fight Paulo Costa back in March. With a win, that would’ve gotten him a damn ranking. But Costa decided he was too bored of cutting weight and hopped to Light Heavyweight instead, and now he’s a prominent contender and Brunno is stuck fighting a big favorite knockout artist whom the local crowd would much rather root for.

Sorry, Brunno. IKRAM ALISKEROV BY TKO.

MIDDLEWEIGHT: Abus Magomedov (28-7-1) vs Michał Oleksiejczuk (22-9)

Abus: I give up. I give up on you. I give you up. You and your long, lanky legs had one job, and that was to prevent us from falling into the Sean Strickland timeline, and you failed, and now he’s a two-time champion. That would be enough to damn you. But you had a chance at cleansing yourself of your sins. They put you up against Joe Pyfer last October, and once again, yours was the fist standing between Heaven and Hell, and once again, you let the god damned demons in. You got choked out and now I have no use for you. You have disappointed me too many times.

Michał: This is your job, now. Are you being set up to lose this fight? Yes. Have you, in fact, gotten destroyed by people Abus beat? Yes. Are you going to win this fight anyway, half because your time training with the Fighting Nerds seems to have worked really well in terms of getting you to finally calm the hell down and fight to your strengths and half because you are now the sword of the divine and all of the pressure of rebuilding the wall that once kept the bigots and horrors out of the Middleweight division rests on your shoulders?

Do it for Dave Menne. Do it for Murilo Bustamante. Do it for the Middleweight we need. MICHAŁ OLEKSIEJCZUK BY TKO.

PRELIMS: FINISH YOUR JUICE BOX
WELTERWEIGHT: Farman Hasanov (5-0) vs Eric Nolan (8-4)

Should Farman Hasanov be here? Probably not. He’s only fought rookies or people who, themselves, have only fought rookies, but at 5-0 that makes sense. At 5-0 you probably shouldn’t be fighting people who matter, and the fact that 5-0 people are getting into the UFC is more of an indictment of the UFC than anything else. Hasanov’s tape is mild and inoffensive, the kind of wrestleboxing that would be a throwback were it not for how kind of slow and laborious it is, like watching a c-tier sitcom pretend to be Wings, and if any part of you replied to that with “but Carl, Wings was a c-tier sitcom,” you can get the fuck out right now. Eric Nolan, on the other hand, is absolutely supposed to be here, because this is why they hired him in the first place. He was signed on 48 hours’ notice because Baisangur Susurkaev got a big win on the Contender Series and the UFC decided to pull a publicity stunt by booking him into a proper fight that same week, and Nolan was the Cage Fury FC champion--i.e., one fight beforehand he’d been competing with a 4-7 guy named Trevor Gudde--at Welterweight. So they pulled him into the main show up a weight class with two days to prepare because they wanted another guy to get a stoppage in the UFC.

And now he’s fighting a fighter who got signed for being Azerbaijani so they could put him on a card in Azerbaijan. Their decisionmaking is rarely subtle and I hope it blows up in their face. ERIC NOLAN BY TKO.

LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Abdul Rakhman Yakhyaev (9-0) vs Julius Walker (7-2)

The “x beat y and y beat z so x will beat z” nature of MMA math is, and has always, been specious. It exists to simplify problems that exist not in a place of logic, but dreams and mysteries. Sometimes, however, you can compress it to something more reasonable. In this case, Abdul Rakhman Yakhyaev is an undefeated man with 2 UFC wins and a near-100% finishing rate, and Julius Walker is 1-2 in the company and just got violently knocked out four months ago, and Walker’s one UFC victory was an awkward decision over Raffael Cerqueira that Cerqueira gave away after nearly knocking him out and choosing to jump a guillotine instead of finishing the job, and one fight later, Cerqueira met Yakhyaev, who floored him and choked him out in thirty-three seconds.

Math is cruel. ABDUL RAKHMAN YAKHYAEV BY TKO.

MIDDLEWEIGHT: Nursulton Ruziboev (36-9-2 (2)) vs Andrey Pulyaev (10-4)

Sometimes you have one of those fights whose end result doesn’t feel like it’s in doubt, but the act of getting there will probably still be a lot of fun. Like, Nursulton is extremely likely to win this fight. He is big and powerful and extremely hard to defeat, and Andrey Pulyaev’s career has been marked primarily by getting repeatedly outstruck. But he’s overperformed in his losses. The last time we saw Andrey he was being served up as a +650 underdog to living wrecking ball Ateba Gautier, and yeah, Pulyaev lost, but he not only ended Ateba’s finishing streak, he took a round off Ateba and even narrowly beat him on a couple media scorecards. That level of toughness starts to raise questions. How much of Nursulton’s success is favorable matchmaking? How much of Pulyaev’s failure is being constantly thrown to the wolves? If Pulyaev doesn’t go away in the first half of the fight, do the odds begin to shift?

NURSULTON RUZIBOEV BY DECISION is still the call, but Pulyaev’s got real upset potential.

FEATHERWEIGHT: Kaan Ofli (13-4-1) vs Javier Reyes (23-5)

Kaan, buddy, I don’t think this is gonna work. For those who missed my horrible 2024 odyssey through the shapeless, featureless doldrums of The Ultimate Fighter 32 (jesus christ), Kaan Ofli came from its terrible depths, and while they introduced their picks for each team and gave some background for almost everyone involved,

• Kaan Ofli of Australia, Pick #5: The show does not bother to talk about him.

Kaan ultimately lost the season’s championship fight after being knocked out by Mairon Santos, but the UFC signed him anyway, because nothing means anything. Kaan lost again, but pulled together a submission over the perpetually troubled Ricardo Ramos and the perpetually overpushed Yizha, and for that, he must fall. Javier Reyes is one of the few, welcome Contender Series signings I didn’t have a single bad thing to say about. He’s experienced, he’s well-balanced, he’s aggressive and traveled, and while he does tend to favor the house style of shirking defense more than is necessarily wise, in his case, it is a skillset honed over dozens of fights rather than embraced because he hasn’t been around long enough to figure out how blocking works.

He’s very solid, he’s very dangerous, he’s hard to wrestle and he’s got half a foot of reach on Kaan. Violence seems likely. JAVIER REYES BY TKO.

WELTERWEIGHT: Daniil Donchenko (13-2) vs Theodor Berggren (8-3)

We’re just cramming all the TUF stuff together. Do you remember Daniil Donchenko? Do you remember anything of TUF 33 (jesus christ)? Did you even know TUF 34 (jesus christ) had its debut this week? Guess what: It didn’t! That was last week. Daniel Cormier and Chael Sonnen, once upon a time stars of the sport, are old and retired and hosting a talent development show that no one fucking watches and the UFC barely acknowledges exists and your reward for winning a TUF championship now is the right to fight a guy with a journeyman’s record in FIGHT CLUB RUSH and a win over in Cage Warriors against a 3-2 guy.

I miss Kendall Grove. DANIIL DONCHENKO BY DECISION.

BANTAMWEIGHT: Bekzat Almakhan (12-3) vs Jean Matsumoto (17-2)

What a deeply bizarre fight between two bizarrely booked fighters. Bekzat Almakhan was a solid and respectable if unheralded regional prospect who’d barely left his native Kazakhstan when the UFC signed him in 2024 and immediately booked him against Umar Nurmagomedov, one of the three best Bantamweights on the entire planet. Shockingly, he lost, and they’ve been keeping him in a strange holding pattern ever since, wheeling him out to beat up poor Brad Katona or test Ilia Topuria’s brother Aleksandre, and now, he’s here to see if Jean Matsumoto still has what it takes. Just a touch over one year ago, Jean looked like he was going to be a player in Bantamweight’s new era. Young, well-rounded, undefeated, defensively sound--when Dominick Cruz fell out of his own retirement fight with Rob Font the UFC picked Jean to take his place, and the world widely considered him a favorite to beat the eternal gatekeeper and take his place in the rankings. Sixteen months later, Jean is 1 for 3 and all three fights were split decision tossups, with Font and Farid Basharat both beating Jean. For three straight fights, Jean was a main card prospect. Now he’s one slot away from curtain-jerking in Baku, and there are valid questions to be asked about how much of his fall comes from higher competition and how much comes from losing part of his edge.

BEKZAT ALMAKHAN BY DECISION. I think Jean is heading to the land of What Ifs.

WELTERWEIGHT: Tahir Abdullayev (21-3) vs Jefferson Nascimento (13-0)

This is not a fight between two men, this is a battle between the two sides of the sport. Jefferson Nascimento has, in theory, done everything right. He worked his way through Brazil’s regional scene, he hooked up with a solid fight team, he made his way to the Legacy Fighting Alliance, battled through solid competition, and has reigned as their Lightweight champion for the last two years. He earned every part of his contract. Tahir Abdullayev lost to the last good fighter he faced. He’s on a four-fight winning streak against journeymen, jobbers, and, in my personal favorite, a guy who was 2-0 against Tahir’s 21 recorded bouts. He is here because he was born in Baku. He is here because he is convenient.

I will root for the soul of the sport until its embers are dead and gone. JEFFERSON NASCIMENTO BY TKO.

One of the best and only creative things the UFC has ever done is commissioning the wardrobe for the ring girls at UFC Noche, an event at The Sphere celebrating Mexican Independence Day. Normally the most thought that goes into what the models wear is how small a bikini worn indoors can be before stretching the limits of bad taste, and whether an energy drink or beer sponsor gets to put their logo on it. If that attire has any intention or purpose, it is to avoid an obscenity charge.

This time the UFC hired Marina Toybina, an Emmy award winning costume and wardrobe designer, a genuine world class talent in this field. She is responsible for wardrobe design for events such as Katy Perry’s Super Bowl halftime show and Taylor Swift’s tour. For the UFC Noche show, she put together several rounds of costumes and makeup between nine women celebrating multiple aspects of Mexico’s culture and history. Not only was the wardrobe stunning, it provided substance for the women. For once these were not just generic sexy lady forms holding up signs to assist the many fans who can’t count to five, they were characters with distinct backgrounds and attitudes to portray. It was successful storytelling in a visual and artistic medium, covering the rise and fall of indigenous empires, anti-colonial battles against conquistadors, the cultural value of Día de los Muertos, and more. The attire was fulfilling a purpose.

The Less Triumphant American Attempt

The UFC brought Marina Toybina back for wardrobe design to celebrate the United States of America at UFC Freedom 250 At The White House Presented By World Liberty Financial cryptocurrencies. The budget is claimed to be $60,000,000, triple what they say the UFC Noche event cost. They did not rely on a lesser creative talent or suddenly get cheap. And yet the wardrobe looked like a horny teenager asked Grok to put his teachers into a Betsy Ross themed porno.

Or has the aesthetics of a Spirit Halloween costume called “Flag Slut” that goes for $40 which a maid of honor decided everyone has to wear for a Nashville bachelorette party.

Or someone thought that the comically hyper-patriotic supervillain Firecracker from The Boys, the least subtle show on television, wasn’t quite getting the message across strongly enough.

On a spectrum from the standard purposeless uniforms to the purposeful storytelling at UFC Noche, it’s unclear where this falls. What substance was there to this offering?

Any Plausible Celebration Of American Culture?

The lack of any specific reference point to celebrate is striking. A friend suggested it was meant to be a throwback to USO shows of the 1940’s or 50’s, the era most conservatives wish we could get back to, the era when the National Review declared they would stand athwart history yelling Stop!. Those USO shows did not look like this. You wouldn’t find Jayne Mansfield or Marilyn Monroe wearing a chopped and screwed American flag, they wore evening gowns and luxuriant furs. Norman Rockwell, even with his notoriously bad taste and love for chintzy Americana, depicted attractive women from the USO simply wearing dresses in his Willie Gillis cover for the Saturday Evening Post.

It was still an insightful starting point. Eventually I found what this aesthetic is referencing and celebrating. Please bear with me on a detour first.

A Philosophy Interlude

In the essay Simulacra and Simulation, the philosopher Jean Baudrillard discusses the nature of symbolic representation; those symbols gaining distance from reality, ultimately drifting so far away that reality is no longer part of the picture. He described a simulacrum as “copies that depict things that either had no original to begin with, or that no longer have an original.”

For example, the Frontierland park at Disneyland is a symbol that ostensibly depicts a town in the American Old West. However the park is not based on references to anything true or real about an old west town. It is a reference to cartoon depictions of the American west, which are a symbolic representation of popular western movies (filmed overseas no less), which are a symbolic representation of pulp novels, which may have finally been in reference to some crumb of reality about the historic American frontier. Each step of symbolic representation perverts the previous one until the final step he called hyperreality, where the symbolic representation no longer has a connection to an original. Knowledge of the original is no longer perceivable by those who participate in these exercises. Merely experiencing the hyperreality at Disneyland restricts one’s literacy.

Ok, What Was That About?

So what was behind the UFC’s concept of patriotic wardrobe? Look to this depiction of a 1940’s USO show in the 2011 film Captain America: The First Avenger, produced by Marvel Studios, a subsidiary of the aforementioned Walt Disney Corporation, a leading purveyor of hyperreality.

Suddenly the UFC’s decisions feel like a familiar spectacle. The wardrobe was referencing a movie, a reference to a comic strip, itself a deliberate exaggeration not meant to portray the reality of those patriotic USO shows, and now playing a role in the chain of symbols obscuring the original reality. This easily blended and merged with the empty performative post-9/11 patriotism of smearing the flag over everything.

It would be easy to assume the ring girls’ wardrobe at UFC Freedom 250 At The White House Presented By World Liberty Financial’s crypto exchange was bog standard gaudiness and bad taste but I urge you to consider this alternative. Through the repetition of signifiers and symbolism, by filtering through the stages and orders of signs, this is actually what American culture can offer. While Mexico has cultural touchstones that could be referenced and rendered through art, the United States of America no longer does. The aesthetics of Bush era conservatism successfully erased knowledge of the past and the ability to tell stories regarding it. Whether building upon that was the UFC’s intention or not does not change that it is accomplishing a purpose. We have been rendered hollow, dressing up as The Flag Slut is all the nation has to offer.

SATURDAY, JUNE 20 FROM THE EMPTY SOUL OF THE APEX
PRELIMS 2 PM PDT / 5 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 5 PM PDT / 8 PM EDT

Feels real weird to go back to normal after all of that, doesn’t it?

Aside from the million other reasons I resent the White House card for existing, I can now add that for the first time in my entire goddamn life, I looked at a UFC event and thought “Oh, thank god, it’s only the Apex.”

MAIN EVENT: HIDDEN HISTORY
FLYWEIGHT: Manel Kape (22-7, #2) vs Kyoji Horiguchi (36-5 (1), #5)

This is a great fucking fight. This is an amazing bout between two of the best Flyweights on the entire planet. It is only through the lens of the Apex, and what it says about the different scales at which mixed martial arts operates, that I can find a single thing to feel bad about.

I mean, aside from the whole ‘Manel Kape keeps using gay slurs and calling people who anger him genetic failures’ thing. I could complain about that, and honestly, our proximity to the White House card is probably why I just don’t have the energy to get mad about it again right now. I am not thinking about Manel Kape the weirdly insecure guy, I am thinking about Manel Kape, unequivocal top contender to the Flyweight title.

Because he is, man. There’s no more denying it. Kape has spent the last five years being dogged by an inability to get over the line, be it badly-timed losses or injuries or opponents botching their weight cuts or Kape botching his weight cuts or, you know, steroids, he’s found himself repeatedly boxed out of contention. Should Muhammad Mokaev have his spot? Yes. Should Asu Almabayev sue the Kape estate for beating him with multiple eye gouges strung together like a Mortal Kombat Armageddon create-a-fatality? Also yes.

Did Kape make himself undeniable by blowing Brandon Royval out of the water? That, unfortunately, is the biggest and most present yes. Royval spent years stuck in his own holding pattern right at the edge of the summit. Good enough to beat Brandon Moreno and get to Alexandre Pantoja twice: Not good enough to win the belt. Went the distance with Tatsuro Taira and Joshua Van, but only beat the former, not the latter. He was long considered the toughest top contender to beat in the entire goddamn company. So Kape immolating him in three minutes last December made him, seemingly, the natural fit for the title picture. Sure, there was the complicating wrinkle of Joshua Van having just won the belt on a bizarre injury stoppage, but Kape was next, right?

Nope! Tatsuro Taira, the man who lost to the man Kape had just destroyed. Well, that sucks for Kape, but that means he gets the next crack at Van, surely?

Why, no. Instead, he gets to fight the goddamn bogeyman.

Kyoji Horiguchi is the best fighter in the world. I don’t care that this is objectively untrue: I am asserting it anyway. 36-5 (1) is already an absurdly good record for anyone who’s spent the majority of their career in the major leagues, but it belies an even wilder sub-statistic: Only one of those losses actually came at Horiguchi’s home in the Flyweight division, and that was against Demetrious “Mighty Mouse” Johnson, arguably the greatest fighter of all time.

Flyweight is such an underbooked global divisionKyoji Horiguchi is just so god damned good that he had to fight at 135 pounds, despite being shorter than all but one of the UFC’s Bantamweights, and he was still great there. At one point in an era of co-promotion that now seems like an impossibly beautiful dream, he simultaneously held 135-pound gold in both Japan and America, thanks to Rizin and Bellator joining forces in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to compete with the UFC’s iron grip on the sport.

Shinryu Takahashi and Ougikubo, the only other Rizin Flyweight champions, both lost to Horiguchi before he left to return to the UFC. Kai Asakura fell to Horiguchi’s fists in under a round. Darrion Caldwell, Bellator champion, got beat by Horiguchi twice in six months. Ian McCall, UFC standout. Hideo Tokoro, living legend.

Manel Kape.

That’s right, baby: This is a rematch. The first time Kyoji and Manel fought was as part of a three-fights-in-48-hours tournament back in 2017 in Rizin. It was a good fight, too, with Kyoji ultimately choking Kape out late in the third. At the time, they were the two best Bantamweights Rizin had to offer, and they did battle in the Saitama Super Arena on New Year’s Eve on the same card as Mirko Cro-Cop, Takanori Gomi and Tenshin Nasukawa in front of tens of thousands of people.

And now they’re two of the best Flyweights the UFC has to offer and they’re fighting for title contention in the Apex.

Really sucks the air out of things, doesn’t it? Like, this is great! This is a stellar fucking fight! Almost nine years of history leading up to this rematch, two men at the top of their game, one maddened by a need for revenge, the other trying to live up to the dreams of his fallen master (no, really, he changed his nickname over it and everything), with the winner all but guaranteed a shot at the greatest Flyweight prize in the world. This is exactly the kind of thing the pomp and circumstance of combat sports theatrics were made for. You could market entire shows around this. When this fight was first rumored it was assumed to be an anchoring fight for the UFC’s first Japanese event in damn near a decade.

And instead it’s here, in the Apex, in front of a few dozen people and also co-main eventer Navajo Stirling before they kick him out because competing in the Apex doesn’t entitle you to a seat afterward.

This was a great fight in 2017 and it’s even better now. Both men have come even further into their own styles. Horiguchi has mastered his darting attacks and the way he varies up his offense so opponents don’t see his takedowns coming; Kape has calmed the fuck down (stylistically, if not personally) and is much better at taking his time and controlling how quickly he burns his gas tank. He’s a much more mature version of the 25 year-old Kyoji choked out.

But: He’s Kyoji goddamned Horiguchi. KYOJI GODDAMNED HORIGUCHI BY TKO.

CO-MAIN EVENT: AH, THAT’S BETTER
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Ion Cuțelaba (20-11-1 (1)) vs Navajo Stirling (9-0)

It’s like falling down an elevator shaft. It’s like running after the Road Runner and smacking facefirst into what you thought was a conveniently-placed tunnel. It’s like walking out of the shower in the morning happy, clean and prepared to face the horrors of the world only to slip and fall into the moat you dug around your house for when the Water Wars happen.

Except a moat has at least a little bit of depth, and Light Heavyweight does not.

Ion Cuțelaba has a losing UFC record. It’s close--it’s 9-10-1--but it’s still on the wrong side of history. He has a victory over top contender Khalil Rountree Jr.! In 2019. In the seven years since then, he has defeated the following men:

• Devin Clark, cut after going 8-9

• Tanner Boser, who just got re-signed after his unsuccessful 5-5 run

• Ivan Erslan, who just saved his job with his first-ever UFC victory last month after dropping three straight

• Ibo Aslan, who just finished dropping three straight

• Oumar Sy, who went from an undefeated superprospect to 1 for his last 3 after Ion choked him out in a single round

But, hey: Navajo Stirling, right? Undefeated! Young-ish! Name sounds sort of interesting! Is he setting the world on fire?

No. You fool. You foolish fool. There is no fire. There is no fuel to burn. In four UFC wins, Navajo Stirling has exactly one victory over a man with a winning record in the company. That man is Rodolfo Bellato, and that record is 2-1-1 (1).

These two men have only the barest hint of divisional traction. Neither has a particularly impactful win anywhere in their recent history. Nobody in this arrangement has demonstrated the capacity to be the future of the division.

Which sucks, because this fight might, legitimately, be pivotal to the future of the division.

Light Heavyweight is fucked, man. We talk about Women’s Bantamweight being in bad straits, but 205 is right on their tail. Here is the entire goddamn ladder, without missing a single beat.

• Brand new champion Carlos Ulberg tore his ACL in his title win and is out indefinitely

• #1 Magomed Ankalaev just got shitcanned by Alex Pereira and is being booked down the card against Khalil Rountree Jr.

• #2 Alex Pereira isn’t even in this division anymore and just got destroyed by Ciryl Gane at Heavyweight

• #3 Jiří Procházka is a fan favorite who has also been knocked out in three title shots in as many years and already lost to the champ

• #4 Jan Błachowicz just went on injury leave for a torn meniscus, by the time he returns from which he’ll be either damn near or past 44 years old and he already lost to the champ

• #5 Khalil Rountree Jr. is somehow the best-positioned contender left, which is unfortunate because he’s 1 for his last 3 after getting brutally knocked out twice in one year

• #6 Jamahal Hill is currently on his third or fourth injury leave for serious leg issues

• #7 Paulo Costa has one fight at Light Heavyweight

• #8 Azamat Murzakanov just got knocked out by Paulo Costa, who has one fight at Light Heavyweight

• #9 Volkan Oezdemir is almost 38 and already lost to the champ

• #10 Bogdan Guskov failed to beat Volkan and Jan both

• #11 Dominick Reyes is a weird, tragic meme and already lost to the champ

• #12 Nikita Krylov got knocked out by Reyes and Guskov both and is welcoming former Welterweight Robert Whittaker to the division next month

• #13 Johnny Walker is moving up to Heavyweight

• #14 Aleksandar Rakić is moving up to Heavyweight

• #15 Alonzo Menifield is almost 39, gets crushed by everyone in the top ten, and already got knocked out by the champ in twelve seconds

That’s it. That is the top of your entire Light Heavyweight division. 20% of the Light Heavyweight ladder is injured and another, separate 20% doesn’t even fight at Light Heavyweight anymore. There is exactly one fight between already-ranked fighters booked in the entire fucking weight class, and it’s Magomed Ankalaev, who was champion one fight ago, against Khalil Rountree Jr., who is half the top ten below him and coming off a vicious knockout loss. Pereira’s gone. Jiří’s tarnished. Ulberg might have to vacate. Paulo fucking Costa might get the next shot at the title.

BREAKING NEWS: In the middle of editing, Jamahal Hill announced that he, too, wants to move up to Heavyweight. We are now at one-fourth of the entire ladder departing said ladder for Heavyweight all at once. Half of the rankings are functionally gone. Jesus wept.

205 was the UFC’s premiere division. It was the land of Frank Shamrock and Tito Ortiz, Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture, Lyoto Machida and Rampage Jackson. Jon Jones. Daniel Cormier.

If you’re asking where the next great Light Heavyweight prospects are: This is, unironically, it. Navajo Stirling. Longest non-Ulberg winning streak in the division. Beneath him, it’s a three-way tie between no less than Dustin Jacoby, Iwo Baraniewski, and Billy Elekana. This is all there is.

Sit on the rusted throne. Inherit the ashes under your feet. NAVAJO STIRLING BY DECISION.

MAIN CARD: MISPLACED PIECES
FEATHERWEIGHT: Vinicius Oliveira (23-4, #12 at Bantamweight) vs Andre Fili (25-13 (1), NR)

One fight really changes everything, doesn’t it. On February 6, Vinicius Oliveira was one of Bantamweight’s biggest prospects. Rangy, powerful, difficult to effectively grapple, and possessed of that overt meanness in the way he hit people--not hunting for knockouts, not technically timing his counterpunches, just going out there trying to make his opponent completely miserable. And it worked fantastically, and it got him past a number of genuine prospects, and it got his name into the conversation for the top ten. And then it got him in the cage with Mario Bautista. Sometimes fights play out in such a way that it reinforces the concept of levels. Oliveira barely got a dozen strikes off between being absolutely styled on by Bautista’s grappling advantage, which, in turn, let Bautista crack him upside the head at will, and in just a hair under two rounds Bautista choked him out. More than being bummed out, though, Oliveira admitted a bit of relief, because cutting to 135 pounds was killing him.

He was supposed to get a solid measuring stick fight against the tragically fallen Giga Chikadze here, but Giga’s out, so instead we have the eternal road warrior, Andre Fili, who is entering, I swear to god, his seventh straight year of managing to never string together a pair of wins or losses. Back in 2019 he beat Myles Jury and Sheymon Moraes back-to-back, and since then: Chaos. He’s rarely ever boring, he’s rarely an easy out, and he goes to split decisions all the god damned time. But, statistically speaking, he wins more of them than he loses, so who’s to say if it’s good or bad? Hell, his entire career is a perpetually horrifying Sword of Damocles situation where every time I see him I think ‘hey, didn’t he temporarily go blind in one eye from getting punched too much?’ and then I remember that not only did that, in fact, happen, it was already almost three and a half years ago and he’s absorbed another 175 recorded headshots since then and that’s not counting sparring and I have to go lay down.

Please do not rob this poor man of his sight, Lok Dog. VINICIUS OLIVEIRA BY DECISION.

FEATHERWEIGHT: Hyder Amil (11-2) vs Christian Rodriguez (12-4)

Hyder Amil, you were supposed to be a thing. Amil was one of the more-hyped Contender Series children, a 2023 winner who seemed promisingly well-rounded and had already successfully tested himself in Bellator and the LFA en route to the big show, and starting off his UFC career with two straight underdog knockout victories earned him a whole lot of respect from the fans. Beating William Gomis by split decision didn’t really lower his stock, either--it’s William Gomis, no one’s stopped him in almost ten years, and besides, he won! Then Jose Delgado knocked Amil out in twenty-six seconds. Then Jamall Emmers, who had gone half a decade without managing back-to-back wins, finally broke his streak by grinding Amil down to a unanimous decision loss. One year ago, Amil was undefeated: Now, he is trying to avert a three-fight losing streak.

No one gets how quickly the sport can move past you like Christian Rodriguez. The UFC hand-picked him as a main-card pay-per-view victim for their undefeated child soldier Raul Rosas Jr. thanks to Christian’s history of getting outwrestled, and Christian proceeded to really piss them off by a) missing weight and b) beating the absolute dogshit out of their special boy. He then proceeded to miss weight even worse in his next fight, which meant it was time for a--completely correct--forced move to Featherweight by the UFC. 145 just hasn’t been kind to the man. Hilariously, his two moments of glory have come from taking out two more undefeated UFC prospects, one in Isaac Dulgarian and the other in Austin Bashi, but he’s 1 for his last 4 and I promise they would not miss him if he lost and they could finally get their just revenge.

So I am asking you to do it to ‘em one more time. CHRISTIAN RODRIGUEZ BY DECISION.

FLYWEIGHT: André Lima (11-0) vs Kevin Borjas (10-5)

André Lima has had an incredibly annoying time in the UFC, through very little fault of his own. He makes it through the Contender Series in 2023, waits half a year to make his debut against Igor Severino, and wins--by disqualification, after Severino bites him so hard it leaves a dental imprint of his teeth so perfect you would scoff at it for being unrealistic if you saw it on whatever iteration of CSI is still plaguing the airwaves. He goes through two replacements for one fight, then fucks up his own weight cut. He wins two fights, including his first finish and by far the best win of his career, then finds himself on the shelf for more than a year with an injury. He waits on a return against Dong Hun Choi, only for that fight to be rescheduled twice and ultimately cancelled.

And now, as one of the most promising Flyweight prospects in the company, he is making his return against Kevin Borjas, who is 1-4 in the company and whose one and only win came against Mexican meme star Ronaldo “Lazy Boy” Rodríguez, who missed weight and hasn’t competed since. Borjas wasn’t supposed to win that fight, and as revenge for his victory the UFC sent him to China to lose to Chinese star Sumudaerji, and when that didn’t satisfy their thirst for revenge, they followed it up by sending him to Mexico City to lose a fight against Imanol Rodriguez. He is here to be defeated. He is here to suffer.

So please make it quick, André. ANDRÉ LIMA BY SUBMISSION.

FEATHERWEIGHT: Melsik Baghdasaryan (8-3) vs Murtazali Magomedov (10-0)

As someone who spends too much of their free time face-deep in MMA research, I’d like you to know, for the record, that half the problem is how much of our data is just plain wrong. The UFC’s punch stats? The ones I cite all the time? Not just frequently miscalculated, but also beholden to such absurd rubrics that every three-feet-away teep Sean Strickland throws is counted as a significant strike attempt, but someone landing a ground-and-pound haymaker might not make the cut. The records? Regularly disputed, given that one leading database counts everything and another tries to reflect fixed fights.

When I went looking up tape on Murtazali Magomedov, I saw that his last pre-Contender Series fight was a bout with Brazilian champion Claudeci Brito. According to Tapology’s database--and the UFC’s--Murtazali and Brito are the same exact height, down to the centimeter.

Down to the centimeter.

I dunno, man. Melsik Baghdasaryan had promise as a striking prospect but then he disappeared in a puff of smoke and this is just one month shy of being his second fight in the last three years. We saw him in February of 2025 and he got destroyed in one round by Jean Silva and then he went right back to the toy chest. Every time he shows up he looks a little worse and a little more tentative, and meanwhile, Murtazali is fighting out in Kazakhstan where people are of indeterminate height and everyone knows how to wrestle at least a little bit.

I will side with the Steppe. MURTAZALI MAGOMEDOV BY TKO.

PRELIMS: DEATH WOULD BE MORE HONEST
WOMEN’S BANTAMWEIGHT: Bia Mesquita (7-0, #13) vs Melissa Mullins (7-2, NR)

It’s very, very funny that I spent all that time talking about how Light Heavyweight is doing almost as poorly as Women’s Bantamweight, and yet, the inequality remains. Navajo Stirling and Ion Cuțelaba? Co-main event. Hyder Amil vs Christian Rodriguez? Main card. And yet, predictable as the sun, we have two ranked women’s fights on the prelims, and both of them are at Women’s Bantamweight, and the higher-ranked one is actually lower than this one because nothing is real. Bia Mesquita is, quite possibly, one of the only hopes for this division. She’s a hyper-aggressive grappler with world-class bonafides and despite being the second-smallest woman in the division they’ve allowed her to strangle everyone in her way. Melissa Mullins was 2023’s iteration of a bigger, stronger and considerably more British version of a grappling prospect for the future, but unfortunately, she just isn’t quite as good at it and she also keeps boning up her weight cut. The UFC putting her here in a ranked match is not a favor to her; it is an attempt to get rid of her.

At least they’re putting Mesquita in a preliminary headliner? I fucking guess? My fingers are scrabbling through the dirt and silt to find the bottom of this bar. BIA MESQUITA BY SUBMISSION.

FLYWEIGHT: Mitch Raposo (10-3) vs Allan Nascimento (22-6)

Good news, me: This is a rescheduling so you don’t have to do any goddamn work. We were supposed to see this back in April at Burns vs Malott, but Raposo got sick 48 hours before the event. Consequently: A rerun.

They’re putting you out to pasture, Mitch. You were a late replacement signing that they expected very little from, and you managed to wrestle a bit, which they also don’t like, and somehow despite pretty clearly losing most of your fights you kept only barely dropping split decisions, which is even worse. They expected you to lose to Azat Maksum last October and help rebuild his prospects, and they were not anticipating Azat blowing his weight cut and coming in tired and unprepared. So here’s the good news, Mitch: You get another shot and it’s at a real opponent who’s damn near ranked! The bad news is he’s one of the best grapplers in the division and they are wholly intent on him strangling you.

I almost want to root for you, but Allan beat my boy Jafel Filho, so I’m honorbound to root for him. ALLAN NASCIMENTO BY SUBMISSION.

FEATHERWEIGHT: Michael Aswell Jr. (11-4) vs Gaston Bolaños (8-5)

If you asked me to imagine the platonic ideal of an Apex prelim, it would be either this or a Middleweight bout between people with 4-0 records and nicknames like “Party Time” or “Bodybagz.” Gaston was a Bellator also-ran four years and change ago, he was one of the odder UFC pickups and he has proceeded to go 2-2, accomplish nothing, and sit out for an entire year since getting choked out by Quang Le, who has actually since been released from the organization, which is even more insulting. Michael Aswell Jr. is 1-2, his only victory came against Lucas Almeida, who was cut immediately afterward, and as an additional bonus he got hit one hundred and thirteen times just one day shy of three months ago but he’s still here because fuck you, get back in the fucking cage or we’ll go back to Samurai Fight House and hire Emmanuel “El Perro” Vallejos and replace you.

MICHAEL ASWELL JR. BY DECISION.

WOMEN’S BANTAMWEIGHT: Karol Rosa (19-7, #8) vs Luana Santos (10-2, #11)

Yup, here it is. Top ten Women’s Bantamweight fight? One woman who’s beaten former title contenders and been in a Fight of the Year candidate, one woman who’s 5-1 and on a solid winning streak? You better fucking believe that’s all the way down the fuck here. Karol Rosa may have a dozen UFC fights, but win or lose she’s gone to a decision in every single one of them, so the UFC has no use for her because it’s not like she’s Colby fucking Covington or anything. Luana Santos dropped a bout to Casey O’Neill a couple years ago, but since then she’s tapped Tainara Lisboa and beaten promising Canadian prospect Melissa Croden, so it makes perfect sense that she’s getting tested in the top ten against one of the longest-tenured, most-successful veterans in the division.

On the prelims. Under Michael Aswell Jr. It’s almost like they don’t want the division to live. What a crazy thought, that. KAROL ROSA BY DECISION.

WELTERWEIGHT: Leon Shahbazyan (12-4) vs Levan Chokheli (14-3 (1))

Hold on, wait. I’m sorry. Leon Shahbazyan? Edmen Shahbazyan wasn’t already enough, you had to go hire his older fucking brother? His brother who got knocked out by Phil Rowe on the Contender series? His brother who got thrown in a trashcan by Ryan Loder, TUF 32 (jesus christ) champion, in a minute and a half, a couple years before Loder proceeded to get repeatedly and effortlessly destroyed in the company? You are hiring that Leon Shahbazyan? His last five wins were the 14-10 Robert Hale, the 10-9 Gláucio Eliziário, the 9-10 Aaron “The Alaskan Bull Worm” Phillips, the 7-5 Aireon Tavarres, and my personal favorite, Marcus Hardaway, an 0-2 fighter whose last fight was against the man with the best name in the entire sport, Here Dudes? And you’re putting him against Levan Chokheli, who, himself, is known almost solely for losing to Goiti Yamauchi and Lorenz Larkin in Bellator?

You know what probably would have been a better idea? HIRING GOITI YAMAUCHI OR LORENZ LARKIN. You cut Lorenz Larkin a decade ago on a two-fight winning streak over Jorge Masvidal and Neil Magny! You could still get him! It isn’t too late!

Except, y’know, for how late it is. LEVAN CHOKHELI BY JESUS CHRIST, WHATEVER, I GUESS TKO, FUCK.

FEATHERWEIGHT: Shane Collins (7-0) vs Otari Tanzilovi (10-1)

No biting cynicism on this one, I’m looking forward to it. Shane Collins may still be a bit lacking in professional experience, but he had a long run as a successful amateur, he’s done well for himself down in Urijah Faber’s promotion, and he’s already pretty solid at wrestling, stringing together combinations and breaking livers, which puts him a step ahead of the rest of his peers. Otari Tanzilovi’s a Georgian striker who spins possibly more than he should and craves nothing more than the feeling of ribs breaking under his feet to the point of overcommitting, but he’s taken out a couple good fighters and he was a coinflip away from beating Josias Musasa on the Contender Series in 2024, so he almost made it to the big show already.

Of course, Musasa has proceeded to go 0-2, and Tanzilovi is being brought in as an underdog prospect, which is indicative that the house knows who it’s going for, here. SHANE COLLINS BY DECISION.

Why has it taken three years to track the recent happenings of this indomitable force? Well, simply put we were threatened by VACANT’s lawyers (many of whom also seem to work for TKO) and we’ve been dealing with a defamation case. Apparently you cannot refer to a being from the depths of hell as a “SATAN”. Who knew?

Thankfully the court has tossed out the case on the grounds that being a demonic entity and being called “SATAN” do not constitute defamation.

The Third Age

At the end of Part 2, VACANT had reclaimed his grasp on the UFC Light Heavyweight championship following the sudden injury suffered by then newly crowned $10k show / $10k win bonus champion Jamahal Hill. Many speculated that the injury was caused Hill’s decision to play a charity basketball game. However, we the seekers of truth at Punch Sport Pagoda know that the ever cunning VACANT tricked Hill into playing that game and placed a small nearly invisible pebble in Hill’s shoe causing him to tumble and ruin his legacy as a UFC champion.

Back in his proud role as the UFC LHW champion, VACANT enjoyed their time at the top. For months they sat, basking in the glory of holding the LHW title for the eighth time. Yes, you read that correctly, eighth time. VACANT is, by all accounts, the most obsessed with the UFC LHW division, and can one blame them? Their minion Jon Jones served them well.

But like all good things, this eventually had to come to an end when a sudden arrow found its mark striking VACANT in his black heart, felling the demon. The archer was a man who emerged from the Brazilian jungle. The man was Alex Pereira, who had recently moved up from middleweight helping the feeble and weak LHW division. Something that actually brought some positivity as he was the first man in four years to have more than one title defense, as well as being the first person not named Jon Jones to defend the title more than once in 18 years. VACANT, however, was not pleased.

After being shunned away by Pereira, VACANT turned its gaze back to the Featherweight division where they had once convinced the Irishman more famous for being on cocaine and abusing women than being a prominent fighter to take up boxing. This time, however, they found a new rube a Georgian-Spaniard who had steadily rose to the top killing and maiming fan favorites. With the exception of a neo-Nazi, nobody liked Bryce Mitchell so that win was kinda cool.

Ilia Topuria’s reign as the Featherweight champion brought new and interesting dynamics. As challenger they stopped Alexander Volkanovski, someone who was very difficult to put away once upon a time. Following that up they were the first person to ever knockout former champion Max Holloway, again something that was unheard of at the time. However, this time as a champion in the division bored Topuria and this is where VACANT struck. Promising greatness and convincing Topuria that Featherweight was boring and the pastures were greener elsewhere, the reigning champion abruptly ceded their championship to VACANT in order to pursue glory in the Lightweight division.

This, however, was a ploy VACANT had been working up. For at the same time they were talking with Topuria, VACANT had traveled to the fabled land of Dagestan to convene with Islam Makhachev. The Russian, having ruled over the Lightweight division for two years beating up a Featherweight twice, an old man once, and a guy nobody remembers being exciting or highly touted, had decided they no longer wished to keep cutting weight.

VACANT, ever the trickster, used the same promises they provided to Topuria. They praised Makhachev for his wrestling, something Dana White detested, and told them riches and gold could become a legend akin to Georges St-Pierre if he just moved up to Welterweight. After all, as VACANT claimed, the Lightweight belt was not nearly as prestigious as the Welterweight title, even considering being tainted by the likes of Colby Covington. Makhachev, ever the strategist, saw this as a reasonable deal and provided VACANT the UFC Lightweight championship. And once again, VACANT was a two division champion.

A New Opportunity

After several weeks, VACANT’s promise to Topuria was fulfilled as Topuria once again beheaded another beloved fan favorite in Charles “Chuckie Olives” Oliveira in April of 2025, becoming the new Lightweight champion. A short while later Islam made good on his promise to claim the Welterweight title.

One may think this is where VACANT would recede and build up strength for some time before appearing once again.

However, just two months later VACANT’s trickery once again played out when Zhang Weili would suddenly give up her prized Women’s Straweeight title to VACANT. This was the first time VACANT had ventured into the Strawweight division, the competition there had been consistently strong and defended well against his schemes. However, Zhang had (like Topuria and Makhachev) grown weary of being on top and like her fellow champions desired more power, something they believed they could gain in the Women’s Flyweight division. So she did just that, giving up the title to VACANT unaware that this came at a cost.

The cost, she would go on to learn, was that Velentina Shevchenko would bully her for 25 minutes that October. Followed by Mackenzie Dern somehow becoming the new Strawweight champion. VACANT’s trickery knows no bounds.

At this stage VACANT had wheeled and dealed with many hopeful champions. This, again, was all part of their plan. Just a few months later in February of 2026, Alex Pereira once again the UFC LHW champion made a baffling choice.

Seemingly tainted by VACANT through the LHW belt, Pereira made the sudden announcement he would be moving up to Heavyweight in a bid to become the first and only three division champion in UFC history. Pereira’s plan was to partake in a strange pagan ritual called “Freedom 250” where the husk of an obese and comatose old man was wheeled out and praised by equally brain dead sycophants, all under the guise to celebrate a nation’s founding that actually is celebrated a month later.

VACANT was pleased. This gave them an unprecedented ninth, yes ninth, claim as the UFC LHW champion.

I would like to now take this time to reiterate that LHW is, and always has been, a horrendously cursed division.

For months VACANT’s grip on the LHW title was strong. They kept the belt in their grasp while the UFC frantically tried to figure out who exactly they could convince to stand up and take the title back from the demon and on April 11, 2026 we had our answer. Carlos Ulberg was that man, who despite having no functioning knee beheaded former UFC LHW Champion, and a man who VACANT had once defeated, Jiri Prochazka.

There truly is no God.

And it is here where I, a man who spent time not really sure what the point of any of this was all about, leave you. Not for the next time but for forever.

I’ll be honest, my interest in mixed martial arts died three years ago thanks to the enshittification of the sport by the coward Dana White and his crew of boring, steroid abusing sycophants and their lust for greed. The sport stopped being fun a long time ago, which has made it harder to poke fun at because the soul has been sucked out of it.

Maybe Carl or Jess will provide the next edition, or we will just all agree the sport died here on this day.

Fin (?)

You’ve probably read Jess’ piece, which is good. I don’t intend to do a fight by fight analysis.

You probably have already read Carl’s piece, which is also good. I don’t intend to do a breakdown of how we got here (at least all too much).

I am just going to rant and try to get across the point that you should just boycott the ever living shit out of the UFC.

But first, I have a real quick question for you.

Remember when Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem as a silent form of protesting against police violence specifically aimed at black youths in the US?

Remember how he was told to just shut up and actually he’s being very anti-American by doing that?

Remember how he was, through no fault of his own athletic performance, forced out of the NFL for such a “politically divisive” act?

Remember when a Christian nationalist conspiracy theorist host on Fox News told other non-white athletes to just shut up and play sports because they dared to speak up on political and social issues?

Remember the number of times we were told to “keep politics out of sports” by people who actively endorsed and showcased politicians they favored?

Yeah anyway forget about that, because as was the case at the time, they do not actually believe any of it.

Which is now how we have UFC at the White House.

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

To celebrate the 250th anniversary of America’s breaking off from the British Empire to form its own equally destructive and harmful empire, the world is going to be subjected to a UFC event that US tax money is paying for to serve as a political prop for the current administration.

The same UFC and administration who spent every opportunity they got whining about how sports shousld be free from politics now really want us to watch a sporting event designed to pretend it is to celebrate a nation’s founding, but in practice serves as yet another edition of sportswashing for a politician.

Which, you know, is an entirely political act.

When not busy shooting Americans in the street, supporting and enabling multiple genocides concurrently, and randomly starting a war because their genocidal buddy wanted to, the current government administration and the UFC have worked for the past year to put on the amazingly mundane event titled UFC Freedom 250.

This is a company worth several billion dollars by the way.

Billions of dollars. With a “B”.

And all they could dribble out was “UFC Freedom 250.”

Scott Coker could do better.

As mentioned by Jessica, this isn’t even taking place anywhere close to the actual nation’s founding day.

Because that is how you celebrate America, by not caring about the actual date your nation was founded on.

“But, why?”, you may ask.

To which I respond: “Have you not paid attention?”

This has been planned to coincide with the current administration’s fixation on celebrating America and somehow tying a convicted rapist of a President, to the idea of “America” in the minds of everyone. In such a naked and blatant way that even an idiot like Bryce Mitchell would recognize. Trump tried to cash in on the NBA finals earlier this week and was, hilariously, boo’d so badly the response by his sycophantic dweebs was to recreate that Simpson’s scene.

Look, this whole spectacle is just another example of American-exceptionalism and arrogance.

While people are starving from SNAP benefits being cut, medical insurance being stripped away, the aforementioned outright murder of non-violent protestors by federal agents, rapists overseeing detainees in ICE facilities, and a newly created “Fuck You” war that has caused energy prices to shoot up around the world with no end in sight, American tax dollars are going towards hosting an invite only UFC event for the current administration and their friends.

Oh and for some added insult to injury, they’re offering a $1.5 million “partner investor” ticket for the event. Which, again, is being ran on tax payer money and on tax payer property. Remember, The White House belongs to the people and not these schmucks.

So what does this stupidly overpriced “investment” get you? Well you get to attend the UFC Freedom 250 reception party, which seems to imply there’s some degree of pay to play access with high access people within or adjacent to the current administration. So…probably a degree of corruption there.

Oh you also get access to reserved seating at the UFC Freedom 250 press conference. Because I guess watching people call each other various insults for an hour is worth that price of admission. I went to one of those for free for Diaz vs Henderson.

You also get access to the ceremonial weigh-ins, but its for the general admission section so again, lmao at this not being a blatant form of bribery.

Finally, you also get access to floor tickets at UFC 329 which is a month later and in Las Vegas. Oh also, ironically, UFC 329 is closer to July 4th than UFC Freedom 250 is. Which sort of tells you how stupid this whole event is.

$1.5 million dollars for all of…that.

Oh and just a reminder, based on the UFC’s antics throughout their history, that the money gained from these exclusive ticket sales will most assuredly not be going towards the fighter’s pockets at all.

Sure, they’ll talk about how they’re losing money. But they also don’t include any mention of this shit show being on a paid streaming service that they got a $7.7 billion dollar deal out of to put on half assed shows at the Meta Apex. No no, $30 million is all they want you to focus on.

Now, none of this is out of the blue. Dana White, and by extension the UFC, has long been an avenue to openly promote, support, and praise extremist right wing politicians organizing this. White himself spoke at the 2016 and 2020 Republican National Conventions despite all that whining about politics getting into sports.

The UFC put together a “we love Donald Trump so much, and actually he is why UFC exists” propaganda video for UFC Fight Pass during his first administration. Which then was taken down after the January 6th domestic terror attack on the Capitol when they were authorizing the 2020 election results, which their hero lost. It’s OK, they put it back up pretending that the domestic terrorism committed at Trump’s behest never happened.

However as the winds of pissed off people blow in their direction and as scrutiny of the White House card intensifies, the UFC’s figurehead is insisting that divergent political views shouldn’t drive fans away from the sport. The thing he actively did for the past decade.

He also doesn’t care if we watch or not so fuck him and fuck this attempt at trying to appease angry fans.

Let’s Just Boycott This Shit

I’ve wasted enough of your time so let’s just say it. Let’s boycott this stupid event. Seriously.

Go watch something else, literally anything else. Here, want a video game recommendation that’s going to be more worthwhile? Go play WrestleQuest. It’s a fantastic game and actually showcases something called “personality and charm.”

Don’t like that? OK well I’m playing Octopath Traveler II and it’s amazing, so you could just get that and play it all weekend.

In fact, let’s just all agree to boycott the UFC as a whole. Especially who needs a break from the psychic damage he inflicts himself with each week.

Go watch RIZIN or PFL. There aren’t many MMA organizations that are good, because let’s be honest no company is ever capable of being good. However, I can only name one that actively promotes a convicted rapist whose authoritarianism has led to a pointless war that kicked off by bombing a school full of children, and then shit talked the Pope for saying that war is bad.

The politicians organizing it don’t care about the fans. They actively call anyone who they don’t like subhuman and fantasize about their deaths on the regular.

The UFC doesn’t care about its ethical responsibility as a business, let alone their own individual morals. They actively involved themselves and their fighters, both domestic and international, with Ramzan Kadyrov, a literal war criminal who is sanctioned by the US Government.

The UFC doesn’t care about the fans either. They actively platform people who go on bigoted rants on their broadcast and just shrug and say “maybe if you pay us you can see him get KO’d once.”

The UFC doesn’t care about their fighters. They actively try not to pay them a decent wage while pocketing all the money for themselves.

The UFC doesn’t even care about putting effort into making their creative content with their shift to using “AI” made “music”, poster designs, and commercials. Telling people who don’t like it to “just shut the fuck up” when they point out how shitty it looks and sounds.

Simply put, the UFC do not care about how terrible their product has become because they no longer need to sell you on watching the event. As Carl has painstakingly noted each month for several years now, the UFC’s business model is now based around getting a bag for X number events per year and as long as they meet that lone requirement they make their money. The incentive to put on a show you feel was worth your time and money is gone. Welcome to the Dana White Slop League era of sports.

So, I repeat my “fuck you” earlier, and I think you should also join me in saying that.

Stop putting up with the UFC’s shit.

SUNDAY, JUNE 14 FROM THE WHITE HOUSE
MAIN CARD 5 PM PDT / 8 PM EDT

I’ve been thinking about this for months and I’m still not entirely sure what I want to say. Rather: I know what I want to say, but it’s a bit of everything and I don’t know where to start.

At least, I didn’t until today, which, as of this writing, is Monday the 8th. Ariel Helwani, the Only MMA Journalist That Matters, decided to chime in on the White House card with his enlightened point of view:

After my eyes stopped spontaneously spewing blood in three-foot arcs I went back to my giant folder of .txt files and deleted my notes on the spot, because I have never felt such a need for the honesty inherent to stream of consciousness.

So, if you are here for a breakdown of the fights as per usual: My apologies, we are not doing that this week, but Jess has you covered in her usually perfect style. If you are here for purely angry ranting, we’re not doing that here, either, but Eric’s gonna have you covered tomorrow.

If you are here to try to make sense of your persistent bewilderment about why, exactly, any of us are still here: You have come to the right place.

PART ONE: EVERYTHING IS BAD

I’m just so tired, man.

This card doesn’t fucking matter, so let’s just dispense with the idea that it does. We’ll just get it out of the way; it won’t take long. You’ve got a Lightweight title fight where the top contender is a guy who already lost to both of the actual top contenders but it’s fine because he beat Paddy Pimblett, a Heavyweight title fight where one guy has failed to win the title on three separate occasions and the other has never fought at the weight class and is on a winning streak of One, Sean O’Malley against The Only Remaining Top Contender They’re Confident He Can Beat, multiple-time retiree Derrick Lewis vs Josh Hokit, the only man too insufferable for the current state of things who also just got hit 214 times two months ago, a damaged Lightweight contender in Mauricio Ruffy getting some attempted rehab against Michael Chandler, who is inexplicably still ranked despite his only win in the last five and a half years coming against Tony Ferguson, a damaged Middleweight contender in Bo Nickal against Kyle Daukaus in the most “he plays golf with Trump and is vaguely bigoted so we need to find a space for him” matchup possible, and Diego Lopes, who lost two title fights in ten months, against Steve Garcia.

That’s it. That’s what this whole giant democracy-destroying fuckfest is giving you. Two bullshit title matches that exist solely for marketing reasons and a bunch of managerially-favored prospects in intentionally lopsided contests and then there’s one fight that’s Actually Neat so it’s the one getting the least attention or care. For the Biggest UFC Event Ever, it is bloodless and cynical.

Which makes it the perfect encapsulation of this moment in the sport.

I started writing these in January of 2022. For almost five years, we have been watching mixed martial arts die. The UFC has become a parody of itself, a ramshackle organization that has spent those years casting off its veneer of respectability or legitimacy in favor of turning into a gaping tumorous mass formed from sheer corporate id. There’s no semblance of meritocracy anymore. The head of the company beats his chest at public press conferences about sidelining #1-ranked competitors out of personal discontent. Veterans, successful prospects and even undefeated top contenders get fired if management dislikes them. Titlists are crowned by fiat. The last two Heavyweight champions of the world left the company in mid-reign, and with the growing acrimony between the UFC and Tom Aspinall, we appear to be heading for a hat trick.

But it’s not just them. The rest of the sport has been choked out in parallel. The American B-leagues of MMA are a smoldering crater. Bellator, the second-best we could do, is dead. The Professional Fighters League, the slouching trash compactor that consumed it, is such a mess that in 2026, the year they realized their huge, ambitious plans of jettisoning their tournament format and embracing life as a Real Organization with standing champions and a roster, they’ve only managed seven events in the first half of the year, and that’s with such big headline fights as Jay-Jay Wilson vs Darragh Kelly and Logan Storley vs Florim Zendeli. But don’t worry! More than a full month after their last card they’re coming back in style, featuring no less than Salamat “No Wikipedia Page Necessary” Isbulaev in their main event. Invicta FC, the only major women’s MMA promotion in stateside history, has been MIA for the last thirteen months while the company that owns it focuses on getting deeper into bed with the WWE, and, thus, TKO and the UFC.

And the international scene isn’t doing all that great! When I started writing these ONE Championship was genuine international competition with a major cable broadcast deal and now it barely promotes the sport. Rizin is fun as hell and doing their best to keep the flame alive for Japanese MMA, but the business has had to draw down to stay healthy, and over the same timeframe that turned ONE into a dead husk, Rizin has gone from thirteen shows a year to eight. The UK has been trimmed down to feeder leagues. Brazil has been fragmented to hell. Absolute Championship Akhmat is chugging along in Russia, but its only big move in years has been signing Jailton goddamn Almeida.

So when I see Ariel Helwani, the canonical voice of mixed martial arts journalism, extol the virtues of ignoring the political ramifications of the UFC holding an event at the White House in favor of celebrating just how far the sport has come, my second reaction was to say, motherfucker, that was ten years ago. The sport has come so far back down over the last decade that we’re swimming in the same primordial muck it started in, back when fans were stabbing Renzo Gracie through the cage and Gerard Gordeau was gouging out Yuki Nakai’s eye. Back when the presence of rapists and Nazis was not only accepted but expected. Celebrating the success of the sport in the present is like throwing a birthday party for a corpse.

But, again: That was my second reaction.

My first was to say, dude, you know perfectly well why you don’t feel the need to view this as a political event.

PART TWO: NOTHING IS REAL

I have not forgotten the years of keep-politics-out-of-sports discourse that came up every time someone dared to imply that anything happening in mixed martial arts had any significance outside of people punching each other for money. I have not forgotten the attempt to talk down Dana White’s early flirtations with promoting Trump or his first speech at the Republican National Convention that he ludicrously described as an apolitical act of friendly support. I have not forgotten the way the sport and pundits treated Fallon Fox as MMA’s only visible transgender competitor, nor the way that we have somehow fallen so far backwards that once upon a time the UFC disciplined Matt Mitrione for being transphobic and now Sean Strickland posts AI-generated bigotry violence porn of himself beating up Dylan Mulvaney to peals of laughter from the worst people on the internet.

I have not forgotten Dana White’s decade-and-a-half-old proto-cancel-culture woe-is-me video blogs about how he was silenced for throwing around the calibre of slurs I’m not going to type here, or repeatedly calling reporter Loretta Hunt a “dumb fucking bitch,” or his simpering “I’m sorry I offended the gay and lesbian community” non-apology afterward that apparently burned his ass so badly that he held onto it for more than a decade before gleefully joining the hell-march of 2020s CEOs celebrating that culture is back where it’s supposed to be because now they can shit on people with the forbidden words again without having to pretend they care, or ever cared, about anything past whatever sparked a couple picograms of dopamine in their wealth-rotted brains.

I have not forgotten the way fighter conduct used to matter so deeply to the UFC that Ultimate Fighter finalists would get made public examples of for being drunk and disorderly, and now the UFC roster proudly boasts litanies of bigots, domestic abusers and sex criminals, and Conor McGregor, a man who is on camera assaulting numerous people, a man who nearly destroyed a UFC pay-per-view by hurling a loading dolly through a bus window, a man who was found liable for the rape of Nikita Hand by multiple juries, is having the red carpet rolled out for his grand return against one of the sport’s biggest stars.

If that seems like a strange aside after two paragraphs of sociopolitics: It shouldn’t. They’re the same goddamn thing. Every abdication of responsibility, every cut contender, every piece of outrage marketing, every cost-cutting Apex event, every Contender Series fighter shoved sidelong into the rankings, every sordid fighter-abusing negotiation tactic, every side-eyed poke by a commentator at Tom Aspinall’s cowardice for wanting his eyes to work more than he wants to defend the UFC Heavyweight Title for 1/10th of what he’s worth, every Elon Musk ringside reaction camera angle they’ve ever shot, every octagon winner who’s ever had extra minutes tacked onto their post-fight interview because they chose to spend them singing the praises of special guest Donald Trump as he sat perpetually half-aware of his surroundings. The continuum of who-gives-a-shit that brought you the TKO merger and the cessation of so much as the appearance of sport is the continuum that brought you Perennial Title Contender Colby Covington and It’s Okay Because He Didn’t Actually Successfully Rape Anyone Gable Steveson is the continuum that tells you a UFC event held on a fucking Sunday on Donald Trump’s birthday on the lawn of the fucking White House can be in any way construed as an apolitical event.

Being unable to watch the UFC without being a part of that continuum is the reason most of the people I know who used to passionately love mixed martial arts can’t stand it anymore.

A little over a year ago, UFC veteran Bryce Mitchell started a podcast and failed to get more than one episode in before immediately going off on a rant about the way Adolf Hitler was a misunderstood hero who loved his country and simply wanted to save Germany from the perfidious Jews who were trying to turn all of its men gay. (Also, the Holocaust was a lie indoctrinated into us by the corrupt system of public education.) In response, the UFC pulled Bryce from a grappling match they’d agreed to let him do at Karate Combat and instead speed-booked him onto a pay-per-view against Jean Silva, because if anyone was going to capitalize on his controversy, it’d be them.

At the time, in the end, I said this.

By and large, I do not care what entertainment you like nearly as much as I care about what you do. Some of the best political demonstrators I know are fans of the WWE. One of the most tireless advocates for trans rights I’ve had the pleasure of knowing is a Harry Potter fan. Even in the right-wing cesspit of the mixed martial arts fandom I’ve made friends with a number of queer activists, leftists, and simply good people.

What you do and what you are matters more than what you watch. If something sparks joy in a cold world, I think that’s worth keeping.

But I cannot help understanding why anyone outside of the WWE, or MMA, or the NFL, or the World Cup, would be horrified by the idea that people still enjoy them.

And as someone who dreamed of mixed martial arts before they knew it existed, as someone who has passionately loved it for most of their life, I cannot help wondering how many pieces of that joy will be tarnished by what it has become, or how permanent some of those stains will ultimately be.

I cannot help thinking about how incredible it is that here, at the nadir of this sport, we’re adjacent to the nadir of another one from that quote. Even as we prepare to deal with the complete corruption of mixed martial arts into an engine for propaganda, the World Cup is about to start, and the world’s single biggest sporting event has been thoroughly pissed on by Trumpism before it could even begin. FIFA, whose primary identifying traits are “corrupt” and “pathetic,” somehow managed to debase itself even further by inventing its own equivalent to the Nobel Peace Prize just to kiss up to the emperor. After an entire year of ICE threatening to hound tourists, players and their families, hotels are reporting disastrous booking figures, fans are less motivated to watch the only sport that matters than I have ever seen them, and in the most passive-aggressive bit of pants-pissing dominance possible, America won’t actually let the Iranian team stay in the country. They get to sleep in Mexico, fly into America every time they have a game, and fly right the fuck back out when it’s done. And even that’s a step above referee Omar Artan, who was turned away at Miami and forced to leave the country because he happens to be from Somalia and the government currently requires you to believe that all Somalians are thugs and thieves if you want to have a job.

And there, once again, is that continuum. The UFC isn’t the end-all and be-all, it’s just our beat. One more arm of the same media octopus that strangled the Washington Post or hired Bari Weiss to hollow out CBS News; that turned Facebook into a platform that enables genocide and twisted Twitter to the ego of a man who stokes hatred against immigrants, trans people, and anyone else whose misery could earn him a nickel.

The continuum of who-gives-a-shit ruins lives. It erodes institutions. It strangles decency and lets you shrug away suffering and death and vote for Trump or Brexit because, hell, it sounds funny, and really, who gives a shit about anything else?

It entrenches itself in things you love and demands that you accept it. It’s not crazy! We’re not doing anything wild, here. It’s just a little speech at the RNC. It’s just a walkout for Donald Trump. It’s just the tacit endorsement of bigotry. It’s just the open endorsement of bigotry. It’s just the active advertising of bigotry as a desirable and marketable trait. It’s just the insistence that if you don’t love bigotry, you’re the one who’s wrong. After all, it’s been this way for years. It’s been this way forever. Anyone who tells you it wasn’t always this way is wrong.

And even if it’s not: So what?

Why can’t you just enjoy mixed martial arts as a celebration of the sport and its fighters?

PART THREE: WHAT YOU GIVE AWAY

I mean, you can. No one’s stopping you.

The problem with Ariel’s viewpoint is not that it is invalid. The problem is that Ariel Helwani is the one saying it. As the foremost figure in mixed martial arts journalism, you should have more to say about the UFC putting on a White House propaganda show. One would hope that after almost a quarter-century of covering combat sports as its most cherished little media guy, and after repeatedly selling off your credibility to get paid gigs from the same companies you’re supposedly objectively reporting on, you’d have something, anything to say about this outside of the most obvious ‘oh golly gee why can’t we just enjoy the sport’ point of view that most definitely has nothing to do with the event’s political values conveniently aligning with your own.

But that’s Ariel. That’s not the average person who remembers Anderson Silva or Brock Lesnar and wonders aloud once every five years if Ultimate Fighting still exists. That’s not you.

Just like it’s not me.

I started watching mixed martial arts because I liked professional wrestling and heard it was like that, but real. I liked Bruce Lee and Joe Frazier and the Surf Ninjas, but the idea that there was a thick line separating “fighting” and “grappling” seemed counterintuitive in ways I had neither the knowledge or experience to explain. My first full MMA event was a Blockbuster VHS rental of UFC 6; my first fight was Tank Abbott destroying John Matua in seconds before mocking his seizing body. Oleg Taktarov disassembling Tank and choking him out in the finals of the night’s tournament taught me about the missing pieces of technique I had been dreaming of.

I loved MMA before I knew it existed. I wound up loving the community I found from it, too, but that community wasn’t the Ed Hardy-wearing Just Bleed crowd the sport was trying to cultivate, it was the outsiders on its fringe. People who, as members of societal out-groups, found a sympathetic experience in following a societally-shunned sport that was trying as hard as it could to be accepted. One of the closest, dearest friends of my entire life is a non-binary jiu-jitsu black belt who used to love talking about martial arts, mixed and otherwise. They’re married to a trans woman now. The sport went from making them feel accepted and interested to openly propagandizing for their destruction.

Around the same time the UFC took off, I got sucked into the world of working for tech companies, which I eventually narrowly escaped. Someday, when there aren’t much more important things going on, we may tell that story in full. But I never stop thinking about the years I spent stuck in rooms with wealthy executives, a truly disconcerting number of whom are now billionaires, listening to them talk openly about minimizing the entirety of the world down to profit. People, minorities, concepts, societies. Rich fucks who have since positioned themselves as moral arbiters for America, if not the world, that used to openly discuss the joy they took in watching other people try to care about things like media consumption and ethical standards.

I have not forgotten the glee they took in watching people fight each other over how best to live ethically in the world they were buying out from under them.

Over the past couple of weeks, the UFC has been getting an unusual amount of attention. This was, of course, the deal. Trump, who is in reality whiny and pathetic, gets his big birthday fight party that cements him as The Most Masculine President for his base; the UFC, which is in reality ice-cold and ignored by the public, gets an unprecedented and unignorable level of spectacle that makes people perceive them as huge again. For the first time in years I’ve found myself talking to regular people about the sport--not for the sport itself, but for the reporting they read on noble heroes like Sean Strickland or Bryce Mitchell who’ve taken ethical stands against the White House card thanks to America’s alliance with Israel or the Trump cabal’s support for pedophiles.

Attempting to say ‘hey, as someone who still watches the UFC, please do not ally yourself with temporarily convenient bigots who hate everything you actually care about’ to people, as it turns out, almost universally ends in the same question:

“Why should I listen to someone who still watches the UFC?”

And: It’s a fair question. When I see the old guard of MMA journalism--the actual journalists--talk about their relationship to the sport these days, it’s almost always somewhere between heartbroken and antagonistic, and even that’s reflective of a fall-off that started in a basement. MMA has never been a place of honor. Whether it was UFC broadcasts on Spike TV sandwiched between commercials of slow-motion boobs and things exploding or watching pirated Pride broadcasts live from Japan at 4 in the morning and absorbing racist stereotypes you didn’t grow up with enough to parse automatically, or seeing Oplot Challenge go from a small little livestreamed fight club in Ukraine to a foothold for Russian ultranationalists to try to take over a country, this sport has been immoral and terrible far, far more often than it’s been a force for good.

But that’s not what MMA, by its nature, is. That’s what MMA is made to be by the terrible people who run it. MMA, even the UFC, can just as easily be a place of inclusion as exclusion. We know that, definitively, because that’s what Dana and the Fertitta brothers spent years trying to make it, right up to the point that it became more profitable to change their minds and turn the sport into something backed by so much right-wing money that they don’t have to care if they drive fans away in droves. They get their $7.7 billion streaming deal no matter what.

Eventually, that, too, will change. All of this, the bravado, the spectacle, the sheer audacity of putting on a UFC event at the fucking White House--that is, once again, that continuum. The one that demands you accept that it is an immortal, unstoppable force of nature. The one that desperately wants you think of it as the new normal, forever, rather than a handful of CEOs and apartheid billionaires celebrating a decrepit rapist’s 80th birthday while desperately hoping their stranglehold on society outlives him.

The one that wants consuming its media to be synonymous with supporting it, while it laughs in boardrooms and smoking lounges about getting the people it hurts to hurt each other.

As I said above: I don’t care what you watch, I care what you do, but I understand why anyone else would. It is particularly impossible to ignore that at this moment in time, when an entire sport swirls its way into a party at the bottom of the sewage tank that is America’s present political climate. But what you do isn’t just what you are doing with your life, it is self-awareness about what you are consuming and why, and that includes the awareness of what you are giving away every time you consume it. In a perfect world, it should just be time and attention. But when you expunge that self-awareness, on a long enough timeframe, you run the risk of becoming the kind of person that looks at an event named “UFC Freedom 250” on the White House lawn on Donald Trump’s birthday and says “I am perfectly fine seeing this as an apolitical event devoid of meaning.”

One day, as hard as it is to presently imagine, the sport, and the world, will not be this. One day we will have to again wrestle with the reality of things mattering, and one day the engines of bigotry will have cooled down to prepare for their next attempt to find a way to rebrand white nationalism, and one day the UFC will be run by an entirely new set of clueless corporate suits who are just as mystified by whatever the hell a Josh Hokit was as we are today. The phrase “hey, remember that one really stupid fucking time they held a UFC event at the White House?” will be a gag. And if you watched it, maybe you’ll have a funny anecdote about it. Maybe it will have been a timeless clusterfuck. Maybe you shared it with other friends who laughed at how craven and awful it was.

Or maybe you’ll be the guy who tried to convince everyone it was fine to view it as just another day in the sport.

I’m skipping this one. It costs too much for me. If you watch it, go with god, but please do not let them rifle through your heart while you’re there.

Alex Pereira faces Ciryl Gane for the interim disputed UFC heavyweight title in the co-main event of UFC America Football Freedom Apple Pie Monster Truck 250 With Bacon in June. You know, the month everyone is traditionally extremely patriotic in America.

They either think we’re too stupid to notice, or too complacent to care, or too weak for it to matter.

Sure, it’s a celebration of America’s 250th birthday. Except it’s not on July 4th, which actually happens to fall on a Saturday, the traditional day for UFC events. This is on Sunday, a month early, June 14th. Oh, which happens to be Trump’s actual birthday. Yay America.

The best part is the event is so accessible! Tickets are available as part of a Unique Investment Opportunity (bribe), a steal at just $1.5 million. Or, if you are A Troop, who meets certain physical requirements (Height, weight, overt Aryan-ness) and able to pay your own transportation, accommodation, and meals, you could attend for free!

If you can’t quite meet those exacting standards, good news! There’s an off-site watch location available that is also outside. All the fun of the DC summer swamp heat, humidity, and bugs, plus the added bonus of straining your neck to look up at a big screen for five hours.

And a moderate chance of severe thunderstorms!

Sorry, let me try that one more time:

All hail God Emperor Trump. May his reign crush ten thousand years of progress. May his bootheel grind out the last flickering sparks of dignity.

LET THE BODIES HIT THE FLOOR.

Heavyweight Title - Alex Pereira vs Ciryl Gane

This fight is happening because Tom Aspinall has been rendered a sightless husk following the cruel ministrations of Gane’s outstretched and grasping fingers. Tom is on the shelf indefinitely as he struggles to recognize light and shadows. Meanwhile, various fighters and random MMA talking heads have been calling Tom a massive pussy for months on end for not simply risking his vision, money, career, livelihood, and potentially future quality of life by getting back into the cage while still extremely blind.

Gane, riding a two fight win streak not counting his vicious claw attack, is slotted back into title contention because why the hell not. If this feels all too familiar, it’s because Gane has had four heavyweight title fights and failed to come away with gold the last three times. He took a vacant interim belt by beating Derrick Lewis in 2021, and since then, lost to Francis N’Gannou, lost to Jon Jones, and went to a No Contest against Tom Aspinall because nobody let him know that the eyeball is a No Go Zone.

Alex Pereira regained the Light Heavyweight title last year and decided there were no more worlds left to conquer at 205 pounds. Honestly, he’s not wrong! Look at the arid wasteland and see if you can muster up the give a fuck to hit the gym. For Carlos Ulberg and Azamat Murzakanov? No thank you!

All that preamble out of the way, the UFC Heavyweight title is now destined for a stupid outcome. Either the former MIDDLEWEIGHT champ wins it, which is real fucking stupid. Or, the guy who has been turned away multiple times by champs and was last seen executing Pai Mei’s eye plucking technique will win it, which is also pretty stupid.

Thing is, if you contemplate any of it for about four seconds, you come to the realization that it is entirely deserved. It’s probably warranted. For the division, for the organization, for the fans. Long time coming, but by god if those chickens found their way in to roost at last.

Carl has written extensively and I’ve chimed in a few times about the dire state of heavyweights. Please read them, our children eat your precious clicks. Anyway, do those wretched beasts really deserve dignity and respect after the decades of floundering and flailing heavyweight MMA has wrought upon this world? No! Pereira versus Gane is the stupidity the division should aspire to for the rest of time.

Look at the current state of UFC as a whole. Guys still wet from the Howler Head spawning vats stumble into a Contender Series fight at 2-1, knock out another terrified, shrieking homunculus, and get fast-tracked to the top ten before their contract re-ups or their birthing slime dries into a flaky crust. Anybody can randomly get thrust into a main event fight with title implications, or worse, get a title shot based off the amount of racism and domestic violence they do on a given weekend bender. Why should the “premiere” title in combat sports have any merit or legacy attached to it any more? Minowaman’s SUPERHLUK belt has more gravitas than a UFC title at this point.

“It’s just a little racist, it’s still good. It’s just a little homophobic, it’s still good. It’s just a little bigoted, it’s still good. It’s just a little fascist, it’s still good. It’s gone.”

And now the mirror turns inwards. MMA fans have let the garbage pile and fester for years. Shrug our shoulders and close our eyes to everything outside the cage that we don’t like. “I just care about the fights, I don’t care what they do when they aren’t fighting” is a common refrain. Well, how do you like it now? Nobody has defense or cage craft, they just plod forward, looking for one shot knockouts. Grappling has become so vilified by the fans and promotions that it’s spilling over into judging and refereeing.

MMA fans, and I staunchly include myself in with that miserable lot, are pathetic. Just sit back and let the fascism creep into the sport. “It’s just a few people with some horrendous opinions, it’s not like it’s going to take over the upper echelons and turn fighters into horrible bigots. Oh, wait.”

Just like Brian Ebersole’s hairrow, my dander is up, buddy!

Think about it like this, if, at any point, in the previous 30 years of UFC history, had the sitting President of the United States been paraded out, at least a dozen people would have hurled beer cups at him, and he’d be lucky if the liquid sloshing around was just beer. But now Dana is best pals with the guy who gets him all the good deals and helps squash labor rights, so let’s fucking honor that turd.

Also, let’s not forget that while Trump Taj Mahal did host UFCs 30 and 31, Trump also was heavily involved in Affliction MMA, which ran directly counter to UFC. Dana White claims that UFC and Trump have been intertwined best pals since 2001, but Affliction was enough competition that UFC counterprogrammed an event with free Anderson Silva. Do you realize how wild that is? One of the coolest knockout artists at the time, who’s a reigning champ, going up in weight against a vaguely hard-hitting jabroni, for free? Unheard of at the time! Hell, its unheard of now, and that’s only because Alex Pereira vacated the light heavyweight belt before this fight.

Lightweight Title - Ilia Topuria vs Justin Gaethje

Here’s the other bullshit: the actual main event is pretty good!

Ilia Topuria vs Justin Gaethje for the Lightweight belt isn’t terrible. Should it be Arman Tsaryukan instead? Yeah, probably! Are Gaethje’s last two wins a little underwhelming? Yeah. Am I steadily realizing that Gaethje isn’t such an ideal contender? Yes. Do I need a nap? Of course, always.

Did I have a whole thing about this fight being like having a really good meal, but forced to eat it in a sewage ditch? Yes, but now it’s more of a third-tier Chili’s lunch, eaten in a sewage ditch. Not bad, but you could have gotten a lot better!

Granted, noted shit-stirring lunatic Arman Tsaryukan might have thrown a fireball, Terry Funk-style, at Ilia during the weigh-in face off, so maybe you don’t have him near heads of state. Sucks, but it’s kind of understandable.

Actually, the real reason Justin’s in this spot is two-fold: One, he is the only American fighter of high enough stock to fight for the title, and two, Ali Abdelaziz probably negotiated down to a fight purse of ten bucks.

Evaluating the fight for just the fight itself, it should be exciting. Justin Gaethje might have cleaned up some of his technique and isn’t purely a blind swinging brawler, but he still hits like a bomb and is more willing to trade than the average fighter at his level of fame and record.

Ilia Topuria has had about six minutes total time not blasting dudes into unconsciousness in his UFC career. His only minor speed bump came against Jai Herbert, who is a twelve foot tall lightweight, so that can be excused, especially since Topuria bounced back from getting dropped in the first round and knocked out Herbert’s giraffe body in the second.

Either man has the potential to put the other man to sleep. Topuria’s craftier at landing his shots, and he is willing to grapple outside of extreme danger situations.

All of that being said, Justin Gaethje is the Violence Idiot for a reason. He’s gonna inadvisably tank some shots just for the chance to throw his own hammers. If he connects, and I realize if is doing a lot of heavy lifting, but if he connects, how will Topuria fare against a man whose bones are so dense he sinks in water? Because if I remember one thing from the season of TUF that Gaethje coached, it is him trudging on the bottom of a pool.

Look, I’m not Carl, I’m not great at analyzing film and breaking down technique. I know what both guys do well and have a vague understanding of how they’re gonna try to Do Their Stuff. I would love to dive deep into the tape study and produce an eloquent summary of how Topuria reacts to a low-kick heavy attack, or what Justin will need to avoid as he swarms in.

However! As I frequently shout from the mountains, above all their skill and technique, fighters love to do the god damn dumbest thing possible. Maybe Topuria really wants to show off his grappling this time, so he comes out looking for Imanari rolls and gets booped to death with hammer fists? Stupid as hell, but I’ve seen dumber deviations from established gameplans to the detriment of fighters before!

All of that waffle and nonsense being said, Topuria more than likely by first round KO such that we all ask “why did we even bother with this fight?”

Bantamweight - Sean O’Malley vs Aiemann Zahabi

Then there’s O’Malley vs Zahabi, third from the top. You might ask, why is Sean O’Malley on this card, let alone in such a high profile spot, against a guy over ten spots below him on the rankings?

Sean’s a guy who got a big media push, should have been stopped early in his ascendancy but ran into an opponent too stupid to capitalize on an obvious advantage, got served up favorable match ups, and, lest we ever forget, has a deep friendship with a sex criminal. Other than that, I can’t see any particular reason for O’Malley to have a place of pride on the Big Boy’s Birthday event.

Zahabi was carefully hand selected to hopefully replicate his Ricardo Ramos performance.

Since this is supposed to honor America, which just means the military, let’s have a repeat of Fight for the Troops. A night of shockingly horrific brain trauma, plus a gross leg break. We’re due for one of those. Maybe O’Malley’s little flamingo sticks will get snapped.

Heavyweight - Derrick Lewis vs Josh Hokit

I realize this card, despite claims of being carefully crafted over 9 months, was mostly assembled at random, and somewhat recently at that.

Derrick Lewis vs Josh Hokit, a late addition to the card. Here we have Stupid Heavyweight in all its glory.

If his back feels okay, and he ate a salad sometime in the past six weeks, Derrick Lewis could easily nuke Hokit inside of four minutes, like how he turned Tallison Texeira away.

On the other hand, he might come out stiff and slower than usual, concede a takedown and just flop around until the ground and pound finishes it.

Either way, none of the possible outcomes of this fight hinge on anything Josh Hokit will do beyond physically being present across the cage.

Regardless of who wins, the post-fight interview will probably feature the n-word.

Lightweight - Mauricio Ruffy vs Michael Chandler

Oh boy. Gone are the days where Michael Chandler was seeing us at the top. Gone is the just around the corner fight with Conor McGregor. Now he’s just an angry red cube, screaming into a silent void as everything eclipses him. He doesn’t even get to welcome McGregor back to the cage, that fight goes to Max Holloway in July! Gonna Jib-Jab yourself into another The Purge clip to menacingly request a fight like you did against Brent Primus in Bellator?

Ruffy is pretty good, and he’s actually been fighting very consistently the past few years. He is far more prepared to fight Chandler than Chandler is to fight him.

Maybe now that there’s an opening, Chandler will embrace his true destiny and become El Hijo del Grande Americano Jr.

Middleweight - Bo Nickal vs Kyle Daukus

C’mon meteor.

Skip it. Skip this one. Don’t like it at all.

Featherweight - Diego Lopes vs Steve Garcia

Finally, some good fucking booking. Go time for Mean Machine. Either he’s the big puncher that has put it all together and is going to punch Diego big, or he’s not ready for the bright lights.

Lopes has really only lost to Volkanovski in the last few years, and damn if most of the rest of featherweight also loses to Volk.

In all likelihood, Lopes is going to prove the levality of This Shit and send Garcia packing. I am hoping to be wrong, but Garcia’s best wins are retroactively Melq Costa, who was last seen getting handily turned away by Arnold Allen, and five fight losing streak Calvin Kattar. Solid wins, but decidedly on a lower tier than Lopes.

All the stars are here!

I’m just surprised at some of the fighters left off this event, not even counting the ones who said they had no interest in Oligarch Fest 2026: Now with More Bugs!

Where’s Sedriques Dumas? Surely the Crimes President loves the man with the most crimes in UFC history!

Where’s Valentina Shevchenko? A dominant fighter who is actually a Russian spy? That’s precisely the person who needs unfettered access to the White House!

Where’s Renato Moicano? Surely he would pledge his winnings directly to Trump!

The actual hardcore MAGA fighters all suck shit and Trump wants nothing to do with them any more.

Ok, I think I typed most of my anger out. I’m gonna take a nap for a thousand years.

Wake me up when Iron Turtle has rightfully ascended to godhood and crushes all with his mighty flippers.

SATURDAY, JUNE 6 FROM THE CAREER ASSASSINATION DESTINATION THAT IS THE APEX
PRELIMS 2 PM PDT / 5 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 5 PM / 8 PM

I cannot help feeling like the next two weeks are one interconnected reckoning with the current nature of the UFC, and, thus, MMA. Next week is the White House card, the moral nadir of the sport’s history, and I’m still not entirely sure what I want to say about that one, but it’ll probably be long and unpleasant.

This week? A world champion two fights ago is in the Apex, a top contender is fighting an unranked man, a top prospect is fighting a Contender Series guy, a man who was just in a de facto title eliminator is on the prelims, and a Nazi walks among us.

I miss when this all brought me more joy than exhaustion.

MAIN EVENT:
WELTERWEIGHT: Belal Muhammad (24-5 (1), #5) vs Gabriel Bonfim (19-1, #11)

When this fight got announced back in March it provoked a forum discussion about whether Belal Muhammad being stuck in the Apex after losing two fights in a row was exceptional or not. My argument, at the time, was this:

Here’s the list of everyone (I think!) in the Apex era that lost a title fight, either defending or challenging, and proceeded to also one-sidedly lose their followup fight:

• Sergei Pavlovich

• Jamahal Hill

• Paulo Costa

• Israel Adesanya

• Colby Covington

• Jorge Masvidal

• Kamaru Usman

• Leon Edwards

• Belal Muhammad

• Alexander Volkanovski

• Renato Moicano

• Max Holloway

• Brian Ortega

• Petr Yan

• Henry Cejudo

• Brandon Moreno

• Steve Erceg

• Kai Kara-France

• Mayra Bueno Silva

• Alexa Grasso

• Rose Namajunas

Here’s who, out of that list, got relegated to the Apex in their next fight:

• Belal Muhammad

• Renato Moicano

• Rose Namajunas

Putting “welterweight champion who was one round away from beating Jack Della Maddalena” in an exclusive fuck-you club alongside “woman who had one of the worst championship fights of all time” and “guy who is only here because we needed a replacement on 24 hours’ notice” parses as pretty exceptional to me.

The mile of crap Belal had to wade through just to get his title shot was already the stuff of legend when we discussed it back in 2022, and even then, they moved Heaven and Earth to get Jorge Masvidal, Colby Covington or Khamzat Chimaev into position instead. Despite being their top-ranked contender, despite having not taken a loss in five years, despite knocking out Sean Brady before it was cool, the UFC wanted to keep Belal and his hard-scrabble wrestling away from the title picture until they no longer had any preferable options. When they did finally relent and book his shot at then-champion Leon Edwards, it wasn’t for Belal’s sake, but Leon’s. They went back to Manchester and put on a big ol’ British special with all the top UK stars they could muster. Arnold Allen got a win. Paddy Pimblett got a win. Tom Aspinall avenged his only (technical) UFC loss. After years of strife the UFC had accepted Leon as one of their next British stars and they wanted that main event to cement him as the top Welterweight on the planet.

Belal outstruck him, outwrestled him and dumped him on his head just to make a point, and that was fortunate, because his title reign was more or less doomed after that.

Shavkat Rakhmonov was supposed to get the first crack at Belal, but first Belal was injured, and when he was healthy, it was Shavkat’s turn. Instead, the UFC turned to Contender Series darling Jack Della Maddalena, who had established himself as one of the best boxers in the sport. I thought Jack, with his previous issues against good wrestlers, would get ground to dust by Belal’s endless double-legs. Instead, Belal boxed. He still tried to wrestle, but not as aggressively or constantly as in his past efforts. Maybe it was Jack’s massively improved counter-wrestling forcing Belal out of his gameplan. Maybe it was latent injuries. Maybe it was a desire to be marketable. It was a game effort, and Belal was only one round away from getting the decision, but it’s the single rounds that kill you. A followup bout with fellow darling Ian Machado Garry went even worse, with Belal getting shut out on scorecards for first time since 2019.

He made it to the top, he fell to two of the best Welterweights on the planet, and now he’s in the Apex.

Gabriel Bonfim? Well,

• He got signed off the Contender Series in 2022 and made a lot of noise by being undefeated and winning his first two UFC fights, which were against the 2-2 Mounir Lazzez and the 7-7 Trevin Giles

• He lost his undefeated streak after getting knocked out in two rounds by living enigma Nicolas Dalby, who went on to lose his next two fights

• The UFC embarked on a rehabilitation quest by giving Bonfim Ange Loosa, who had once lost to Lazzez, and Khaos Williams, a solid but inconsistent prospect

• Bonfim’s jump into the rankings came from a fight with former title contender Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson, who was 1 for his last 5 and hadn’t beaten a ranked opponent in almost five years; Thompson proceeded to outland him, nearly knock him out and win 12 out of 14 media scorecards, only to lose what would ultimately be considered the second-worst decision of 2025

• The UFC followed this by booking one of the worst Apex cards of all time, with Bonfim having his first ever main event against the unranked Randy Brown on a one-fight winning streak, whom Bonfim stopped in the second round

This? This is why this sucks.

For all that I complain about it, bringing up talent is difficult. Margins are slim, fighter availability is questionable, turnover is harsh. There are arguments for putting your underheralded prospects up against your established quantities. There are reasons to book Belal vs Bonfim that aren’t inherently awful.

But those reasons are only less awful in a vacuum. In the context of the UFC’s Welterweight matchmaking? Michael Morales and Leon Edwards are unbooked despite having not fought since November. Sean Brady suffered one loss and is back to spinning his wheels in the bottom half of the top ten. Kamaru Usman, lifetime Welterweight, is leaving for the Middleweight division and an instant shot at its #2 contender. Joaquin Buckley has lost two consecutive fights without his #9 ranking changing. Mike Malott got into the top fifteen by beating a retiree. Uroš Medić got into the top fifteen by beating a man who was still #12 despite having one win in the last four years, which was over a man who also only had one win in the last four years. Michael Page is tied for #13 at Welterweight, but they had him fighting at Middleweight for the last two years, and when they finally brought him back to 170 it was to battle Sam Patterson, who was unranked and had never fought anyone remotely close to a ranking.

The talent at the division is incredible. The booking is gross. It is impossible to separate the context of giving Gabriel Bonfim a shot at the top five from the context of demoting Belal Muhammad as fast as is humanly possible, in front of as few people as humanly possible, and seeing it as a positive movement for the weight class gives me hives.

Besides, as I put it during our rankings special:

If Belal Muhammad cannot defeat a man who got knocked out by Nicolas Dalby, I am quitting mixed martial arts and the next time we meet we are going to be ranking competitive snorkeling.

Please don’t fuck it up. BELAL MUHAMMAD BY DECISION.

CO-MAIN EVENT: DON’T DO THEM ANY FAVORS
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Brendan Allen (26-7, #4) vs Edmen Shahbazyan (16-5, NR)

I started this section with “Brendan Allen, fire your fucking manager,” and then I decided to do a little research. The conclusion is still the same, but the reasons are different.

Initially, I just thought this was an irresponsibly stupid fight to take. And it still is! Brendan Allen has been struggling to make it as a top Middleweight for the last six goddamn years, and every time something’s gotten in the way, be it Sean Strickland or Chris Curtis or Brendan’s own inability to not tweet weird things about how child abuse is an ethical good. The last couple years weren’t much kinder: Allen got a rematch with Curtis and only barely managed to beat him, then dropped all the way down the ladder thanks to back-to-back losses against Nassourdine Imavov and Anthony Hernandez, both of whom would end up stuck in contendership amber themselves.

But the rest of 2025 wound up working out extremely well. Allen took on Marvin Vettori, who was on his own rapid descent, and managed to beat him when that still meant something. Much more importantly: Allen took a big risk by agreeing to be a short-notice fill-in for a main event with Reinier de Ridder. If Imavov and Hernandez were two points on the rising-contender triangle, RDR was the third: He hadn’t even been in the UFC for a year but had already worked up a four-fight winning streak that included choking out Kevin Holland, knocking out Bo Nickal and just barely winning a decision against former champ Robert Whittaker. Many people thought Reinier would get elevated straight to a title eliminator with Khamzat Chimaev, but his bout with Hernandez was just as logical a contest, and when Hernandez dropped out and Allen stepped in, most of the world looked at his grappling strengths against Reinier’s, thanked Allen for his service, and prepared to move on to RDR’s title shot in 2026.

And then Allen just beat the shit out of him.

The first round looked just the way people had anticipated, with de Ridder flinging Allen down, controlling him easily, and nearly submitting him several times. Midway through the second Allen took over, and Reinier fell apart on the spot. After three full rounds of Allen doing damn near whatever he wanted, hammering de Ridder with ground and pound, RDR’s corner threw in the towel rather than letting their man come out for the fifth. It was the best win of Allen’s career, it could not have been timed better, and it teed him up for instant relevance at the top of the division.

So he’s fighting Edmen Shahbazyan in a co-main event in the Apex.

Edmen Shahbazyan! Edmen Shahbazyan, the third-most exciting Middleweight striking prospect of 2019. Famed Ronda Rousey training partner Edmen Shahbazyan. Got-completely-destroyed-by-Derek-Brunson Edmen Shahbazyan. Edmen Shahbazyan, who lost four out of five times in a four-year span, took a year off from the sport, and was greeted with a rehabilitative matchup against AJ Dobson, one of the company’s least successful fighters. Edmen Shahbazyan, who promptly got strangled by Gerald Meerschaert in the latter’s only victory in his last six fights. Edmen Shahbazyan, whose best and most recent win is a 1-for-his-last-5 André Muniz whom the UFC cut immediately afterward. Edmen Shahbazyan, a man so tertiary in his importance that an official onscreen graphic once misspelled his nickname as “The Doglden Boy.”

Edmen Shahbazyan, who is going straight from that unranked victory to battling for a spot in the Middleweight top five.

Even by the UFC’s standards this is baffling matchmaking, and they know it, because Edmen was supposed to fight the unranked Iron Turtle himself, Jun Yong Park, this past April. Park got injured, they couldn’t find a replacement, and now, instead of a middle-of-the-pack bout against a man who only barely beat Brad Tavares, Edmen is fighting to be one heartbeat away from the world championship.

I wondered what kind of shit-ass manager Brendan Allen must have, to either encourage or simply allow him to take this kind of fight--no upside, all risk--and, after looking into it, it was, of course, Ali Abdelaziz, a man so notoriously unethical that Conor McGregor during his living cocaine elemental era was still able to score legitimate conversational points against him. I also wanted to know who could be managing Edmen Shahbazyan, that he gets booked so persistently well.

It was, of course, Ali Abdelaziz.

I’ve written a lot of words about the way folks like Dana White, Joe Silva, Hunter Campbell, Ari Emanuel and essentially every c-suite that’s ever existed in the mixed martial arts space have helped harm the sport, and they deserve it, but they couldn’t exert their total control without having an iron grip on its fighters, and they wouldn’t have that grip on the fighters without the complete obeisance of their management. The promoters who sign their promotions up to be feeder leagues; the managers that advocate for the UFC’s best interests instead of the fighters they’re supposed to be cultivating. Ali Abdelaziz alone constitutes half of that problem. He manages hundreds of fighters, he very openly pits them against each other for the UFC’s benefit, he was named as part of the antitrust lawsuits that are still plaguing the company, and when last I saw an update in February he was refusing to cooperate with a court order to turn over records of their negotiations with the UFC. But you can’t blame the corrupting influence of the big show, because when Ali was the matchmaker for the World Series of Fighting he was also managing a bunch of its fighters, which was perfectly fine and in no way a conflict of interest.

And you can’t even blame the corrupting influence of mixed martial arts, because before he even touched the sport, he got out of being convicted of forgery by working as an FBI snitch reporting on The Muslims of America, which the government was just certain were secretly harboring terrorists, for some strange reason.

When this fight was announced, Ali put out a tweet praising Brendan Allen for giving “a young guy” like Edmen an opportunity. Brendan is less than two years older than Edmen, and Edmen was fighting with the UFC a year before Brendan was even signed. There’s no mention of his representing both of them, no mention of the circumstances of the fight. He doesn’t even spell their fucking names correctly. He calls them “Edmund” and “Brandon Alan.”

But where’re you going to go when there’s only one game in town, and only a handful of people who can get you there?

Burn this sport to the ground and start over with something made by human beings again. BRENDAN ALLEN BY SUBMISSION.

MAIN CARD: A SERIES OF WHYS
LIGHTWEIGHT: Farès Ziam (18-4, #14) vs Tom Nolan (10-1, NR)

I don’t hate this matchup quite as much as Allen/Shahbazyan, but it’s not as far away as I’d like it to be. It took six and a half years for Farès Ziam to get here, and that’s after he spent the last four of them quietly assembling one of the best winning streaks in the Lightweight division. Michal Figlak was an undefeated Cage Warriors contender: Ziam beat him. Jai Herbert was a knockout threat who’d just come inches from beating the hideously underrated Ľudovít Klein: Ziam beat him. Claudio Puelles was a grappling threat that’d almost torn Dan Hooker’s knee apart, Matt Frevola flattened Drew Dober, Mike Davis hadn’t lost a fight in five years. Ziam beat every one of them. When last we saw Farès back in December he was in the cage with Nazim Sadykhov, the Ray Longo prodigy who hadn’t lost a fight since his debut in 2018. Ziam didn’t just beat him, he knocked him out. And half of those fights--including that last, biggest victory--happened buried in the prelims.

Tom Nolan’s been in the UFC for just a touch over two years. This is his UFC career, unabridged:

• Got knocked out in his debut by Nikolas Motta, who is 3-3 (1), hadn’t won a fight in years at the time, and, fun fact, got flattened by Nazim Sadykhov in his last matchup

• Was rehabilitated by a bout with recent knockout victim Victor Martinez, who is now 0-3 in the company; Nolan is the only man in the UFC who didn’t finish him

• Beat Alex Reyes, who is now 0-3 in the company and took seven years to accrue said three bouts; Nolan is the only man in the UFC who didn’t finish him

• Got a decision over Viacheslav “Slava Claus” Borshchev, who, as much as I love him, is 3-6-1 in the company and has one split decision victory since mid-2023 (although he did go to a draw with the aforementioned Sadykhov, which is very funny)

• Choked out Charlie Campbell, by far his best win in the company; Campbell is 2-1 and his best win was, and this may shock you, Alex Reyes

Ziam had to claw his way through a half-dozen genuine prospects over almost half a decade to make it to the rankings. Nolan got a series of layups, some of whom were defined solely by losses to men he’d already beaten, and two years later he’s got a shot at the top fifteen. If you hadn’t already guessed: Farès Ziam was signed back in 2019 as a short-notice injury replacement and Tom Nolan was a 2023 Contender Series winner.

The opportunities are not even, and most of the time they’re not even opportunities. FARÈS ZIAM BY DECISION.

BANTAMWEIGHT: Bryce Mitchell (18-3) vs Santiago Luna (8-0)

In some way, to some extent, I have to be grateful for Bryce Mitchell’s existence. We talk a lot about the barrel-bottom of ethics the sport is currently swimming in, and with the fucking White House one week away lord knows we’ll be discussing it even more this month, but in a sport where the Middleweight champion tells female competitors with whom he’s sharing a press desk that they belong in the kitchen and the head of the company was caught on camera slapping his wife, there is, still, a desire to maintain some semblance of the idea that there are limits somewhere. To kill that notion, we have Bryce Mitchell, who used a podcast to talk about how Adolf Hitler was a great man who loved his country and just wanted to stop the Jews from turning everyone gay, and in the year since he has been booked more consistently than just about any other point in his career. He is the living reminder that there has never been a worse time to be a mixed martial arts fan.

There’s a good side to that, though: I never, ever have to wonder who I’m picking in a Bryce Mitchell fight. He was supposed to fight Victory Henry here, the man known mainly for getting choked out by Charles Jourdain and punted in the crotch by Javid Basharat, and Bryce would almost certainly have beaten him, and by god, I would’ve picked Henry anyway. But Henry’s hurt, so with just a touch over a week’s notice, he’s been replaced by Santiago “Borderboy” Luna, a man whose entire UFC career thus far came from two fights: A wild back-and-forth one-round affair where he knocked out Quang Le, who was 1-2, and a measured 30-27 victory against Angel Pacheco, who was 0-1. Did he look amazing in either performance? Not really. Have we seen him deal with any kind of significant grappling threat? Nope. Does he have a wealth of pervious experience to draw on? Not even a little! He’s 21 and only barely three years into his career and he was fighting 4-6 guys before he joined the UFC. We just watched him struggle with the wrestling game of a man who got soundly outgrappled by Caolán Loughran. There’s absolutely no reason to think he’s prepared for a Bryce Mitchell level of competition.

But the alternative is picking Bryce Mitchell, which means life is simple, clean, and serene. SANTIAGO LUNA BY TKO.

CATCHWEIGHT, 130 POUNDS: Matt Schnell (17-10 (1)) vs Alessandro Costa (15-5)

Flyweight is still coming to save us, even if it’s not technically Flyweight anymore. Matt Schnell is clinging to life in the UFC by the worn-down tips of his fingernails. At one point he was a genuine contender at both Bantamweight and Flyweight, and he’s picked up a collection of good wins--maybe none more than Naoki Inoue, former Rizin champion--but that was quite awhile ago, and over the last five years he’s 2 for 9. Those wins have been just well-timed enough to keep him afloat, with the one over Jimmy Flick in April last year pulling him out of a three-fight losing streak, but immediately after that win he got himself choked out by Joseph Morales, so he’s right back in the danger zone.

They know it, too, because the original plan was to get Schnell put out to pasture by Imanol Rodriguez, the 26 year-old Morales choked out to win The Ultimate Fighter 33 (jesus christ) who is still technically undefeated because TUF fights aren’t real, but Imanol couldn’t make it, so with about 10 days of prep time it’s Alessandro Costa’s turn to get a win, which is why we’re fighting at pretendweight. His UFC career came from late replacement fights, his career losses keep coming from late replacement fights, he did, in fact, lose to Steve Erceg while replacing Schnell himself once, and now he craves the kind of revenge that comes only from finding the person in your office who keeps rescheduling meetings and getting paid an insufficient amount of money to punch them on camera.

Just send a fucking e-mail next time, Matt. ALESSANDRO COSTA BY TKO.

LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Iwo Baraniewski (8-0) vs Junior Tafa (7-5)

You know, at this point, 130 pounds is closer to being a real division than Light Heavyweight is. Look at this. Look at what has become of Forrest Griffin’s division. Iwo Baraniewski is on a two-fight winning streak, which makes him one of the seven out of forty-three signed 205-pounders with multiple consecutive wins. Said victories? Ibo Aslan, who has dropped three in a row, and Austen Lane, who just retired from the sport after a 1-5-1 (1) UFC run. Junior Tafa is 3-5 in the company, it has been almost three years since he beat anyone with a single win in the UFC, he once assaulted Valter Walker in mid-cage because he was upset he got submitted, and even he is only here because Billy Elekana, the owner of a three fight streak in the division, couldn’t make it.

Who, you might ask, did Billy beat to earn that high acclaim? Junior Tafa. Who did Billy beat to earn his shot at Junior? Kevin Christian. You know who Junior Tafa beat to be here? Kevin Christian! More than half of the men to hold the Light Heavyweight title over the last decade vacated the belt, a statistic that might get even sillier if Carlos Ulberg’s injury is sufficiently severe, three people in the top fifteen are departing for the Heavyweight division and three more are sidelined with serious leg injuries, there are two ranked fights currently scheduled in the entire top fifteen and one of them is Nikita Krylov against the division-debuting Robert Whittaker, who used to fight at fucking Welterweight. But who can blame him, because he already holds a recent victory over the newly-minted #7 205-pounder in the world, Paulo Costa, who went from only barely surviving at the periphery of Middleweight to one fight away from the 205-pound belt.

It’s not enough to say that the division is cursed. The division is dead. There are zero up and coming prospects, there are no points of interest, the only person left in the top fifteen anyone in the audience cares about is Jiří Procházka and he’s already had three title shots in two and a half years and he got dumpstered in every single one of them. The UFC can’t even pretend to care about these non-prospects because they just have them fighting each other in an endless circle. IWO BARANIEWSKI BY TKO and then the ground opens up and swallows every fighter above 170 pounds and the WEC takes over the world.

PRELIMS: THE BIG DIP
BANTAMWEIGHT: Marcus McGhee (10-2) vs John Yannis (10-4)

Eleven months ago, the UFC made a really obvious, really gross attempt to jump a cheap, favored fighter into title contention by having Marcus McGhee, who was ranked #13 and only barely, at that, suddenly take on Petr Yan, former world champion, current world champion, man who has only ever lost against world champions, and, at the time, the #3 contender. It was blatant, it was nihilistic, and all it did was kill McGhee’s momentum so badly that he went from a man being talked about as a genuine prospect to so completely and wholly forgotten that he fell from sharing a co-main event with the best Bantamweight alive to the Apex prelims against John fucking Yannis. It was supposed to be Jakub Wiklacz, which would be better, but on the other hand, Wiklacz is an unranked dude with two UFC fights. Hell, the fact that McGhee is unranked is, itself, hilarious. It’s not like he fell off the ladder because an up-and-comer beat him! They threw him in there with Petr fucking Yan, he completely unsurprisingly lost, and the entirety of the matchmaking department went ‘ah, yeah, you got us, we had to try’ and over the next few months he just slowly slid down the ladder and out of sight and now he’s fighting the guy who got choked out by Austin Bashi. And don’t you dare fucking tell me you remember who Austin Bashi is. I barely remember who Austin Bashi is.

This is how it’s going to be for the next few years: People they think stand the slightest chance of surviving getting jumped up the ladder getting completely unearned shots at the big time, and if they make it, awesome, and if not, chuck them all the way to the back of the line again. Prepare for Top Ten Tommy McMillen, because it’s coming. MARCUS MCGHEE BY TKO.

FLYWEIGHT: Bruno Silva (15-8-2 (1), #15) vs Edgar Cháirez (13-6 (1), NR)

Good fighters getting ground to death by an extremely tough division is one of the oldest tales in combat sports. There is nothing wrong with Bruno Silva. He’s fast, he’s aggressive, he’s damned good at catching necks when given half a chance, and he’s also fighting to keep his job, because if he loses this one he’s 1 for his last 5. And that sucks, because those three losses were Manel Kape, the #2 contender, Joshua Van, the current champion, and Charles Johnson, the man that knocked said champion out. And hell, the Johnson fight was close! But when you have as many losses as you do wins, being close isn’t enough. Close gets you Edgar Cháirez. They’ve wanted Edgar in the rankings for awhile. Hell, they want him there so badly that this is the first time in five fights and three years that they haven’t booked him on the Noche UFC/Mexico City circuit, because they cannot miss the opportunity. Fortunately: He deserves it. He’s never boring, he’s always tough, and he’s only two fights removed from taking Van the distance and actually stumbling him on the feet.

Not all rankings churn is bad, just like not all marketing focus is unethical. Good fighters being booked well is a thing to be praised. EDGAR CHÁIREZ BY TKO.

WOMEN’S BANTAMWEIGHT: Chelsea Chandler (6-4) vs Priscila Cachoeira (13-8)

Every single time we talk about Women’s Bantamweight I sing you the same song about how terribly mistreated it is; how underserved and poorly-matched; how all of its athletes deserve better. And it’s always true! Except here. Except this one, single time. Chelsea Chandler is 1-3 in the last three years, she’s only successfully made the Bantamweight limit once, and her only victory even technically at the division came over Josiane Nunes, the 5’2” Featherweight who collapsed the moment the 145-pound division closed. Priscila Cachoeira is 1-4 in the last three years, she has been outfought and often outright destroyed in each of those losses, and even that comes from a past history as a notoriously unsuccessful Flyweight. And her only win in this terrible time period? Also Josiane Nunes. If it weren’t for Josi somehow still having a contract these would be the two least relevant women in the least-healthy division in the world.

Which means it’s the perfect matchup. CHELSEA CHANDLER BY DECISION if they even make it to the cage.

FEATHERWEIGHT: Jordan Leavitt (13-3) vs Joanderson Brito (18-5-1)

Look, man. You know what we’re doing here. You know about me and Brito. He’s never going to win the big one and I’m going to keep picking him and my inevitable disappointment is a crop I will harvest like wheat left past its time. I will place my faith in him and emotionally overidentify with his successes and failures until they hold an unprecedented, outsized emotional impact on my day, which will in no way be a projection of my overall experience with this era of mixed martial arts. Eventually I will lose track of where the genuine fandom begins and my commitment to the bit ends, and I will become the same kind of irony-poisoned monster I have been trying to avoid aligning with for my entire adult life. My barometer for sense will fade, my ability to parse my feelings for earnestness will dissolve, and they will find me dead in my office, a victim of perpetual stillness, crumbling into rot.

And that’s still not enough to make me pick Jordan Leavitt. JOANDERSON BRITO BY SUBMISSION.

WOMEN’S FLYWEIGHT: Jeisla Chaves (7-0) vs Yuneisy Duben (6-1 (1))

When Yuneisy Duben made her UFC debut in March 2025 I had a brief conniption about the way things had fallen so far that Duben made it to the Contender Series as a 5-0 (1) fighter whose opponents, before fighting her, had a combined record of 0, as every single one of them was making their professional debut. I wondered aloud how it could, and inevitably would, get worse. Like clockwork, I give you Jeisla Chaves of Bahia, Brazil, who walked into the Contender Series with a body of work consisting of seven opponents with a combined record of 0-8. That’s right, baby: Not a single fucking win among them. As a matter of fact, Jeisla’s last pre-DWCS matchup came from Bahia’s Demo Fight organization on a card wherein, out of fifteen matches, seven were people with winning records against people with no wins and the main event was an extremely competitively booked contest between the 28 year-old, 9-0 Joseilton Santos and the 45 year-old, 19-17 Nilton dos Santos. This is where your talent is coming from. This is the trajectory of the sport. We can’t get you Dakota Ditcheva or Liz Carmouche or Taila Santos, but we’ve got Jeisla Chaves and Yuneisy Duben, and what more could a division possibly need.

Yuneisy got knocked out in her debut. Chaves only barely beat Sofia Montegro, and I’m not going to insult you by telling you about her competition, too. I didn’t have faith in Yuneisy, and having watched Chaves I don’t have a ton in her either, but she seems to at least know where her hands should go when she strikes. JEISLA CHAVES BY TKO.

WOMEN’S STRAWWEIGHT: Ketlen Souza (16-6) vs Ariane Carnelossi (15-4)

Choose your fighter carefully. On one side: Ketlen Souza, former Flyweight queen of Invicta, who is coming off a victory against journeywoman Bruna Brasil, has one definitive UFC loss in the form of a kneebar at the hands of Karine Silva and who has since become maybe the only person to ever lose a dodgy split decision against Angela Hill and nearly beat Piera Rodriguez. On the other: Ariane Carnelossi, who has never directly defeated anyone with a victory in the UFC and whose one and only victory in the last four and a half years was a disqualification after the aforementioned Piera repeatedly, inexplicably headbutted her. Not really a hard decision, is it?

Well, more the fool you, because this is a rematch, motherfucker. Ariane and Ketlen fought back in Brazil in 2019, and Ariane knocked her out in the third with a deceptively gentle-looking push-kick to the body. So ask yourself this: Is seven years, Ketlen’s reinvention as a better, more well-rounded fighter, and Ariane’s years of terrible performances enough of a reason to make you pick the obviously correct choice, or are you a bad enough dude to side with the cyclical reoccurrence of comedy?

Be brave, not wise. ARIANE CARNELOSSI BY TKO.

Welcome to June. It’s not gonna be great. There are zero PFL title fights, there’s barely anything from ONE, Rizin’s real weird this month, and out of four UFC events one is in Baku, two are in the Apex, and the fourth is at the fucking White House. It is time to end this suffering, and I do, in fact, need a minute to myself.

THIS MONTH’S PUNCHSPORTS EVENTS

• UFC Fight Night: Muhammad vs Bonfim, June 6

• UFC Freedom 250, June 14

• UFC Fight Night: Kape vs Horiguchi, June 20

• UFC Fight Night: Fiziev vs Torres, June 27

• PFL Africa 2: Adeshina vs Campos, June 13

• PFL San Diego: McKee vs Isbulaev, June 27

• ONE Fight Night 44: Jarvis vs Rungrawee II, June 26

• Rizin Landmark 44: Ougikubo vs Shinryu, June 6

IS THERE ANY NEWS

After years of rumors, spitballs and false starts, Netflix hosted its first MMA event last month thanks to Jake Paul, who is, impossibly, one of the least odious promoters in combat sports. Was MVP MMA 1 a smooth experience? Not really: Like most organizations in their early days, its pacing was glacial. Were the fights great? Also no: For every Adrian Moraes vs Phumi Nkuta there were five horrible mismatches, including a main event that ended in seventeen seconds.

Was it a success?

According to a release from MVP, viewership peaked at 17 million for the featherweight headliner between Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano while drawing an average of 12.4 million viewers globally. In the United States, the fight card averaged 9.3 million viewers with a peak of 11.6 million for the evening’s headliner, making it “the most watched MMA event ever in the U.S,” per a release.

Should you be skeptical of those numbers? Of course! It’s a corporate press release about how great they are. Are they legitimate? Probably. It’s Netflix, they have like three hundred million subscribers, seventeen of them deciding to watch Ronda Rousey makes sense to me. It proves, if nothing else, that the audience is there. They just have to decide how much they want to invest in it. I cannot imagine MVP is ever going to want to be a fully-featured fight promotion with a full bench of fighters, but the UFC has left enough talent out there that they can run a solid handful of shows without having to put too much effort into it.

At least, as long as they don’t have competition.

On one hand, Scott Coker is the second-most heralded mixed martial arts promoter in American history. He made Strikeforce and took it from a little-known local kickboxing promotion to an international MMA organization that competed with the UFC. He spent a decade in charge of Bellator and helped it transition into a Spike-broadcast company with a year-long format. By any measure, he’s a success.

By similar measures, he is a failure. Strikeforce’s pocketbooks ran wild and it got bought out by the UFC. Bellator limped its way to a death that seemed simultaneously untimely and belated, acquired and buried by the PFL. Coker is widely agreed to be one of the fairest, kindest fight promoters, and he still complained about wrestling, and he still overbooked tournaments, and he kept fucking signing Fedor.

But the industry has never needed him more, and at the end of May, Coker announced that he’d attracted $60 million in funding--a chunk of it, for some reason, coming from Tony Hawk--for the purposes of launching a new global MMA league in 2027. Details are scarce and the majority of them are currently gleaned from a Zoom interview he gave from the front seat of his car, which is sort of tonally perfect for this moment in history, but if he wants to throw his hat back in the ring, that’d be dandy. I have never wanted him back more.

Just don’t fucking sign Fedor again.

In darker news, just a couple weeks after participating in and winning the main event of PFL Sioux Falls on May 2, Logan Storley, NCAA wrestler, Bellator titlist and PFL tournament finalist, was arrested on the 18th after allegedly being witnessed committing sexual battery on a woman in a street. When reached for comment, the PFL somewhat perplexingly said that despite being in said main event, he had been fired from the organization days earlier, which they offered no additional comment on or details about.

This shouldn’t be industry news. It is, obviously, news of a terrible crime, and the industry is not at all the point. That said: I cannot help reflecting on how far things have fallen that a top-ranked main-event fighter for the #2 promotion in America getting caught red-handed trying to sexually assault a woman, and being immediately disclaimed by the company that employed him, barely even lasted a day as a Reddit thread, let alone a news story. He bonded out, and I wouldn’t be shocked if we never get an update again, barring some random MMA journo like Luke Thomas or Suzie or, christ alive, me, chasing down the records.

WHAT HAPPENED IN MAY

We kicked off May on the 2nd with UFC Fight Night: Della Maddalena vs Prates, an attempt to appeal to the Australian crowd that went tragically wrong at the end. Your undercard bouts included Kody Steele making me a permanent booster of his by heel-hooking Dom Mar Fan, Jonathan Micallef beating and retiring Themba Gorimbo, Wesley Schultz choking out Ben Johnston, Colby Thicknesse narrowly outpointing Vince Morales, Jacob Malkoun winning the slow wrestle-off with Gerald Meerschaert, Junior Tafa knocking out Kevin Christian, and Cameron Rowston taking a one-sided call over Robert Bryczek. On your main card, Louie Sutherland won a pretty sad decision over Tai Tuivasa, Brando Peričić punched out Shamil Gaziev in two rounds, Marwan Rahiki crushed Ollie Schmid in one, Steve Erceg won a competitive but clear decision over Tim Elliott, and Quillan Salkilld did his job by destroying poor Beneil Dariush in three and a half minutes. But all of Australia’s hopes laid in former champion Jack Della Maddalena’s main event bid to maintain contendership against Carlos Prates, and unfortunately for Perth, Prates just beat the absolute brakes off him, ultimately handing Jack his first TKO loss since his debut fight a decade prior.

But the day also had PFL Sioux Falls: Storley vs Zendeli, which is extremely unpleasant given that a couple weeks later Storley would be arrested for rape. So we’re not gonna talk about the main event. But Taila Santos kicked Yan Qihui’s innards out in two minutes and Magomed Magomedov won a split over Leandro Higo and Sergey Bilostenniy continued the fall of Renan Ferreira by knocking him out in the third and Simeon Powell kneed Emiliano Sordi flat and Gadzhi Rabadanov managed to beat Aleksandr Chizov, and nothing else after that is important.

UFC 328: Chimaev vs Strickland came a week later on the 9th, and with it, we are back in the worst timeline. Your early prelims saw Baisangur Susurkaev choked out Djorden Santos while Jose Ochoa, Pat Sabatini and Roman Kopylov all picked up decisions--Sabatini’s was against William Gomis, which is fairly impressive--and your regular-flavor prelims were an all-finishes special, with Jim Miller guillotining Jared Gordon, Grant Dawson RNCing Mateusz Rębecki, Ateba Gautier punching out Ozzy Diaz, and Yaroslav Amosov absolutely styling on Joel Álvarez en route to suplexing and arm triangling him. On the main card of what would once have been pay-per-view, King Green destroyed an inexplicably present Jeremy Stephens, Sean Brady dominated Joaquin Buckley to the tune of multiple 30-25s and Alexander Volkov took an unsurprising decision over Waldo Cortes-Acosta. The co-main event was fight-of-the-year material, as Tatsuro Taira showed absurd levels of grit in a back-and-forth war with Joshua Van, but he ultimately lost it after getting TKOed in the fifth round. In the main event, Khamzat Chimaev and Sean Strickland turned in the dictionary definition of a coinflip fight, in part because neither managed to really accomplish that much, with Strickland avoiding most of the wrestling after the first round and Chimaev never really being in trouble from Strickland’s jabs, but with media scorecards split straight down the middle, Strickland won the great judging coinflip and is, once again, the UFC Middleweight Champion, god help us all.

Rizin 53 was later that night, and after the all-out blitz that was Landmark 13 last month this was a bit lower-key--and dotted with things like, say, the 12-13-3 Daiki Tsubota choking out the 2-0 Genji Umeno, or the 9-8 Keito Oyama beating 7-10 Katie Perez, or Shinobu Ota getting rehabilitated from his losing streak by beating the now 16-16-23 Yuto Hokamura, but, y’know, it’s Japan. But Sho Patrick Usami knocked out Tatsuya Saika, and Ren Hiramoto went to a draw with Koji Tanaka, and in the main event, Ilkhom Nazimov, the brand new champion who dethroned Satoshi Souza, lost his belt in his first defense after Luiz Gustavo knocked him out in two minutes.

ONE had a pair of events split across the 15th, as they continue to spiral into ever-weirder organizational decisionmaking. There were some kickboxing things of note, including Superlek getting beaten by Abdulla Dayakaev, and it should matter that Kade Ruotolo beat Hiroyuki Tetsuka, but the thing that mattered was the Heavyweight championship rematch between Reug Reug and Anatoly Malykhin. The fight was just as bad as the first time around, but this time, Malykhin found the exhausted energy necessary to knock Reug Reug out in the fourth round and reclaim his triple-champion status, at which point he immediately retired, which means 1/3 of ONE’s mixed martial arts championships are now vacant.

But the 16th was the big day for the month. ONE came back with ONE Fight Night 43, which was, as always, 1/3 MMA to 2/3 kickboxing, and for once, the kickboxing wasn’t too notable and the MMA took center stage. Lito Adiwang annihilated Eko Roni Saputra in just about thirty seconds with a flurry of punches, Fabio Henrique extendd former Shooto champion Yosuke Saruta’s losing streak to a painful five fights in as many years after Saruta busted his elbow, and in the main event, Tang Kai recorded his first victory in more than two years and successfully defended his Lightweight title after stopping Shamil Gasanov on leg kicks in four rounds.

The UFC’s offering was UFC Fight Night: Allen vs Costa, and it was, despite its Apex-flavored nature, actually ass pretty good time. Nicolle Caliari choked out Shauna Bannon, who is still here, Luis Gurule finally notched his first UFC win over Daniel Barez, Alice Ardelean managed to submit Polyana Viana with the incredibly rare capsule lock, Cody Brundage overcame the odds again and knocked out Andre Petroski, Ketlen Vieira beat Jacqueline Cavalcanti and then got released anyway because the UFC sucks shit, Tommy Gantt made his debut by pounding out Artur Minev, and Ivan Erslan took a decision over Tuco Tokkos only for Ivan, too, to be released following the weekend. On the main card, Khaos Williams dropped Nikolay Veretennikov in a round, Bernardo Sopaj absolutely ran through Timmy Cuamba on the ground en route to a rear naked choke, Modestas Bukauskas got a split decision over late replacement Christian Edwards, Juan Díaz pitched an upset by choking out the now-floundering Malcolm Wellmaker, and Dooho Choi overcame a tough first round and took out Daniel Santos in the second with some beautifully painful body punching. The main event was one of the most pleasantly competitive 50-45s I’ve seen, as Melquizael Costa put up a good fight against Arnold Allen, but was just a touch too outclassed.

For once, however, the UFC was not the big show of the weekend. That honor went to MVP MMA 1: Rousey vs Carano, the debut of mixed martial arts on Netflix, and it was a supremely goofy card with a lot of silly shit on it, and boy, did that not matter at all. For every Brandon Jenkins beating Chris Avila or David Mgoyan vs Albert Morales, there was Jason Jackson destroying Jeff Creighton in twenty-two seconds. You had Namo Fazil choking out Jake Babian and Aline Pereira taking a split over Jade Masson-Wong, but you also got one of the most controversial fight endings of the year, as Adriano Moraes notched a submission win over Phumi Nkuta that had to be called retroactively, as Nkuta didn’t go out until after the bell had ended the final round. The main card was mostly silly, though. Robelis Despaigne knocked out Junior dos Santos, which was tragically predictable. Salahdine Parnasse punched out Kenny Cross’s liver, which was also predictable but a lot less tragic and a lot more cool. Francis Ngannou returned to MMA and left poor Philipe Lins motionless on the mat in one round. Mike Perry battered Nate Diaz to a corner’s stoppage because all of his blood was coming out and he kept falling down repeatedly. And, in your main event, Ronda Rousey ended ten years of retirement and Gina Carano ended seventeen years of middling acting to have what was promised to be an epic fight that ended exactly the way anyone who’s actually paying attention could have told you it would: Ronda immediately, effortlessly taking Gina down and armbarring her in seventeen seconds. It is officially the most-watched MMA broadcast in American history. Congratulations.

The UFC’s week off left a hole for the PFL, and they tried to fill it with the greatest of MMA matchmaking choices: Today’s hot prospects destroying people who should really be retired. PFL Brussels: Habibora vs Henderson on May 23 was another of those events that are ultimately hasrd to recommend to people who aren’t real diehards of the sport--do you know who Movsar Ibragimov is, because if you say you do, I don’t believe you, but he choked out Shane Campbell, so hey. The thing that caught on most from the cart wasn’t even a cool finish, but rather the ending of kickboxer Donegi Abena’s MMA debut vs circa-2015 Bellator Kickboxing standout Joe Schilling, wherein Abena got Schilling on the floor and headbutted him--incredibly blatantly!--and when the referee attempted to restart them without making Abena sacrifice his position, Schilling cussed him out and simply left the cage. On one hand: Real bullshit judgment and Schilling got screwed. On the other: Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. The main card also saw former Rizin champ Naoki Inoue win a close split decision after a war with Marcirley Alves, Taylor Lapilus taking a lopsided decision over Jake Hadley, and in the main event, Patrick Habibora, who is 25, undefeated, has a near-total finish rate and is widely considered one of the best prospects in the world, fought former WEC and UFC champion Benson Henderson, who is 42, had been retired from the sport for three years, and arguably hadn’t won a ranked fight in a decade. Habibora knocked him out in twenty seconds.

PFL came back one day later for PFL MENA 9: Pride of Arabia, and, as is often the case, I’ll be honest, I’m not gonna make you read this. You don’t know who Hamza Kooheji is. I don’t know who Hamza Kooheji is. When I looked up Hamza Kooheji and saw that he was 15-4 I stopped to think about my assumptions and if I should be more critical of my lack of knowledge when it comes to MMA in the EMEA, and then I went through his record and realized almost all of his victories are people at, near or below 50/50 records, which they earned against people who, themselves, barely beat anyone, and it’s all just one giant fucking circle. The best way to put it: Do you remember Mohammad “The UAE Warrior” Yahya? The guy who got booked on UFC cards every time they went to Abu Dhabi, even though he got his ass kicked in progressively more and more embarrassing performances? He was in the main event. his opponent had only two fights against people with winning records, and Yahya lost a split decision that had 30-27 scorecards in either direction. MENA: Not even once.

And the 30th ended the month on UFC Fight Night: Song vs Figueiredo. It was the UFC’s return to China after last August’s run to Shanghai failed to deliver the Chinese superstardom they’d hoped for, and I’m deeply appreciative, because it went even fucking worse. They threw every Chinese fighter they could at the card and almost all of them failed. Zhu Kangjie got knocked out in two minutes by Rodrigo Vera, Aoriqileng got his liver kneed out by Cody Haddon, Ding Meng dropped a split decision to José Henrique, Yisak Lee got knocked out by Luis Felipe Dias, Jingnan Xiong made her UFC debut but got completely outclassed by Angela Hill, Sumudaerji was actually about to beat Alex Perez but he kicked him in the dick and drew a No Contest instead, and the co-main event was an attempt to rehabilitate their Light Heavyweight star from China, Zhang Mingyang, after Johnny Walker beat him in two rounds last year, and they fed him an even less successful fighter in Alonzo Menifield, and all it accomplished was Menifield chucking Zhang in a dumpster in 4:15. In other comedy on the card, Jaqueline Amorim nearly snapped Loma Lookboonmee’s arm, Rei Tsuruya made short work of a Luis Gurule who’d just been in a three-round fight two weeks prior, Jake Matthews took a really obvious decision over Carlston Harris, Kai Asakura knocked out Cameron Smotherman, and the UFC’s latest attempt to elevate Tallison Teixeira into a top ranking ended with Sergei Pavlovich walking through him in thirty-nine seconds. But the main event, at least, went right to plan: A progressively older-looking Deiveson Figueiredo got in the cage with Song Yadong and got himself beat up and choked out in two rounds.

WHAT’S COMING IN JUNE

We start where all terrible things live: The Apex. UFC Fight Night: Muhammad vs Bonfim is on June 6, and it features a bunch of fights that should be somewhere else. Jordan Leavitt vs Joanderson Brito should be in front of a crowd. Priscila Cachoeira vs Chelsea Chandler should be in Invicta. Bruno Silva vs Édgar Cháirez should be in Mexico. Bryce Mitchell vs Santiago Luna should be in a garbage can. Brendan Allen vs Edmen Shahbazyan should be on a drawing board, being reconfigured into two much more sensible fights. And your main event, Belal Muhammad vs Gabriel Bonfim, should be in a court record as Exhibit B in the UFC’s active sabotage of Belal’s career.

That night also brings us Rizin Landmark 14, which continues Rizin’s recent trend of having slightly lower-key cards with a couple big matches up top. This time around, your anchoring fights include Black Panther Beynoah vs GRACHAN champion Bilal Kai Haga, Yusuke Yachi vs Isao Kobayashi, a very funny Heavyweight matchup between 15-14 former DEEP champion Ryo Sakai and 3-4 former sumo Takakenshin, and a co-main event slot featuring former contender Yuki Motoya taking on Rizin’s favorite Canadian, Tony Laramie. In the main event, Flyweight champion Hiromasa Ougikubo defends his belt against Shinryu Takahashi, whom he already beat in July of 2024.

June 13 brings us PFL Africa 2, the quarterfinals of this year’s African tournament, and I’d like to tell you that I am selling it to you because of the immense drawing power of Wasi Adeshina and Ignacio Campos, but in truth? I talk a lot about how dire things are for women’s MMA right now, and this is a deeply unfortunate example. Elisandra Ferreira is Invicta FC’s Atomweight champion. Fantastic fighter, great all around. But Atomweight doesn’t exist anywhere else but Rizin, and their opportunities are few and farbetween, and having an Invicta belt isn’t even enough for a ticket to the UFC anymore, and Invicta, itself, appears to be in a coma. So Elisandra is stepping up to Strawweight so she can fight Juliet Ukah, a former Featherweight who is half a foot taller than her, and it’s on the prelims of this PFL Africa card. Not even headlining the prelims. It’s bad out there, man.

UFC Freedom 250 is on the 14th.

Six days later, the UFC is back in the Apex for UFC Fight Night: Kape vs Horiguchi. There’s a really irritating number of solid matches on this card that are stuck in the fucking fight warehouse. Karol Rosa vs Luana Santos, Farid Basharat vs Ethyn Ewing, Allan Nascimento vs Mitch Raposo, Bia Mesquita vs Melissa Mullins, André Lima vs Kevin Borjas, Hyder Amil vs Christian Rodriguez, Vinicius Oliveira making his 145-pound debut against Giga Chikadze--all of that is really, really good. And the main event, a Rizin rematch betweeen Manel Kape and Kyoji Horiguchi, is stellar. So it fucking sucks that it’s all in the godforsaken Apex.

That day also brings us ONE Fight Night 44: Jarvis vs Rungrawee II, and like all ONE events, the card is not yet fully announced despite being less than a month away--which is less of a big deal than, say, ONE Friday Fights 158 on the twelfth, which as of this writing is less than two weeks away and has no fights announced--but it has three MMA matches, including a Heavyweight bout between Paul Elliott, best known for being 1-2 (1) in the company, and Regan Upshaw, who has never had a professional fight, a 125-pound bout between Karen Ghazaryan and Hisashi Ezaki, and former champion Ok Rae Yoon taking on Lucas Gabriel. Your main event is a Muayu Thai rematch between George Jarvis and Rungrawee Sitsongpeenong, for people who are into that.

And this weird, terrible fucking month ends with the UFC in Baku for UFC Fight Night: Fiziev vs Torres on June 27, which is a suitably weird fucking card. Ikram Aliskerov, on a two-fight winning streak, faces Brunno Ferreira, who just got knocked unconscious three months ago. Asu Almabayev, who is on a two-fight winning streak including choking out Alex Perez, is facing Charles Johnson, who is just a handful of months separated from getting knocked out by Alex Perez. Shara Magomedov and Michel Pereira are fighting in the UFC’s non-canonical Middle Eastern-only series. Rizvan Kuniev, who just became the UFC’s #8 Heavyweight after earning his first UFC win, is battling Tyrell Fortune, who just became the UFC’s #10 Heavyweight after his first UFC fight. And in the main event, Rafael Fiziev, who is 1 for his last 5 and just got knocked out in February, is facing Manuel Torres, the guy who knocks everybody out.

CURRENT UFC CHAMPIONS
Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs

Tom Aspinall - 15-3 (1), Either 1, 2 or 0 Defenses Depending On How You Look At It

You know, once upon a time, the UFC would’ve killed for a Tom Aspinall. Entire years of UFC events were spent desperately trying to get a Dan Hardy or Darren Till or Jimi Manuwa into championship pictures so they could cash in on UK superstardom. And somehow, Tom Aspinall just fell into their lap. They didn’t go out of their way to softball him, they didn’t put a ton of effort into marketing him, they just let him mulch everyone in his path. In 2025, Tallison Teixeira has a main event in just his second UFC bout: In 2022 Tom Aspinall had to notch five straight stoppages to get his first crack at the top of the card against Curtis Blaydes, and it ended with his knee imploding fifteen seconds into the fight. When he lost that fight, Francis Ngannou was the reigning UFC Heavyweight Champion of the World. By the time Tom returned in the Summer of 2023, it belonged to Jon fucking Jones. Within one fight Aspinall was a top contender again, and with Jon comically scheduled to defend his title against Stipe Miocic, who hadn’t fought in two and a half years, Aspinall was left in a holding pattern--until Jon injured himself in training. With barely two weeks to prepare, Tom Aspinall fought Sergei Pavlovich for an interim championship. Sergei was the most devastating knockout artist in the Heavyweight division: Tom knocked him out in sixty-nine seconds. Not only did it give him gold, it gave him a golden ticket. The sole purpose of an interim champion is to one day reunify the belts, and that meant Tom had a shot at Jon Jones, one of the biggest fighters in the history of the sport. All he had to do was wait. And wait. And wait. Tom waited so fucking long the UFC made him defend his interim title in a rematch with Blaydes--which he won easily, knocking him out in 60 seconds--on July 27, 2024. Four months later, Jon Jones returned and had his fight with Stipe, who by that point had been effectively retired for almost four years. Unsurprisingly, Jon won. Equally unsurprisingly, Jon and the UFC refused to commit to fighting Aspinall. Jones reportedly held the UFC up for a huge payday, and when they shockingly agreed, he changed his mind. In the end, the most obvious pair of conclusions happened: On June 21st, during the press conference after Fight Night Baku, Dana White announced Jon was retiring and Tom was being promoted to Undisputed Champion; an hour later, coincidentally, news broke that Jon was being summoned for arraignment in July on charges of leaving the scene of an accident after drunkenly crashing another car and leaving another heavily-inebriated half-naked woman behind in it and also threatening the police over the phone when they called him. It is the only way the Jon Jones story could possibly have ended. Tom Aspinall was an interim champion for 588 days, and he made his first undisputed one against Ciryl Gane at UFC 321 on October 26--and, because this division is fucking cursed, it ended in a No Contest after Gane poked him in both of his eyes at once. The UFC has decided this is mostly Tom’s fault, which has nothing at all to do with Tom’s dad talking about how he shouldn’t sign a new contract. A rematch has been vowed, but Tom had to get eye surgery to regain his sight and the UFC doesn’t want to wait when there’s marketing to be done, so Ciryl Gane and Alex Pereira will fight for an interim title at the godforsaken White House.

Light Heavyweight Champion, 205 lbs

Carlos Ulberg - 14-1, 0 Defenses

It’s so hard not to skip to the punchline on this one. Carlos Ulberg’s combat sports career is more mixed than MMA alone would lead one to believe. He started as a mixed martial artist all the way back in 2011, but after winning his debut fight, he decided to give fighting a break for almost half a decade. Then it was boxing, and then it was MMA again, and then it was kickboxing, and for a brief period of time it was both at once. The rise of Israel Adesanya led the UFC on an all-out talent search for big, credible strikers from Oceania, and that is how despite being just 3-0 as a mixed martial artist, Carlos wound up on the Contender Series in 2020, and just a few months later, in March of 2021, he was debuting in the UFC. They hyped him, they gave him a spot on the pay-per-view prelims, they booked him against the 1-1 Kennedy Nzechukwu and despite having half his experience Ulberg was the heavy betting favorite, because everyone knew they wanted him on top. Which was unfortunate, because Kennedy knocked him out in two rounds. Carlos described the loss as the most important moment of his career--half for the lesson of the loss itself, half for the $50,000 bonus that gave him his first taste of actual profit as a professional. He vowed to take his career more seriously, he vowed to prepare for his fights as though every one mattered rather than simply being happy to be in the UFC, and four years later, he was the top contender for the Light Heavyweight crown. A testament to determination and a good mindset? Absolutely! But also a bit of a testament to the careful cultivation and protection of a prospect. Carlos did his job and beat everyone the UFC put in front of him, but the people put in front of him tended to be carefully picked. At one point he beat a genuine prospect in Nicolae Negumereanu, and the UFC followed it up by giving him Ihor Potieria, the man Nicolae had just knocked out in his previous fight. Stiff prospects like Aleksandar Rakić and Azamat Murzakanov flew past in the background, but Da Woon Jung and Alonzo Menifield had to be destroyed. The UFC spent a year and a half trying on three separate occasions to book Ulberg against Dominick Reyes, and by the time they finally got there, it was, somehow, impossibly, a title eliminator. But Ulberg won, just as he’d won every fight since his meeting with Kennedy Nzechukwu, and he proceeded to his title fight with Jiří Procházka for the championship Alex Pereira had left behind to try his hand at the Heavyweight division. It was fun, it was fast, it was dramatic and it was definitive. In just a hair under four minutes, Jiří was flat on the canvas and Carlos Ulberg, five years after his debut, was the Light Heavyweight champion of the world. He also very visibly tore his ACL in half right in the middle of the fight and could barely move. If Jiří had simply backed away, hacked a few leg kicks and kept his distance, the fight would’ve been stopped between rounds, but he chose to engage and got flattened by a left hook counter for his troubles, and the result was a brand new titleholder who proceeded directly to the emergency room after the fight and had knee surgery less than a week later. For the third time in six title reigns, the new champion has an injury so bad it will prevent them from defending their title for at least the rest of the year. Will we get an interim title? Will yet another champion have to give up the gold? Will Paulo fucking Costa wind up technically a 205-pound champion? Stay tuned.

Middleweight Champion, 185 lbs

Sean Strickland - 31-7, 0 Defenses

After all of that time, we are back where we were. When Sean Strickland got his first shot at the UFC Middleweight Championship back in 2023, it was under particularly thin circumstances. Strickland had just come off back-to-back losses against Alex Pereira and Jared Cannonier, his title prospects seemed slim, and a short-notice victory over the then-unheralded Nassourdine Imavov and one-fight UFC veteran Abus Magomedov seemed unlikely to get Strickland anywhere. But then Dricus du Plessis wanted another month to prepare for Israel Adesanya, and the UFC wanted to keep their pay-per-view main event, and suddenly, Sean Strickland was beating one of the sport’s biggest stars and becoming its top Middleweight. It was a stellar performance, it was a career-defining victory, and it was one of the shortest title reigns in UFC history, as just four months later Strickland lost the belt to du Plessis in his first defense. But it was a split decision, so his argument for a rematch was sound, and after a pretty dubious win over Paulo Costa, Strickland got du Plessis back in the cage, where he vowed vengeance, justice, and a return to greatness. Dricus beat him 50-45. It would be a full year before Strickland returned, and in that time, the Middleweight division had changed shape. Nassourdine Imavov was in pole position. Israel Adesanya was a shadow of his former self. Anthony Hernandez was the fastest-rising contender in the class. And Strickland’s nemesis Dricus du Plessis had lost his title to Khamzat Chimaev. On February 21, 2026, on the back of a bunch of bigot bullshit that was growing ever-more tired by the day, Sean returned to the cage and walked right through Hernandez, not just beating him but knocking him out in the third round, and just like that, Imavov’s work didn’t matter, Dricus beating Sean twice didn’t matter. The UFC has its favorites, and Sean got the shot. Khamzat, as he did, hadn’t fought in nine months, and had been busying himself making threats about moving to Light Heavyweight and chasing a superfight with Alex Pereira, who had, himself, already moved up to Heavyweight altogether. Chimaev swore he would outwrestle Sean, smash him, and move on with his life. And for one round, he looked completely correct. After the first, suddenly, Strickland evened things up. Khamzat was never able to assert his wrestling game again, so the rest of the title fight became a boxing match, and in that sense, it was surprisingly even, with Khamzat arguably landing the bigger punches but Strickland landing at a higher clip, and the scorecards were split right down the middle. But the coinflip went Sean’s way. For the second time, Sean Strickland is a world champion, and we are all bastards for it. A rematch seems almost inevitable, but Sean has a shoulder injury to rehabilitate, so we’ll see what the future holds.

Welterweight Champion, 170 lbs

Islam Makhachev - 28-1, 0 Defenses

The prophecy has been fulfilled. Khabib Nurmagomedov was considered by many to be the greatest Lightweight of all time, but in the later stages of his career he began to repeatedly reference his lifetime friend and training partner Islam Makhachev as not just his successor, but the man who would break the mold he’d left behind. And the fanbase was more than willing to buy another Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov protege coming in and wrecking shop--until he got knocked out by Adriano Martins. Khabib’s aura of invulnerability came from the simple, so-obvious-more-people-should-try-it factor of simply never losing a damn fight. When Islam got torched in under two minutes by a man that couldn’t beat Donald Cerrone, that aura vanished. A lot of folks still thought he could be a champion, but most felt the greatest-of-all-time lane was closed to him. It turns out there’s another way to regain that sense of unbeatable awe, though: Just don’t lose for so goddamn long people forget it ever happened. In the ten full years since that Martins bout, Islam has not lost a single fight. Most of the time, he hasn’t even lost a round. He worked his way up the Lightweight ladder and began to rack up incredible achievements. He tore through top prospects with virtually no effort, he choked out one of the best MMA grapplers ever in Charles Oliveira, he outlasted and later knocked out one of the two men with a claim to the all-time Featherweight crown in Alexander Volkanovski, he choked out Dustin Poirier and he broke the Lightweight title defense record after stomping Renato Moicano. And then he traded in his record-breaking reign to challenge for Welterweight gold. Jumping divisions is always difficult, but the 15-pound leap from Lightweight to Welterweight is a mountain, and no Lightweight champion had ever managed it. Even BJ Penn, the canonical first man to hold gold at both, had to do it in reverse: He failed at both of his attempts to win Lightweight gold and shocked the world by abruptly taking it at Welterweight instead, and it would be five more years before he finally got his shit together and won a title in the division that made him famous. His subsequent attempts all ended in defeat, half because Matt Hughes and Georges St-Pierre were both great and half because BJ was just a Lightweight. Even though Islam was Islam and widely agreed to be a monster in the cage, Jack Della Maddalena had won the Welterweight title with some of the cleanest boxing the UFC had seen, and his championship victory over wrestler Belal Muhammad had people convinced that Islam, at best, would struggle. They met in the main event of UFC 322 on November 15, 2025, and there was absolutely no struggle. Islam kicked Jack’s leg to pieces, landed some surprisingly big punches, and took the fight to the ground almost at will, and by the time the fight ended, it felt like Jack never had a chance. The shadow has been stepped out of. Islam Makhachev is a two-division champion. And now he has a brand new horde of contenders beating down his door.

Lightweight Champion, 155 lbs

Ilia Topuria - 17-0, 0 Defenses

One of the most exciting things about following mixed martial arts is picking which prospects you really, truly believe in. There are hundreds of fighters across history that you will enjoy watching, and you may have some hopes for their future, but you don’t necessarily expect the world from them. When Ilia Topuria showed up in the UFC in 2020, if you were paying attention, you knew he was going to be special. The combination of wrestling, grappling and absolutely murderous striking was almost immediately visible, but what really set him apart was the unshakable confidence with which he used it. Even when he went up to 155 pounds on short notice and almost got knocked out by Jai Herbert he survived the onslaught, recovered, came right back at him as though he was utterly unfazed and destroyed Herbert seconds later. That was the truly exceptional danger of Ilia Topuria: His belief in his technique was so absurdly complete that it came across as absurdly silly arrogance and it made huge swaths of the audience disdain him and then he’d somehow always find a way to just go do the damn thing anyway. He outgrappled Ryan Hall. He submitted Bryce Mitchell. He beat Josh Emmett so badly he got a 50-42 scorecard out of it. And on February 17, 2024, he ended Alexander Volkanovski’s historic, nearly-four-year reign as the king of Featherweight by knocking him out in two rounds. When Ilia followed that up by saying he was going to become the first man to ever knock out Max Holloway--a thing Volkanovski, Dustin Poirier, José Aldo and Conor McGregor failed to do--even with his title victory, the audience was still particularly skeptical. He did it anyway. Once again, Ilia walked into a fight with supreme confidence, and once again, it ended with his opponent on the floor, this time in three rounds. Ilia Topuria had knocked out the two greatest Featherweights of the generation and seemed poised for a longer title reign than either of them. And then he quit the division. One of those first overconfident boasts of his had been the desire to move up to Lightweight and knock out Islam Makhachev to become a double champion. The MMA world thought he was talking about a far-away future, but he wanted it and he wanted it now. Unfortunately, so did Islam. Right as Ilia vacated the Featherweight title to move up to Lightweight, Islam vacated the Lightweight title to move up to Welterweight. So Ilia was left to fight for his destiny against Charles Oliveira instead. Oliveira’s always been incredibly tough and dangerous, and he hadn’t been knocked out in almost eight years, and even then it wasn’t unconsciousness but rather because a Paul Felder elbow had broken part of his face. That streak ended on June 28, 2025 when Ilia Topuria punched him limp in two and a half minutes. The UFC may not do double-champions anymore out of sheer promotional frustration, but in any rational sense, Ilia is the king of Featherweight and Lightweight, which gives him a horde of contenders like Arman Tsarukyan, Justin Gaethje, Dan Hooker and Mateusz Gamrot. So he appears to be fighting Paddy Pimblett next. If you ask Ilia, he’s just killing time until Islam wins the Welterweight title, because his destiny is to take his 5’7” frame all the way up to Welterweight so he can kill the king and be the first ever three-division champion in UFC history. Does it sound aggressively silly and arrogant? Of course it does. Do you feel comfortable ruling it out? Then you haven’t been paying attention. Ilia is, however, dealing with some personal issues related to his divorce, so he’s going to be out of action until the Spring, which means the UFC made an interim title bout between Justin Gaethje and Paddy Pimblett for UFC 324 on January 24. Yes, really. How’d that one wind up going, you ask?

Interim Lightweight Champion

Justin Gaethje - 27-5, 0 Defenses

One of the foundational subjective mixed martial arts questions, right alongside ‘who’s the pound-for-pound best’ and ‘what if Cro-Cop ducked that kick,’ is ‘Who’s the best fighter to never win a championship?’ There are different answers for every generation, and one of the complicating factors is the inevitable debate over whether interim titles count. Was Carlos Condit a UFC champion? What about Colby Covington or Yair Rodríguez? It’s still an incredible achievement, but it’s just not quite real the way an undisputed title is. And I cannot imagine what sort of a backhanded career accomplishment it is to be the only person in UFC history to win their division’s interim title twice. Justin Gaethje has been right on the edge of the top for so long he’s got two half-championships in his closet. Back in 2020 he fought Tony Ferguson, then arguably the scariest Lightweight in the world, and beat him so horrifically that his career never recovered, and that netted Gaethje his first interim belt, which he promptly lost to Khabib Nurmagomedov in the latter’s retirement bout. Two years later, Gaethje got his second shot at the undisputed title against Charles Oliveira and he wound up strangled in three and a half minutes. Three and a half years after that, Gaethje was still right there at the precipice of the top, Ilia Topuria needed a break from the sport, and the UFC needed an aging veteran to propel their marketing star Paddy Pimblett to the top, and at UFC 324 on January 24, 2026, they threw Paddy’s big party and Justin crashed it. The UFC will tell you the fight was close, and it was in the sense that it went the whole way and one judge only gave Justin three rounds, but Paddy got brutally beaten and dropped repeatedly. Once again, Justin Gaethje is the interim champion, and because everything sucks, he’ll try to unify the belt against Topuria at the White House.

Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs

Alexander Volkanovski - 28-4, 1 Defense

And just like that, 2024 never happened. For eleven years Alexander Volkanovski was the best Featherweight on the planet, and most of that time was simply waiting for everyone else to notice. He was short and he won by decisions a lot and the world was entirely into Max Holloway so he skated under the radar right up until the moment he finally beat Max. And that wasn’t enough to convince people, so Volkanovski beat him again. And that somehow made the world doubt him even more, so he beat Max a third time. By 2023 Volk was second only to all-time great José Aldo in Featherweight title defenses--and he’d beaten Aldo in a fight, and his only actual loss was an all-timer of an effort against Islam Makhachev that still stands as the closest Islam has come to losing his title as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world, so it was very, very easy to accept Alexander Volkanovski as the greatest Featherweight on the planet. And then he took a rematch with Islam with only one week to prepare and got knocked out in three minutes, and then he came back less than four months later and got flattened by Ilia Topuria, and in the space of two fights the audience went from celebrating him as the best around to calling for his retirement. Volkanovski took an entire year off to heal and rebuild, which was enough time for Ilia to get bored and vacate the belt to go chase Lightweight greatness, and the Topuria/Volkanovski rematch became Volkanovski vs Diego Lopes at UFC 314 on April 12 to fill the vacant throne instead. It was somehow both close and clear. Lopes gained steam in the middle stanza of the bout and at one point dropped Volk, but Volk got right back up and resumed punching him in the face, and by the end of the bout he’d outlanded him more than two to one. The judges sided with him, the audience sided with him, and Alexander Volkanovski became not just one of the rare few to win back a UFC title, but the first man over 35 to ever win a UFC belt in the sub-170 weight classes typically reserved for young lions. His logical next contender should’ve been Movsar Evloev, but the UFC was busy trying to get him to fight an unranked, debuting Aaron Pico, thus clearing the way for a rematch with Yair Rodríguez in Guadalajara for Noche UFC 3 in September. Except the Arena Guadalajara wasn’t done yet, so Noche UFC 3 got moved to the most Mexican of places, Las Vegas, in October, and Alex’s manager said he had an eye injury that needs time to heal, so he took the rest of 2025 off. Good news, though: That left time for the UFC to get new contenders going. Lerone Murphy wound up fighting and knocking out Pico! Aljamain Sterling beat Brian Ortega! Hell, Movsar Evloev is still right there! The UFC looked at all of them and gave them all the finger. At UFC 325 on January 31, fresh off his title victory over Diego Lopes, Alexander Volkanovski had his first title defense against Diego Lopes. Unsurprisingly, the guy who beat Diego Lopes beat Diego Lopes again. The UFC had Evloev and Murphy fight in March and Evloev won a contentious decision, and now Jean Silva is lobbying as hard as possible for the fight, so we’ll see who gets it.

Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs

Petr Yan - 20-5, 0 Defenses

Petr Yan’s road to the top has been incredibly circuitous. When Yan initially won the Bantamweight title back in 2020, no one was particularly surprised. He’d been one of the best in the world for years, he’d put together a six-fight winning streak on his road to the title shot, and the UFC had fed aging legend Urijah Faber to him in an attempt to make him a known quantity. Felling an even greater legend in José Aldo and taking the belt felt like an entirely expected passing of the torch, and a long reign as the division’s standardbearer seemed all but assured. And then, as they so often do, things went wrong. In quite possibly the most infamous title change in UFC history, Yan became the first champion to ever lose his title by disqualification after drilling Aljamain Sterling in the face with an illegal knee. Yan’s team cried foul and the world turned on Sterling, but when they had their rematch a year later, Sterling beat him by decision and that was that. But it was a split decision, and it was close, so the UFC gave Yan another theoretical title eliminator with Sean O’Malley, and this time the world was almost unanimously convinced Yan won--except for two of the three judges, who split in O’Malley’s favor. To top it off, Yan’s attempt to stay in the contendership conversation ran into the brick wall that was the rising Merab Dvalishvili, who handed him the most one-sided loss of his entire life. In the space of two years, Petr Yan went from being perceived as a generational champion to 1 for his last 5 and seemingly eliminated from contendership. After a year off to cope with injuries, reassess his career and figure out how to turn things around, Yan proceeded to take the path that most commonly leads to success: Just fucking beating everyone. He battered Song Yadong, he outpunched Deiveson Figueiredo, he won an exceedingly weirdly-booked matchup with Marcus McGhee, and suddenly, he was on a winning streak and right back in contendership. It might have taken him longer to get an actual title fight were it not for Merab Dvalishvili being a crazy person. Merab was on the greatest championship run the division had ever seen, and after clearing out most of his to contenders and recording a blistering three defenses in a single year, he announced his intention to break a UFC record and cement himself as the greatest 135-pounder of all time by recording a fourth--just two months after the last one--and Petr Yan was available and ready. The world saw the fight as a foregone conclusion, given how one-sided their first match had been, and the world was wrong. Yan put on the best performance of his career, not just battering Merab but outwrestling him, and in one of the best career comebacks we’ve seen, almost five years after he’d given it away, Petr Yan got his title back. He’s on top of the world again, and in all likelihood, the rubber match with Merab will be next. But it’s gonna have to wait until the second half of the year, because Yan’s having back surgery.

Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs

Joshua Van - 17-2, 1 Defense

It would be disrespectful as hell to Joshua Van to say that no one saw this coming, as many people perceived it as a possibility, but I don’t think anyone saw it coming like this. Van was the Flyweight champion of the Fury Fighting Championships when the UFC came calling, as a 21 year-old regional titleholder with a penchant for collecting knockouts despite fighting at 125 pounds so thoroughly ticks all of their boxes that Van couldn’t have been a more perfect fit without also having a history of racist tweets, and his Contender Series debut was set for August of 2023. But the UFC needed someone to fill in against Zhalgas Zhumagulov, so Van got called up to the big show early and proceeded to justify their faith by beating Zhalgas, and then beating the man he was originally slated to Contend against, and then facing off with Legacy Fighting Alliance champ Felipe Bunes and handing him the first TKO loss of his entire career. In the space of six months, Van went from a little-known regional fighter to a borderline-ranked Flyweight in the UFC. And then he got atomized by Charles Johnson. It was the second loss of Van’s career, the first time he’d ever been knocked out, and the snapping of an eight-fight winning streak, and in many cases, that would’ve permanently ended his momentum. But Van was smart enough to learn from his mistakes, and the UFC was invested enough in him to bring him back up to speed with a gentle hand, and eleven months later he was on a four-fight winning streak again and had successfully made his way to the top ten after knocking out Bruno Silva, which left him in the perfect position to take advantage of an abrupt opportunity. Top contender Brandon Royval had just lost his opponent and needed a replacement, and Van was game to fight for the second time in three weeks if it meant a shot at the belt. It was a close bout, and if Van hadn’t knocked Royval down at the end of the third round he may well have lost, but he did, so he didn’t, and suddenly the prospect was next in line for the title. All but one month of Joshua Van’s UFC career took place during Alexandre Pantoja’s reign as the Flyweight king. His streak was monstrous and he was a sizable favorite coming into his defense against Van, but many were waiting to see if Van’s boxing could defuse Pantoja’s aggression. As it turns out: We’re gonna have to wait a bit longer. Twenty-six seconds into the bout Pantoja busted his own arm on the mat after a head kick gone awry. So Van’s the champion, but it’s under some real weird circumstances, and it means a number of people are immediately gunning for him. Alexandre Pantoja presumably has a rematch as soon as he’s back, but Tatsuro Taira just pounded Brandon Moreno out and got his crack at Van at UFC 327 on April 11. It was an amazing fight, but ultimately, Van got the knockout in the final round.

Women’s Bantamweight, 135 lbs

Kayla Harrison - 19-1, 0 Defenses

Every once in awhile the inevitable turns out to actually be inevitable. Ronda Rousey parlayed a 2008 bronze medal in Judo into mixed martial arts stardom; Kayla Harrison took the gold medal in 2012 and 2016. The world was already asking her about MMA before the second. The UFC made a play for her, but there was a problem: By the standards of female fighters Kayla was huge. Ronda had competed at 70 kg in the Olympics, which translated to about 154 pounds, well within the range of weight cutting for the insane standards of combat sports and Women’s Bantamweight. Kayla competed at 78 kg, which was almost 172 pounds. Even at a twenty-pound weight cut, her division simply did not exist in major mixed martial arts organizations. So she had to find one that would build it. The Professional Fighters League needed star power, and Kayla was their gal. They founded the first Women’s Lightweight division in a major American organization, and it was populated mostly by Bantamweights and Featherweights who were trying the best they could. For four straight years, Kayla was their recurring, undefeated champion. She won the 2019 and 2021 tournaments, and in 2022 she made it to the finals and looked poised to take it for a third time, as her only competition was Larissa Pacheco, whom she’d already beaten twice. In a massive upset, Larissa took a decision off of her. It was shocking, it was unexpected, and it was also more or less fine, because Kayla was more or less done with the PFL. She took one more fight against Aspen Ladd as a one-off, but her future was with the UFC. Even with her loss to Pacheco, the world was sure she was a future UFC champion--as long as she could stomach the weight cut. And it did, visibly, kill her! But she made it. She choked out Holly Holm in her debut, she took a decision over Ketlen Vieira in a title eliminator, and all she had to do after that was wait. Julianna Peña was a +500 underdog in her own title defense against Kayla, and that turned out to be just about right. On June 7, 2025, at UFC 316, Kayla achieved the inevitable, ragdolled Peña and tapped her out in just two rounds. She’s the best in the world and she’s going to get her shot at the superfight everyone wanted in the first place, as Amanda Nunes is coming out of retirement to face her later this year--actually, this got delayed so much it’s only now finally booked for UFC 324 on January 24, 2026--maybe never? A couple weeks before the superfight Kayla had to pull out for apparently fairly major neck surgery. No word on when she’ll be back or what on Earth happens now.

Women’s Flyweight, 125 lbs

Valentina Shevchenko - 26-4-1, 2 Defenses

After almost two years of suffering, we have gone back to the start. At the end of 2022 Valentina Shevchenko was so thoroughly ensconced as The Greatest Women’s Flyweight that a sizable segment of the fanbase had built an honest-to-god antipathy for her over it. Sure, she won, all the time, and sure, her only losses in almost a decade and a half came to the greatest of all time in Amanda Nunes, and sure, Shevchenko arguably won their second fight, but familiarity breeds contempt, and after watching the purported greatest struggle with a split decision to Taila Santos that could easily have gone the other way, too, a big chunk of the mixed martial world was ready to move on from Val. And then, unexpectedly, it did. Valentina was a -900 favorite when Alexa Grasso shocked the world, choked her out, and took her title away on March 4, 2023. An instant rematch was obligatory, given Val’s long history on top, so half a year later they ran it back at Noche UFC in 2023, and, awkwardly, it ended in a draw. If the rematch had been obligatory, the threematch was mandatory, but a hand injury on Val’s part and the UFC’s desire to put an entire season of The Ultimate Fighter behind their promotion meant a full twelve months passed before they got back in the cage. That’s a long goddamn time, and it left a lot of air, and that air was filled by doubt. Alexa won the first fight, after all--but she was on her way to losing a decision before Valentina made a costly mistake, threw one of her trademark nowhere-close-to-landing spinning back kicks, and got immediately jumped on and choked out for her troubles. Alexa didn’t lose the second fight--but based on the scorecards, she should have, and would have, were it not for one judge handing her a completely indefensible 10-8 in the final round. When the third fight came on September 14, 2024, it was seen as Alexa’s chance to cement her legacy: Either she was the superior fighter and the herald of a new generation for Women’s Flyweight, or the whole thing was just a weird episode. Unfortunately for Alexa, it was the latter. Valentina dominated her. She outstruck her and outwrestled her with almost comical ease, the fight was a complete shutout, and despite their series being now tied at 1-1-1, no one has any doubts about the winner, nor any desire to see them fight again. Once again, much to the internet’s chagrin, Valentina Shevchenko is a champion. And--only two years late--she defended her title against Manon Fiorot at UFC 315. It was close, it was contentious, and it was also a fight the audience does not want to see again. Her next fight was a long-awaited champion vs champion affair against Zhang Weili at UFC 322 on November 15, 2025. After years of watching Zhang dominate her competition, the world felt she had genuine double-champ potential and could be the woman to unseat Valentina. As it turned out: Not even close. Val dominated her in every aspect of the game, Zhang got completely shut out, and her Flyweight hopes are dead in the water. Valentina has multiple title defenses again and is now tied with Amanda Nunes and Anderson Silva for the fourth-most wins in title fights in UFC history. We’ll have to see who they give to her next, but Natália Silva feels like a safe bet.

Women’s Strawweight, 115 lbs

Mackenzie Dern - 16-5, 0 Defenses

On a long enough timeline, the house always wins. Mackenzie Dern signed with the UFC as a 5-0 fighter all the way back in 2018 and they’ve been trying to get a belt on her ever since. She came into mixed martial arts with a pre-existing pedigree as one of the more decorated women in the history of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu: Gi championships, no-gi championships, pan-Am championships, Asian open championships, world championships, ADCC championships, she took them all. And the UFC marketed her as a grappling champion who was bringing some of the best submission offense in the sport to the Strawweight division! But they also marketed her as an extremely conventionally attractive woman who frequently wore bathing suits. It was one of the touchiest things to comment on with her career: Where other women would have to struggle for their matchmaking and featured spots, Mackenzie’s opportunities kept coming, and they were almost always on the main broadcast and, on multiple occasions, in the main event slots women almost never received. And she needed them, because despite being legitimately quite good, she just wasn’t great. She could make it into the top fifteen, and sometimes even brush the top ten, but every time they tried to get Mackenzie into title contention, she’d falter. It was Amanda Ribas in 2019, it was Marina Rodriguez in 2021, and between 2022 and 2024, Mackenzie had the worst run of her life, winning only one out of four bouts, getting shut down by Yan Xiaonan and Amanda Lemos, and taking the first stoppage loss of her career after being knocked out by Jéssica Andrade. She managed to get her way back up the ladder again by outgrappling Loopy Godinez and submitting a struggling Amanda Ribas in a six-years-belated rematch, but with so many losses to top contenders, her path to the title still seemed closed. Then a funny thing happened: Zhang Weili gave up the Strawweight belt to move up to Flyweight and challenge Valentina Shevchenko. Suddenly, the door was wide open. And conveniently, the UFC had booked all the women who beat Mackenzie into other matches, leaving Mackenzie with just one contender left--and it was Virna Jandiroba, a career grappler whom Mackenzie had already beaten back in 2020. The two met at UFC 321 on October 25, and after seven years of effort, the UFC finally got its way. Mackenzie beat Virna again, fair and square, in a close and hard-fought but ultimately clear decision. She is, at last, the Strawweight Champion of the World. And she’s in the exceptionally weird position of being a newly-minted champion that has very recently lost to several of her own top contenders. If Zhang Weili fails to beat Valentina Shevchenko, it’s very likely the UFC will try to pressure her back down to 115 for a money match with Mackenzie, in which case Dern would almost certainly be a big underdog in her own first defense. If not, at this point, it’s either a rematch with Yan Xiaonan, a grappling match with Tatiana Suarez, or the UFC stops pretending entirely and has Mackenzie beat Contender Series women until she turns a profit.

NOTABLE CHAMPIONS ACROSS THE WORLD

Rizin Lightweight Champion, 156 lbs

Luiz Gustavo - 16-4, 0 Defenses

Sunrise, sunset. Luiz Gustavo is not new to Rizin. He made his debut all the way back in 2018, when he was an undefeated, 8-0 22 year-old who’d only barely started fighting real competition down in Katana Fight. Rizin threw him straight into a main event in the hopes of completing the ascension of their rising star Yusuke Yachi, who’d just capped off a six-fight winning streak that included torch-passing matches with Japanese legends like Satoru Kitaoka and Takanori Gomi. Gustavo was supposed to be Yachi’s victim. Instead he knocked Yachi out in two rounds. Suddenly, Gustavo was the star and the man folks had flagged as Rizin’s next big Lightweight champion. He proceeded to go 1-3 over the next year, which culminated in the first knockout loss of his life against Patricky Pitbull and, ultimately, an almost three-year hiatus while the world struggled with COVID. When Rizin tried to get back to its wholly-international ways in 2022, they had Yusuke Yachi waiting for a rematch, and once again, Gustavo knocked him dead in two rounds. In two years Luiz had a winning streak and a shot at longtime champion Roberto “Satoshi” de Souza, and the world expected a classic striker-vs-grappler clash. Satoshi shocked him with a right hand and knocked him out in twenty seconds. Having lost his shot, and followed it with an unsuccessful bout against Shunta Nomura, Gustavo’s hopes for the top of the heap were so distant that Rizin booked him into a fight with living legend Kazushi Sakuraba’s son, the 2-1 Taisei. Gustavo punched him out in seven and a half minutes. Barely two months later, Rizin needed a challenger to stand opposite Ilkhom Nazimov, the man who had unseated Satoshi during their big New Year’s Eve special, and Luiz was available. Once again, the world underestimated him, and once again, they were wrong. Luiz punched Nazimov out in two minutes to finally take his title home.

Rizin Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs

Razhabali Shaydullaev - 18-0, 3 Defenses

I asked how long the second reign of Kleber Koike Erbst would last, and as it turns out, the answer was sixty-two seconds. Razhabali Shaydullaev’s rise through the sport has been impressively meteoric. Four years ago he was a rookie fighting on Batyr Bashy cards in Kyrgyzstan as a predominantly grappling-based fighter. Three years ago he was disposing of journeymen in the developmental leagues of Russia’s Absolute Championship Akhmat. Two years ago he was choking out top contenders in South Korea’s Road FC. One year ago he got signed to Rizin. In just six months he choked out a DEEP champion, submitted a Bellator champion and smashed through a K-1 Kickboxing champion with virtually no resistance. He was the favorite against Erbst, but few thought it would be an easy night, with Erbst having been finished only once in his entire career, and even that was an armbar all the way back in 2009 when he was still a rookie. Shaydullaev, as he has been doing for the entirety of his run thus far, destroyed Erbst. He walked through him and flattened him in just barely over a minute. Rizin’s got another gaijin champion, and given how good he’s looked, they may be stuck with him for awhile--or, worse, they might lose him to the UFC sooner than later. With Mikuru Asakura’s victory over Chihiro Suzuki on the same night he’s the logical next contender, but that would just be stupid, so instead it was Shaydullaev making his first defense against Viktor Kolesnik at Rizin 51 on September 28: He knocked Kolesnik out in just thirty-three seconds. His successful murders got him the main event of 2025’s Japanese New Year’s MMA special, where Rizin secretly hoped their big national star Mikuru Asakura would get the job done; Shaydullaev chain-suplexed him, grounded him, and laid an unconscionable amount of ground and pound on him in one of those Japan-likes-to-let-its-heroes-die moments before the ref finally called the fight in just shy of three minutes. Shaydullaev’s the best guy in the company, and now there’s a question of what’s left for him to do. For now, inexplicably, the answer was carrying the murder of the 5-2 Yuta Kubo at Rizin Landmark 13 on April 11, which is wild because they already fought at the end of 2024 and Shaydullaev destroyed him in seven and a half minutes. Try to control your shock: This time it only took Shaydullaev four.

Rizin Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs

Danny Sabatello - 18-4-1, 1 Defense

When Naoki Inoue won Rizin’s Bantamweight title I wrote that Rizin was one step closer to its dream of an all-Japanese championship roster, and it’s fitting that as gaijin once again take over the majority of the championship belts in the biggest organization in Japan, Danny goddamn Sabatello is one of the men to do it. Sabatello has been dogged by a reputation as a grinding wrestler without a ton to offer since 2020, when he got the call to compete on Dana White’s Contender Series, won, and was notably not offered a contract on the grounds of Boring Grappler. He made the move to late-stage Bellator instead, where he attempted to establish himself as their own personal Chael Sonnen: An indefatigable wrestling machine whose mouth ran just as hard as his double-legs. But it never quite caught on. The talk seemed a bit forced, the wrestling wasn’t that fun to watch, and all his 1980s wrestling promos about the bums in Bellator’s Bantamweight Grand Prix ended with an elimination at the hands of Raufeon Stots. Sabatello swore he’d won and that he’d get revenge; instead he ended his Bellator tenure getting choked out by Magomed Magomedov, decisioned again by Stots, and losing out on a shot at the PFL after going to a draw with Lazaro Dayron, who would’ve won the decision were it not for a point deduction. It was a bit of a shock when Sabatello signed with Rizin in 2025, but it seemed to have paid off when he scored his first knockout in six years during his debut against Shinobu Ota and swore he’d reinvent himself as Japan’s new American superstar. Then he went back to wrestling. It was still enough to get him his shot at Inoue’s belt at 2025’s New Year’s special, and despite the common wisdom of judging favoritism, a very close split decision went Danny’s way. It took three years longer than he intended, but Danny Sabatello is holding gold. Now we see if he can, in fact, become Big In Japan. His first title defense was against Joji Goto at Rizin Landmark 13 on April 11, and, unsurprisingly, he wrestled Goto to a broad decision.

Rizin Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs

Hiromasa Ougikubo - 30-8-2, 0 Defenses

It’s been an incredibly long road to gold for Hiromasa Ougikubo. He was a teenager when he made his professional debut all the way back in 2006, and even at 19, he was notable for the tough, gritty way he handled his grappling. Within a year he was a Shooto rookie tournament winner, within a dozen fights he was a regional champion, and a year later, he was Shooto’s Bantamweight World Champion. And then he immediately lost it after getting choked out by some guy named Kyoji Horiguchi. Having faced a level of force he didn’t feel he could contend with, he dropped down to Flyweight, where he was an immediate success, winning the Vale Tudo Japan tournament and, ultimately, the 125-pound Shooto title. That win got him called over to America for the most talent-rich season of The Ultimate Fighter ever, 2016’s Tournament of Champions, where he distinguished himself as one of the best fighters in the house and even beat a young Alexandre Pantoja on his way to the finals. Unfortunately, he couldn’t get past Tim Elliott. He returned to Japan, where, in his absence, Rizin had been reborn in the ashes of Pride FC, and as one of Japan’s best fighters, he got immediately called to the show--where he was immediately defeated by some guy named Kyoji Horiguchi. Ougikubo went back up to Bantamweight and fought his way to a title shot at company star Kai Asakura, but Asakura lanced him with a knee and ended his title hopes again. Undeterred, Hiromasa entered Rizin’s 2021 Bantamweight Grand Prix and stormed the bracket, winning four fights in a year and two in the same night, including the sweet revenge of a championship final where he defeated Asakura and staked his claim as the best Bantamweight in Japan. And then South Korean Kim Soo-chul beat him. So Ougikubo dropped back down to Flyweight for 2022’s massive Bellator vs Rizin supercard--where he was, for the third time, beaten by some guy named Kyoji Horiguchi. Someone should find out if that dude’s any good at fighting. Ougikubo still got his shot at Rizin’s Bantamweight title, but Juan Archuleta beat him, and for the first time in seventeen years of fighting, Ougikubo found himself on a three-fight losing streak. But Horiguchi, Rizin’s Flyweight champion, left the company to return to the UFC, and with the throne empty, Ougikubo wanted one more shot. He went back down to 125 pounds, he entered the 2025 Flyweight Grand Prix, he ran the table one more time, and at the 2025 New Year’s Special he faced and defeated Yuki Motoya to win the tournament and, with it, the vacant belt. It took several tries and almost twenty years, but by god, Hiromasa Ougikubo is the world champion. He’ll try to defend the belt for the first time against Shinryu Takahashi at Rizin Landmark 14 on June 6.

Rizin Women’s Super Atomweight Championship, 108 lbs

VACANT - The source of life and death

The world has long wondered who or what could beat Seika Izawa, and as it turns out, the answer is childbirth. At Rizin Landmark 13 on April 12, 2026, Seika took to the ring and announced her pregnancy and, accordingly, her hiatus from the sport. After four straight years as the undisputed best Atomweight in the world, the queen has abdicated the throne. She vowed to one day return and take back the belt from whichever unlucky woman gets it in her absence, but obviously there’s no timeline for said return, nor should there be. All eyes now turn to the rest of Rizin’s Atomweight division, which is, like, four people. Ayaka Hamasaki’s back in Rizin, but she got armbarred pretty easily by the debuting Natasha Kuziutina. Moeri Suda and Saori Oshima are always around on loan from DEEP. I’m sure they’d love to belt up RENA, but she spends half of her time closer to Strawweight. It’s a loss for mixed martial arts, we are all happy for Seika and wish her well, and god bless Rizin, which can never, ever have a full complement of champions.

ONE Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs

ONE Light Heavyweight Champion, 225 lbs

ONE Middleweight Champion, 205 lbs

VACANT - The inevitable end of hubris

We were always destined to end here. ONE’s heavier title belts have always been more suggestion than reality. All three have seen at most five champions apiece in their decade-plus of existence--in Light Heavyweight’s case it’s just four, which makes sense, as after ten goddamn years there have been exactly five Light Heavyweight title fights. The belt-padding era began in earnest when ONE made Reinier de Ridder the double-champion over a division that barely existed, and when he fell on hard times with ONE management, they one-upped him by having Heavyweight champion Anatoly Malykhin drop to 225 and 205 thereafter just to beat him out of the company entirely. Over the past two years there was exactly one championship fight across all three weight classes, and it saw Oumar “Reug Reug” Kane take Malykhin’s Heavyweight title away, and it was a portent of the future that Marcus Buchecha won #1 contendership on that same night and opted to leave the company rather than fight for its title. Kane and Malykhin wouldn’t have their scheduled rematch until May 15, 2026, when Malykhin got his revenge by knocking out an exhausted Kane in the fourth round. Having won back his belt, he retired immediately, and in so doing rendered 1/3 of ONE’s MMA championships vacant. I’d bet we will, eventually, see another Heavyweight champion in ONE; I doubt we’ll ever see the other two belts again.

ONE Welterweight Champion, 185 lbs

Christian Lee - 18-4 (1), 0 Defenses

ONE Lightweight Champion, 170 lbs

Christian Lee - 18-4 (1), 1 Defense

It took three tries, but by god, Chatri gets what Chatri wants. Christian Lee, the male half of the first family of ONE Championship and its homegrown golden boy, was very mad about losing his lightweight championship in a controversial decision to Ok Rae Yoon last year. He demanded the decision be reviewed and overturned and his championship reinstated. Unsurprisingly: This did not happen. After months of complaining and just shy of a year of waiting, the two had their long-awaited rematch and Lee left nothing to chance, knocking Yoon out in six minutes to reclaim his belt. Having finally retrieved his title, Lee, being a responsible champion, proceeded to immediately challenge ONE’S 185-pound champion, Kiamrian Abbasov, for his title, a move that was definitely in no way influenced by ONE’s repeated attempts to get his sister Angela Lee double-champion status. Fortunately for Christian, Abbasov horribly botched his weight cut: He came in overweight, lost his title on the scale, and was visibly depleted in the fight. Which is particularly lucky, because Abbasov beat Lee senseless in the first round to the point that a standing TKO would not have been an unreasonable stoppage. But whether from his failed weight cut or simply from punching himself out, Abbasov was exhausted by the second round, and Lee mounted a gutsy comeback and ultimately stopped him with ground-and-pound in the fourth round. After three attempts, ONE has succeeded in getting two belts on a Lee. Unfortunately, it was followed by tragedy. After the passing of his younger sister Victoria, Christian took the whole of the year to, understandably, grieve. ONE planned his comeback for February of 2024, but, y’know, that clearly did not happen. ONE held an interim title fight between Alibeg Rasulov and Ok Rae Yoon to welcome him back--but that didn’t exactly happen either, as Rasulov failed hydration tests, became ineligible to win the title, then won the fight anyway. Lee vs Rasulov was scheduled for October. And then November. It finally happened on December 7, 2024--and it ended in a No Contest after two rounds thanks to Christian unintentionally gouging Rasulov’s eye. They ran it back almost a full year later at ONE 173 on November 16, and this time Lee knocked him out in the second round, marking Lee’s first win in three years.

ONE Featherweight Champion, 155 lbs

Tang Kai - 20-4, 2 Defenses

Tang Kai has been flying under the radar for some time, and in hindsight, that was clearly a mistake. He made his professional debut as a 20 year-old collegiate wrestler and won a rookie featherweight tournament in China’s WBK (after investigating, we THINK it’s World Battle Kings), but his stylistic limitations became apparent when he moved up to Kunlun Fight--and stopped fighting rookies. Dominant decision losses to ACA standout Bekhruz “Ong Bak” Zukurov and Road to UFC runner-up Asikeerbai Jinensibieke made Kai’s weaknesses too apparent to ignore, and he made the tough call to commit to his dream, pack up his life, and move away from home to start training with real fight camps, most notably Shanghai’s Dragon Gym and Phuket’s legendary Tiger Muay Thai. It’s worked out quite well: He hasn’t lost a fight in five years. Three knockout wins in China’s Rebel FC got ONE’s attention, and since debuting with the organization in 2019, Kai has soundly defeated everyone in his path. He claims his wrestling base makes him impossible to take down and he proves it by using it almost entirely defensively, vastly preferring to bludgeon his opponents on his feet. His fight against Thanh Le, while blistering and difficult, was proof: He evaded every takedown attempt, widely outstruck him, dropped him with punches and leg kicks alike, and took the belt he’s held for two years. And then, absolutely nothing else happened. It took ONE almost a full year to book another match for Tang Kai, and it was just an instant rematch with Thanh Le with no fanfare, and it was delayed by eight full months thanks to an injury. So after more than a year and a half without a fight, Tang Kai finally fought Thanh Le again, and this time, he knocked him out in three rounds. Congratulations, Tang Kai: You are back at square one. His position hasn’t improved much, either. He was supposed to defend his title against Akbar Abdullaev on January 10, and Abdullaev pounded him out in the fifth round, but he also missed weight by a pound and a half and thus was ineligible for the championship. So, hey: Still a world champion! You just got knocked out a little bit. It’s fine. ONE cut Abdullaev anyway rather than give him another shot. After almost another year and a half of inactivity Tang Kai finally defended his title on May 15, this time knocking out Shamil Gasanov.

ONE Bantamweight Champion, 145 lbs

Engh-Orgil Baatarkhuu - 14-3, 0 Defenses

By god, ONE had an MMA title change hands in 2025. Enkh-Orgil Baatarkhuu is one of the precious few success stories for ONE’s feeder system. He was a 5-2 champion in the small (but competitive!) regional scene in his native Mongolia, which put him on ONE’s talent-scouting radar for their Warriors of the Steppe tournament in 2022. Enkh won two fights in six days to earn his contract with ONE, where he quickly discovered that no matter where you go in the wide world of sports, being a grappler-type Pokemon makes companies less invested in promoting you. Enkh went 6-1 across two years--8-1, if you count those aforementioned tournament wins--and finished most of his opponents, but title contention eluded him in no small part thanks to ONE’s turn away from mixed martial arts as a whole. It wasn’t until December 6 that Enkh finally got his long-belated shot at Fabricio Andrade’s Bantamweight title, and the first round and a half looked pretty thoroughly one-sided in Andrade’s favor, as most had figured it would be given the gap in Enkh’s striking game, and Andrade battered him to a near-stoppage on a couple occasions. But Enkh, as it turns out, is tough as shit. He weathered the storm and used his grit, his power and his wrestling to turn the tables, and towards the end of the fourth round, an exhausted Andrade gave up the ghost and got himself strangled. Enkh-Orgil Baatarkhuu is ONE’s Bantamweight champion, and his very first act as a champion was to call for a cross-class title match with Tang Kai, because weight classes aren’t real.

ONE Flyweight Champion, 135 lbs

Avazbek Kholmirzaev - 16-2, 0 Defenses

There’s a certain kind of tragedy in winning a championship during what certainly seems to be the waning days of a promotion’s time with mixed martial arts. Avazbek Kholmirzaev is by no means new to ONE, his title victory came a whole eleven fights into his time on their roster, but he spent a great deal of that time nigh-unto invisible. He got his start in his native country’s Uzbekistan MMA Association, but like so many of his countrymen, the successes that built his career came from the bigger, more popular Alash Pride FC, Kazakhstan’s biggest promotion, which is large, well-populated, and also the kind of bullshit record-padding organization that books main events between promising prospects and 5-11 guys who mysteriously always lose within three minutes. But he was on the positive side of the equation, and he knocked people out with spinning kicks, so ONE scouted him for their expansion across the East and he proved to be a natural fit--for the prelims. Avazbek almost never left the first few fights of the cards he was booked on, right up to his championship-opportunity-earning victory over no less than the 11-10 Jeremy Miado this past December curtain-jerking an Amazon Prime card, and an unkind man would probably intimate that his shot at Yuya Wakamatsu’s Flyweight Championship was an attempt to get Yuya a win, being as it was ONE’s big Ariake Arena show in Tokyo and they were attempting to showcase as much of their Japanese talent as possible. It was going well for Yuya right up until he ate a spinning elbow to the dome and went down in a heap just moments before the second round was about to end. Avazbek is a champion and he should be duly proud, and now we’re just left to see what being an MMA champion in ONE means in 2026.

ONE Strawweight Champion, 125 lbs

Joshua Pacio - 23-5, 1 Defense

It’s been a difficult couple of years for Joshua Pacio. “The Passion” stands as a true veteran of ONE Championship, having made his debut--and his first, unsuccessful attempt at winning the Strawweight title--all the way back in 2016. Pacio established himself as both a fan favorite and a solid promotional favorite for the company, and when he lost his second bid for the title against Yosuke Saruta in 2019, ONE, in a trick they’d become very friendly with over the years, gave him an instant rematch anyway. Pacio knocked Saruta out in the rematch and became easily the greatest 125-pound champion in ONE history, ultimately defending the title three times--including a trilogy match against Saruta. By 2022, Pacio was a crown jewel for ONE’s lineup. Which is when he promptly got wrestled into paste by UFC cast-off Jarred Brooks. Rather than having him defend the title, ONE booked Brooks into grappling matches, and in the meantime Pacio fought and defeated undefeated prospect Mansur Malachiev to earn himself a rematch. Multiple delays ensued, but on March 1, the Brooks/Pacio rematch finally came. Fifty-six seconds in, Pacio attempted a standing kimura on Brooks, who hoisted him off the ground, suplexed him, and knocked him out. Unfortunately, this was a problem. Under ONE’s ruleset, slams that land headfirst are illegal. ONE has been regularly criticized for this--less for the rule itself as for ONE’s tendency to selectively enforce the rule, using it to benefit fighters they would like to succeed. ONE, of course, denies this vehemently. However you draw your own conclusions, at the end of the day Jarred Brooks was disqualified, and thus, by DQ, Joshua Pacio is now a three-time Strawweight champion. He almost immediately announced he has torn his ACL and was out for an entire year. On February 20th, 2025, Pacio and Brooks finally fought again and it was weird, but definitive. Jarred Brooks seemingly exhausted himself after a round and Pacio pounded him for the entire second round, which eventually elicited a mercy stoppage from the ref. ONE has only one 125-pound champion again. So he, of course, challenged for the 135-pound title next. Pacio vs Wakamatsu happened at ONE 173 on November 16 and ended in Pacio getting smashed in six minutes.

ONE Women’s Atomweight Champion, 115 lbs

Denice Zamboanga - 12-2, 0 Defenses

Denice Zamboanga, to be clear, is not the problem with ONE’s women’s divisions. She’s a good fighter. She’s been trucking along in ONE since 2009, she’s proven herself repeatedly as a solid all-around competitor. She’s tough, she’s talented, she’s never been finished. She’s also never beaten a top fighter. She’s fought 0-0 rookies, she’s beaten journeywomen on losing streaks--in a dozen fights with ONE, she’s only beaten someone coming off a victory at all twice. She was also notably defeated by Seo Hee Ham, the top Atomweight contender and former Rizin champion, twice in a row. It was consequently a bit of a surprise to Ham when ONE announced an interim title fight to make up for Stamp’s injury absence and she wasn’t in it. Instead of her, the #1 contender whose only loss in ONE was to Stamp herself, it would be Denice Zamboanga, the woman she beat, against Alyona Rassohyna, a woman she also beat and who, as a bonus, had not fought in ONE since September of 2021--when she lost to Stamp Fairtex. This was all supposed to end in a unification match with Stamp at ONE 173 on August 1, but in early May, ONE announced that Stamp had reinjured her knee and was going to miss at least the rest of 2025. With the awareness that it would have been close to two and a half years between title fights, Stamp ‘voluntarily relinquished’ her title. This wound up being even more infuriating when ONE failed to rebook Denice for so long that upon finally scheduling her again, they chose ONE 173 on November 16, where Stamp Fairtex, who is now healthy, will be fighting a completely unrelated kickboxing match. Denice will face Ayaka Miura. Rather: Denice was going to face Ayaka Miura, but at the end of August she announced medical issues will prevent her from fighting. So they made an interim title fight for Stamp’s return against a non-#1 contender, and then they stripped Stamp for being unable to compete, and then they didn’t schedule the next championship fight until the card where Stamp was making her return anyway, and now Stamp is healthy and fighting but the Atomweight champion isn’t. Stamp lost and Denice has yet to be rebooked. Just fucking stop already.

Invicta Bantamweight Championship, 135 lbs

Jennifer Maia - 23-10-1, 0 Defenses

It did not take Jennifer Maia long to find her way back home to Invicta after the UFC cut her in 2023, and it only took a year for her to reclaim gold in the company she left behind. This is, in fact, Maia’s third stint with Invicta: The first time around was back in 2013, when Invicta was barely a year old and Maia was only a couple years and nine fights into her career, and it saw Maia distinguishing herself as a hot prospect but failing to get past the top ranks. She came back in 2016 as a more seasoned fighter and captured its Flyweight championship, but, as is the fate of all regional champions, she traded the belt for a ticket to the UFC. Her half-decade in the big show was by no means bad--she even fought Valentina Shevchenko for the UFC’s 125-pound title--but she still couldn’t crack the top of the mountain, and eventually, the UFC got tired of her derailing prospects and let her go. It only took two fights for Maia to dethrone Talita Bernardo and gain her second Invicta gold. Hopefully she sticks around this time.

Invicta Atomweight Championship, 105 lbs

Elisandra Ferreira - 9-2, 1 Defense
The only major Atomweight division in America is back, and as happens so often, it belongs to Brazil. Elisandra “Lili” Ferreira started competing as an amateur at 19, lost all of her amateur fights, and proceeded to turn pro anyway, because giving up sucks. She spent the first third of her professional career fighting at Strawweight simply because Atomweight opportunities are few and farbetween, but she made the turn to the lower weight class in 2021 and never looked back, and boy, it’s worked out for her. With one exception--a loss to Anastasia Nikolakakos, maybe the best Atomweight on this side of the globe--Ferreira’s cleaned house on the division. She made the jump to Invicta in 2023, and a year and a half later she’s 4-0 and the new bannerwoman for its most unique weight class, thanks to a hard-fought decision over Andressa Romero on September 20, 2024. Invicta’s 2024 comeback has reclaimed its first lost title; now we just have to see who they line up to test Ferreira over the next year of its renaissance. Her first at-bat came against Ana Palacios at Invicta FC 61 on April 4, and Ferreira earned a near-shutout on the scorecards.

PFL Heavyweight Championship, 265 lbs

Vadim Nemkov - 19-2 (1), 0 Defenses

When the PFL announced that it was going to crown a standing Heavyweight champion, they had a raft of interesting options. Oleg Popov, their 2025 tournament champion, had a strong argument. Denis Goltsov, 2024 champion and the only man in almost ten years to beat Popov, could’ve called dibs. Hell, the PFL still technically has Francis Ngannou, the best Heavyweight on the planet, under contract. They, of course, did not choose any of those men. They chose Renan Ferreira, the 2023 tournament champion whose only fight in almost two years was a TKO loss to Ngannou, and Vadim Nemkov, Bellator’s best Light Heavyweight. Nemkov, a Fedor protégé, hadn’t lost since 2016, when he got himself punched out by Jiří Procházka and narrowly edged out by Karl Albrektsson, and it’s a testament to both his skills and the world’s dim view of the Heavyweight division that when the PFL acquired Bellator and Nemkov announced he was leaving 205 for the 265-pound world, instead of the expected fretting about how a 6’1” man would contend in the world of the big boys, more or less everyone said “Yeah, that’s fine.” And lo: It was. Nemkov choked out 2021 PFL champ Bruno Cappelozza, and then he choked out the ever-pained Timothy Johnson, and when he fought Renan Ferreira at PFL Champions Series 4 on December 13, 2025, shockingly, he choked him out, too. Nemkov’s now the only major Heavyweight champion in American MMA outside of the UFC. Hopefully it pays off.

PFL Light Heavyweight Championship, 205 lbs

Corey Anderson - 20-6 (1), 0 Defenses

One of the best Light Heavyweights in the world isn’t in the UFC, and they have only themselves to blame. Corey Anderson was the precise kind of fighter the UFC wanted when they first got ahold of him in 2014: Big, young, athletic, talented, undefeated. He had all the makings of a future champion, and his victory on The Ultimate Fighter 19 (jesus christ) cemented him as a prospect to watch. Unfortunately, he had also barely been in the sport for a year and only had four professional fights to his name. In short order he’d suffered his first loss, and a couple years later, a pair of back-to-back knockouts in 2017 sent him to the realm of afterthoughts. But a recommitment to his wrestling style, an extremely well-aged victory over Glover Teixeira, and a devastating knockout over Johnny Walker got Anderson back in the title picture, and in 2020, he fought Jan Błachowicz to determine the #1 contender to the soon-to-be-vacated belt. They’d done battle once, five years prior, and Corey had won a clear decision. This time, Jan flattened him in three minutes. Despite his top-ten ranking and the four consecutive fights he’d just won, the UFC decided to dump Corey, sending him from main event to unemployment in a week. Corey went straight to Bellator and proceeded to become one of its best stars, and he would have become the first man in America to beat Vadim Nemkov had they not banged their heads together and ended the fight prematurely. Corey lost the rematch, but he became the last man to hold Bellator’s Light Heavyweight title after beating Karl Moore, and on October 3, Corey had a champion vs champion match against the PFL’s 205-pound tournament champion, Dovletdzhan Yagshimuradov. Corey had pounded him out in Bellator four years prior, and while he didn’t get the stoppage in the present, he did get the win, and in so doing he became the inaugural PFL Light Heavyweight Champion. What that actually means going forward, we’ll have to see.

PFL Middleweight Championship, 185 lbs

Costello van Steenis - 18-3, 1 Defense

For years, the Professional Fighters League has threatened to crown standing champions. Did they carry through any of their major tournament winners? Nope. Did they bring out their holdout Bellator champions? Not exactly! Did they at least make a big hubbub about finally going through with it? Of course not. Instead, just five days before PFL Champions Series 2, their promotional debut in South Africa, they abruptly announced that Bellator champ Johnny Eblen was suddenly the first-ever PFL Middleweight Champion, and his match with Costello van Steenis was the first-ever defense of the title. Costello, himself, was a Bellator veteran who’d been absorbed in the PFL buyout, but he’d always played second fiddle in the organization, unable to get through the John Salters and Douglas Limas of the world, and thus said world was mostly overlooking him as a challenger. The first three rounds of Eblen gradually grinding him into dust bore out that expectation, but then a funny thing happened: The inexhaustible wrestler got tired. Eblen found himself punched up by van Steenis in the fourth round, and he seemed to be pulling it together again in the fifth, but right before the bell could ring van Steenis managed to take his back and sink in a choke, and with just seven seconds separating him from an almost-certain decision victory, Eblen passed out. Costello van Steenis is the first man to truly hold a standing PFL Championship, and he became the second man to defend one after knocking out Fabian Edwards on March 20.

THE PFL WELTERWEIGHT CONUNDRUM

Yeah, I don’t quite know what to do here. On February 7, the (technically) final Welterweight champion of Bellator, Ramazan Kuramagomedov, beat 2024 PFL tournament champion and undefeated favorite Shamil Musaev and became the first official PFL Welterweight Champion. In his post-fight interview he immediately retired. On one hand, the PFL still lists him as their officially reigning champion. On the other, the PFL’s Youtube channel has a video on it named RAMAZAN KURAMAGOMEDOV ANNOUNCES THIS WAS HIS LAST FIGHT and in their own description phrase it as “announcing his retirement.” Does the PFL have a Welterweight champion? I don’t think even they know. So, as of March 1, 2026, I’m leaving ol’ Matthew Lesko here until the PFL clarifies its own title situation and I am on pins and needles to see how long it’ll take before I remove this section. UPDATE, JUNE: The PFL has announced that Ramazan has officially been stripped, which sure does feel like a ‘you can’t quit, you’re fired’ kind of move, and Thad Jean vs Shamil Musaev on July 25th will crown the second Welterweight champ. Matty Lesks can stick around for another two months, as a treat.

PFL Lightweight Championship, 155 lbs

Usman Nurmagomedov - 21-0 (1), 1 Defense

The Nurmagomedov family is trying to run the sport, and Usman is their B-league beachhead, but that assault has proven to be an awful lot rockier than the rest. As the kid brother of Umar and the cousin of Khabib, Usman had great expectations thrust upon him very early in his career, and he dealt with them the way regional talents with great camps traditionally do: Squashing severely overmatched competition until you get a contract from one of the big companies. Bellator won the Usman bidding war and brought him over in 2021, and he proved to be one of the breakout stars of their final days, blitzing his way up the Lightweight ranks, knocking off several contenders and ultimately beating Patricky Pitbull to win the 155-pound championship and securing his reign by retiring former star and UFC champ Benson Henderson. It was 2023, and even though Bellator’s upcoming death was clear, Usman was a name and widely considered one of the best Lightweights in the world. Unfortunately, then, things got weird. He was a massive, -2200 favorite to beat Brent Primus in the waning days of Bellator, and he did--and it became the first non-win of his career after failing a drug test for something that was never disclosed. He carried Bellator’s title over into its new life as a colony of the PFL, and he immediately ran into controversy after barely scraping a majority decision off of Irish superprospect Paul Hughes. The world wanted a rematch for the inaugural PFL Lightweight Championship fight, and on October 3, at the PFL’s big Dubai show, they got it--and this time, it waws even closer, with media scorecards split right down the middle. This, by itself, is not that unusual, nor is one fighter winning a controversial decision unusual. It is unusual when the decision is not only unanimous, but one judge scores the entire fight as a 50-45 shut-out. So Usman’s last two wins were dubious, and his future as part of the PFL depends on how they treat their own championship, but for now, he is the damn champion. He notched his first title defense by choking out Alfie Davis on February 7.

PFL Women’s Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs

Cris Cyborg - 29-2 (1), 1 Defense

Are you noticing how all of the inaugural PFL champions are just Bellator’s champions? Funny, that. Cris Cyborg is the greatest Women’s Featherweight of all time, and we all just kind of have to deal with that, because Women’s Featherweight has only barely ever existed. Strikeforce set the standard back in 2006 because Gina Carano was one of their biggest stars, and that star lasted right up until 2009, when they attempted to put a belt on her and failed because Cris Cyborg punched the shit out of her. In the following sixteen years Cyborg’s only lost one mixed martial arts fight, and it took Amanda Nunes, the greatest Women’s mixed martial artist of all time, to do it. Aside from that one loss, she’s run the table. She was the Strikeforce Featherweight Champion until it closed, and then she was Invicta’s Featherweight Champion until they let the UFC have her, and then she was the UFC’s Featherweight Champion until Amanda dropped her, and Cyborg promptly went to Bellator and won their title, too. When the PFL brought her over in the Bellator buyout, they set her up for an interpromotional superfight against Larissa Pacheco, a two-time PFL tournament winner and the only woman who’d ever beaten Kayla Harrison. On one hand, Pacheco’s one of just six women to ever make it to the final bell with Cyborg. On the other, she lost 4-1. In the ultimate act of promotional cowardice, the PFL promoted Cyborg to champion status three days before her appearance at the PFL Champions Series on December 13, 2025, meaning her fight with Sara Collins was, technically, a title defense. It was as one-sided as you’d expect. In theory, this is great! The biggest female fighter outside the UFC has a belt and the PFL is bringing back a division the UFC threw in the garbage. In practice, Cyborg didn’t even get out of her post-fight interview without noting that after her next fight she’s going to retire from MMA in favor of focusing on her boxing career. So welcome back, Women’s Featherweight. I hope you still exist by 2027.

SATURDAY, MAY 30 FROM THE GALAXY ARENA IN MACAU, CHINA
EARLY START TIME WARNING | PRELIMS 1 AM PDT / 4 AM EDT | MAIN CARD 4 AM / 7 AM

Western viewers, welcome to your second Card You’re Probably Not Gonna Watch of the month. It’s not quite the annual trip to Macau, as they skipped 2025, but they took Deiveson Figueiredo and Zhang Mingyang to China in 2024 and by god, they’re gonna do it again. If you are staying up until 7 AM to watch Jake Matthews, god bless you.

MAIN EVENT: ROUNDING OUT THE RANKS
BANTAMWEIGHT: Song Yadong (22-9-1 (1), #5) vs Deiveson Figueiredo (25-6-1, #7)

When Song Yadong fought Henry Cejudo back in 2025, I wrote about the troubles of never quite making it to the top of the mountain.

Song Yadong needs this. Song Yadong has needed this for quite some time. Song’s run in the UFC is nearing its eighth year, and it, too, has been a success by any measure. You do not last nearly a decade in one of the hungriest shark tanks in the sport without being good; you do not knock out most of your UFC opponents and hang around in the Bantamweight rankings without being great.
(...)
But he still lost. That makes two failed runs at the top--three, if you count Kyler Phillips knocking him back down the ladder in 2021--and at a certain point, you start running out of bodies to climb. If Song wants to fight his way back to contention, he needs to beat a top guy, and with his longevity, there are precious few he has yet to battle.

Song beat Henry Cejudo that night, albeit with the controversy of an extremely weirdly-officiated eye-poke-based loss, but it was enough to earn him that third or fourth shot at Bantamweight’s pole position. It took almost an entire goddamn year, but this past January, Song walked into the cage with Sean O’Malley and gave it his best effort, and the result was an extremely close bout that split public and media scorecards right down the middle.

You can, I hope, surmise for yourselves who wins a close decision in a Sean O’Malley fight.

Cheap shot? Cheap shot. Probably a cheap shot. It’s not Sean O’Malley’s fault that his path to the title was astroturfed by some of the most egregious marketing and matchmaking favoritism in memory, nor that his title eliminator win over Petr Yan was a robbery, and in either case, the Song fight was no robbery. It was close, it was even, and as so often happens, the cosmic coinflip just happened to go the way of the wide marketing favorite.

And that means Song Yadong is stuck on the outside looking in, yet again. There’s this unfortunate phenomenon with trying to prove yourself as a contender: Every time you fail, it becomes harder to envision your success. After a certain point you stop looking like a contender and you start looking like a gatekeeper.

But that point comes for some fighters sooner than others, and I think Deiveson Figueiredo is already there.

People had high hopes for Figgy as a Bantamweight, as they generally do whenever a former world champion decides to take on another weight class, but as much as I enjoy Deiveson as a fighter, I was skeptical from the beginning. At Flyweight he was a physically imposing, power-punching monster that could hurt anyone he touched. At Bantamweight he was the second-smallest man in the division and already entering the back half of his thirties. But he snapped off a three-fight winning streak, and just like that, he proved that he belonged in the contendership conversation.

Except said streak came against Rob Font, the division’s peripheral gatekeeper, and Cody Garbrandt, a fallen champion at the tail end of going 3 for 10--one of those losses coming at the hands of, hilariously enough, Rob Font--and Marlon Vera, who is now 1 for 6, and even that victory was a widely derided decision. Over the year and a half he’s spent fighting competitively relevant Bantamweights, Deiveson’s gotten beaten handily by Petr Yan, had his knee shredded to pieces by Cory Sandhagen, and lost a wide decision to Umar Nurmagomedov after blowing his weight cut by three and a half pounds.

His sole victory, the only thing keeping him afloat in the top ten, was a split decision over Montel Jackson that stands as one of the most baffling fights I have ever seen, a match-up that bordered on performance art in its sheer tribute to the power of negative space, where only one man landed double-digit strikes in one, single round, and somehow, he was the one that lost.

That’s it. That’s the only good news for Deiveson in the last two years. He won a fight that only barely qualified as a fight, and since then he’s gotten trashed by a top contender after failing--badly--to make the divisional limit despite being one of the shortest Bantamweights in the sport. He is losing frequently, he’s looking awful even when he wins, he’s struggling to get his body where it needs to be, and at the end of this year he’ll be 39 at one of the fastest weight classes in the sport.

Deiveson’s dream has all the hallmarks of being over. It was beautiful while it lasted, but it is quickly gathering dirt, and if he wants to get it back he needs a win that is both big and definitive.

Which is why the UFC has booked him against the one and only ranked Chinese man on the entire roster during their trip to China.

Song is an enormous favorite and he should be. He’s bigger, he’s faster, he hits harder, he hits more often, his only stoppage loss in the last decade came because the referee refused to let him keep fighting when his entire eyebrow was falling off of his face. Song landed 36 significant strikes in his fight with Sean O’Malley, arguably the best striker in the division, which is just one less than Deiveson scored in his last three fights combined. He can wrestle, he can box, he can tank punches and he does not appear to be actively, visibly crumbling more and more into dust every time we see him fight.

Figueiredo’s still absurdly tough, and I think this is the fight where that’s going to cross the Rubicon from “impressive” to “uncomfortable.” SONG YADONG BY DECISION after what could be depressingly lopsided.

CO-MAIN EVENT: TAKE TWO
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Zhang Mingyang (19-7, NR) vs Alonzo Menifield (17-6-1, #15)

The last time the UFC was in China was much like this one: Sergei Pavlovich was risking his top contendership against an undeserving but managerially-beloved Heavyweight, Sumudaerji was being positioned for a jump into the rankings, and Zhang Mingyang was being fed a chronically troubled Light Heavyweight in the hopes of making him a contender.

Johnny Walker has looked pretty bad for quite awhile. He gave up a round to late-period Anthony Smith. He got completely walked through by Magomed Ankalaev--twice, under Pride rules. He’s the only man Volkan Oezdemir has knocked out in more than six years. The optics of making Zhang’s fourth UFC fight a bout against yet another struggling, winless fighter are about as obvious as the choice to book it in Shanghai in the first fuckin’ place. Johnny Walker is not here to test Zhang, he’s not even here to put up a fight. He is here to lose.

And god, I really want to pick him anyway.

I’ve noted on several occasions that my insistence on choosing winners with my heart rather than my head has cost a pretty sizable chunk of my picks percentage, but in this cursed era of the sport, the hope means more to me than the average. And buddy, I’ll tell you: Waking up and seeing that Johnny Walker ruined the entire event by knocking Zhang out in a round and a half? That’s worth every lost pick for the entire damn year.

They moved Heaven and Earth to get Zhang on the safest possible path to the rankings. His contract fight was against Tuco Tokkos, who was known mainly for getting knocked out in Bellator. His followup was Brendson Ribeiro, who the UFC still employs despite being 2-5 with four stoppage losses because they know exactly why they chose to employ him in the first place. After that? Ozzy Diaz, a man who was getting knocked out on the Contender Series at Middleweight. And to earn his number? Anthony Smith, a retiree on his final fight with a long history of terrible losses. All Zhang had to do to finish the job was beat Johnny Walker, who’d been doing nothing but getting knocked out over and over for two full years.

And he couldn’t fucking do it. He is Walker’s one and only win since the Spring of 2023.

Which means they have to try again, and they’re being so thoroughly unsubtle about it that despite their longstanding tradition of organizing their cards by standing--the highest-ranked fighter first, the lower-ranked fighter second--Zhang Mingyang is first as Hell on this card listing, and Alonzo Menifield, the #15 Light Heavyweight, is second.

Which, if we’re being really honest, is fine. It’s absolutely fine. I was a big Menifield booster once upon a time. I liked his aggression in the pocket, I liked his composure, I liked the way he teased the world into thinking Jimmy Crute could still be relevant only to effortlessly smash him in a rematch. But the last couple of years haven’t been kind to Alonzo.

Crushed by Carlos Ulberg in twelve seconds? He’s the champion now, so I guess that’s less embarrassing than it could be. Atomized by Azamat Murzakanov? Tarnished a little after watching Azamat lose to Paulo Costa, but it could be worse. Just barely beating Julius “Juice Box” Walker by split decision? That’s not great.

But getting punched completely stupid by Volkan Oezdemir in one round? That’s when they single you out as a reliable loss machine. And we know this, because the last thing Johnny Walker did before they booked him against Zhang was, shockingly, get uppercutted to death by Volkan in two and a half minutes.

The mistake from their first attempt at propping Zhang up was evident. Johnny Walker is a talented, multifaceted striker with a big range advantage. He was able to hobble Zhang with leg kicks before he could even begin to pose a threat. Alonzo’s shorter and less technical and his best wins come from overpowering his opponents. He can’t play the range game and his crushing attacks in the clinch are a liability because using them means staying right where Zhang wants the fight to be.

Every part of this is built for Zhang to win.

So. Y’know.

ALONZO MENIFIELD BY TKO.

MAIN CARD: GIVING UP ON PRETENDING
HEAVYWEIGHT: Sergei Pavlovich (20-3, #3) vs Tallison Teixeira (9-1, #15)

So we’re just done, right? We’re just giving up completely on even pretending to have a functional Heavyweight division?

Like, we did this already. We did this specific thing with both of these specific guys. Sergei Pavlovich is one of the best knockout artists in Heavyweight history, but he got beat by Tom Aspinall and Alexander Volkov and the UFC decided he was persona non grata. Despite being the #3 man in the division, despite his only losses in almost eight years coming against the champion and his top contender, in the past sixteen months, Sergei has been booked to fight exactly twice. The first time was the last time the UFC went to China, where he was placed up against the #6-ranked marketing darling Waldo Cortes-Acosta. Pavlovich won an extremely clear decision, which is why since said fight he’s been stuck on the shelf while Waldo got booked all the way to a Heavyweight title eliminator. On the plus side: Sergei easily beating him looks even better now, right? That means Sergei beat a man the UFC considered was worthy of a top contendership bout, so he’s going to get a top-tier matchup now, right?

Nope! It’s Tallison fucking Teixeira. We’re gonna recap the complete Tallison Texeira UFC career arc, because it takes roughly thirty seconds:

• Wins his contract on the Contender Series by knocking out Arthur Lopes, who has one win over a man with a winning record; said man fights at Welterweight

• Makes his UFC debut by knocking out Justin Tafa, who is 7-5, unranked, and hasn’t won a fight in almost three years

• Gets immediately booked into a top ten main event against #8-ranked Derrick Lewis, who effortlessly destroys Tallison in thirty-five seconds

• Rebounds with a main-card bout against the #12-ranked Tai Tuivasa, who has the longest losing streak in UFC Heavyweight history; Tallison beats him in one of the gassiest, least impressive Heavyweight fights in years

• Is rewarded with a fight against the #3-ranked man in the Heavyweight division

I’ve talked about an awful lot of marketing pushes in my time doing this, but Tallison’s is one of the most blatant. He’s the Typhoid Mary of the We Want Less Expensive Heavyweights experiment. He managed to look good once, and it was against a man that once managed to lose a fight to Jared Vanderaa. Tallison’s victory over Tuivasa was so uninspiring that it spawned thinkpieces around the internet regarding the ethical need to shut down the Heavyweight division until we figure out where on Earth we all collectively went wrong, but he’s tall, he’s statistically likely to get a knockout, and he’s on a cheap-ass Contender Series contract, and buddy, in this terrible era of corporate capture, that plus maybe a little conversational bigotry is all the matchmakers could ask for.

And it’s Heavyweight, so it’s going to work every once in awhile. You roll the dice enough, you wind up with Top Ten Tyrell Fortune. Sergei can be clipped, Tom Aspinall proved it, and if a 6’7” guy can sneak just one good punch in there, suddenly, a title match costs 1/10 as much to book as it used to.

Don’t you love being a mixed martial arts fan right now? Isn’t it great to watch an already-borderline sport get driven into the dirt by men in boardrooms that have already made billions but just won’t be content until titles are handed out by marketing fiat, rankings are built by ChatGPT and the roster is paid in company scrip?

Push back the dawn, even if just for a few more hours. SERGEI PAVLOVICH BY TKO.

BANTAMWEIGHT: Kai Asakura (21-6) vs Cameron Smotherman (12-6)

For as much as I chide the UFC for their business practices, I must also acknowledge that sometimes they do everything right and, as happens in sports, it still doesn’t work out. Kai Asakura was an excellent pickup. 135-pound champion in Rizin, half of the Youtube-famous Asakura brothers, one of three men on Earth to ever stop Kyoji Horiguchi in a fight, just a fantastic bit of talent poaching. Which made it weird when he announced his intention to fight at Flyweight, a weight class he hadn’t participated in since 2017. Did it sap him? Probably! Would it have stopped him from getting wrestled and strangled by Alexandre Pantoja and Tim Elliott? I dunno how much of a difference those ten pounds would make when it comes to some of the best grapplers in the game.

Fortunately, Kai is no longer fighting said grapplers. When I first wrote about Cameron Smotherman in 2024 I cursed the gods for naming a man Smotherman while allowing him to stylistically focus on striking, and true to form, he has not shot a single takedown in his time under the UFC’s corporate banner, and for denying the gift the Gods gave him, he is 1-2 and probably fighting to keep his job. At this point, his only victory was as a late-replacement opponent for Jake Hadley, who got cut after Smotherman took him to a particularly punchy decision. Other than that, Smotherman dropped a fight to Serhiy Sidey, got beat up by Ricky Simón, and, more famously than any of his actual bouts at this point, he had a matchup with Ricky Turcios cancelled this past January after his weight cut went so badly that, seconds after stepping off the scale, he passed out in mid-stride and fell facefirst on the stage.

But don’t worry, the UFC assured everyone that there’s nothing wrong with cutting weight and he probably just got nervous. No, really. Dana White said that shit. They are here in the hopes of quietly sweeping Smotherman into a corner so they can forget they ever had to be embarrassed, and if Kai can’t pull it off, he probably shouldn’t be here. KAI ASAKURA BY DECISION.

WELTERWEIGHT: Jake Matthews (22-8) vs Carlston Harris (19-7)

I don’t know why we’re here. I really don’t. Jake Matthews is entering year thirteen of his UFC tenure, and he enters it having once again failed to overcome his perpetual not-quite-a-gatekeeper status, with his latest winning streak having gone down the tubes after Neil Magny choked him out in September, meaning Matthews is, yet again, not ready for primetime. Carlston Harris was signed up for the legendarily cursed Michelle Waterson-Gomez vs Marina Rodriguez card back in 2021, an event so plagued with replacements that initially Diego fucking Sanchez was supposed to be on it, and now it’s 2026, and Harris is a month and a half away from turning 39, and he’s only fought twice in the last three years and both times he got brutally knocked out.

And this is on the main card. In China. Jake Matthews vs Carlston Harris is a match the UFC decreed deserving of a main card berth. Angela Hill, one of the longest-tenured fighters in UFC history across any gender, and Jingnan Xiong, one of the best female fighters outside of the UFC and one of the best Chinese fighters on the planet, are fighting on this card, in China, for a spot in the rankings, and it’s six fights down from here, buried in the preliminary section.

And we’re here. Jesus wept. JAKE MATTHEWS BY DECISION.

FLYWEIGHT: Alex Perez (26-10, #11) vs Sumudaerji (19-7, NR)

Sometimes, all it takes is one good win to make people forget about the rest of your career. Alex Perez has been the dwindling afterthought of the Flyweight top fifteen for the last six goddamn years. Until this past January he wasn’t just 1 for his last 6, he had been, more often than not, completely trashed. If getting choked out repeatedly wasn’t enough, having Tatsuro Taira climb his body and break his knee in mid-backpack was more than enough for most people to write him off entirely. But this past January saw Perez take on Charles Johnson, a man with knockout victories over multiple top contenders and even the current champion, and Perez blew him out of the water and punched him out in three minutes. Fantastic win! So good people forgot that he also botched the shit out of his weight cut. But who cares? He’s back, baby.

The UFC cares. The UFC would rather someone more reliable get the spot. I’m not complaining one bit, though: Sumudaerji has more than earned another shot at a ranking. He wasn’t quite up to the task in 2022, and after very nearly flunking out of the company on the heels of a subsequent three-fight losing streak he came into 2025 angry and active, and having snapped off three straight wins in eleven months and not dropped a single round in the latter two, he’s finally ready to try again. He hits hard, he wrestles fast, he’s never been knocked out, and after years of practice with the shirtless battle-monks of Urijah Faber’s Team Alpha Male, he has reached partially-nude enlightenment and knows, inwardly, that the path to progress is paved with punches.

That or I’m just kind of bored of writing about him not really making it and I want him to win the big one already. SUMUDAERJI BY TKO.

PRELIMS: GENUINELY, WHAT IS IT GOING TO TAKE
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Yisak Lee (8-1) vs Luis Felipe Dias (17-5)

Let me lay this preliminary headliner on you. In one corner: Luis Felipe Dias de Assis, who is no less than the Shooto Brasil champion! At Welterweight. Two fights ago he had his first Middleweight bout in years, and it was against the incomparable Helison “Nego Velho” Cruz, who is 2-14 and so clearly fraudulent that the Tapology database doesn’t even count him as a real fighter. He fought one more time in July--three years ago--and choked out a 2-0 man who is now 2-4, and that earned him his Contender Series shot last October, where he defeated no less than Donavan Hedrick, who on that night had his first-ever bout against a fighter with a winning record. And Hedrick almost won! Until he didn’t. In the other corner: South Korean prospect Yisak Lee, who has a whopping two victories against men with winning records so long as you don’t mind that one of them is 8-5-1 and the other is 5-3, and if you need to ask me if the 5-3 guy had, himself, battled anyone with a positive career ratio, you have not been paying attention to the rest of this paragraph.

I obsess over records because they’re the easiest, simplest shorthand for understanding where a fighter has been, what they’ve had to deal with, and how those experiences may have helped them grow as competitors, but they’re never the whole story. Really good fighters can have really unimpressive records. When Merab Dvalishvili entered the UFC he was three years into a 7-2 career with only three decent fights under his belt, on paper. Numbers aren’t everything and sometimes you have to watch the tape to know when someone’s better than their record would indicate.

But, in this case, I have watched tape on both guys and I am completely unimpressed. YISAK LEE BY DECISION.

WELTERWEIGHT: Ding Meng (35-9) vs José Henrique (8-1)

When I talk about the degree to which numbers lie, this ostensibly lopsided fight where one guy has five times the experience of the other is a case in point. In some ways, China has one of the bigger, more vibrant regional mixed martial arts scenes in the world, between companies like Kunlun and Wu Lin Feng and, in today’s most relevant case, Jue Cheng King, better known as JCK MMA. The bulk of Ding Meng’s career, and the stuff that brought him to the UFC’s attention, came from JCK. And ten of his sixteen JCK opponents had less than ten wins. Five of them had, at most, two. When Ding Meng tried out for ONE Championship during their 2019 Chiense trials, he got knocked out in a round by an opponent with 1/5 as many fights as he did at the time; when the UFC brought him in for the Contender Series in 2024 he got beaten by Rami Hamed, who noticeably did not get a contract. José Henrique’s record is much shorter, but there’s a solid argument to be made that just by hanging out in Shooto Brasil and the Legacy Fighting Alliance and the Centurion Fighting Championships he’s fought consistently tougher competition.

At least, I hope he has, because the last time anyone here saw him it was when Yusaku Kinoshita knocked him the fuck out on the Contender Series four years ago, and Kinoshita went on to wash out of the UFC in a year, so fingers crossed that he’s learned his lessons. JOSÉ HENRIQUE BY TKO.

BANTAMWEIGHT: Aoriqileng (26-12 (1)) vs Cody Haddon (8-1)

Forget China vs America, forget veterans vs prospects, this is a rubber match against the entire institution of Codies. Aoriqileng’s second-ever UFC fight back in 2021 was a decision loss to Cody Durden, and that left a burning fire of vengeance in his belly that took four years to quench. When last we saw him this past October, Aoriqileng enacted his need for justice by knocking out Cody Gibson with one punch in twenty-one seconds. It wasn’t too long ago that we talked about Daniel Santos and his inexplicable war on every South Korean fighter in the Featherweight division: There are four Codies at Bantamweight, and right now, Aoriqileng is 1-1 against them. He needs this tiebreaker. He needs this glory.

I do not care that Haddon is a big favorite. I do not care that Haddon is probably going to win. This is about more than mixed martial arts. This is about fate. AORIQILENG BY DECISION.

BANTAMWEIGHT: Rei Tsuruya (10-1) vs Luis Gurule (11-3)

I really hate this shit, and I hate that it comes up so often. Rei Tsuruya isn’t the problem here, he’s fine, I’m sure they want to rehabilitate him after he finally losing his undefeated streak when last we saw him--more than a year ago, jesus--but it was Joshua Van and he’s the Flyweight champion now, so honestly, if you’re gonna lose to anyone, it might as well be him. Luis Gurule is the problem. Gurule was on a three-fight losing streak and competing to, in all likelihood, keep his job, but he finally managed to put it together and notch a solid win over Daniel Barez so now, after four attempts, he finally has momentum! Which would be great! Except the distance between that fight and this one is fourteen days. This wasn’t a quick knockout or a first-round submission, it went the distance. A professional fighter struck Luis Gurule 113 times just two weeks ago, seventy-nine of which went straight to the dome, and the world of mixed martial arts has no problem with sending him right back out there.

It’s completely baffling that this is normal now. REI TSURUYA BY DECISION.

WOMEN’S STRAWWEIGHT: Angela Hill (18-16, #14) vs Jingnan Xiong (19-2, NR)

I feel like I am running out of words to properly express my exasperation about ranked women’s fights being stuck on the prelims, and this is one of the most maddening cases.

We already talked about this during the main card, but I’m going to repeat it, because it bears repeating. Angela Hill is the greatest journeywoman in UFC history. She was there for the debut of Women’s Strawweight. She shared the cage with its first-ever champion in 2014 and its current champion almost ten years later. When she makes her walk this weekend, it’ll be her thirtieth UFC fight, which ties Jéssica Andrade for the most in UFC history and puts her just two bouts behind Max Holloway, Dustin Poirier and Diego Sanchez. Jingnan Xiong was the greatest female fighter in the history of ONE Championship, the UFC’s Singaporean competitor. In eight years and eleven fights she went 10-1, with her only loss coming from a failed attempt to drop a weight class and become a double-champion opposite ONE’s other best female fighter, Angela Lee, who Xiong ultimately went 2-1 against, beating her both times they fought at her home in the 125-pound division.

The UFC is happy to spend half of every given year acting as a regional promotion these days. Get paid to come to Australia; stack your card with Australians, even if it means an Ollie Schmid sneaks through. Fight night in Abu Dhabi? Time to book Mohammad “The UAE Warrior” Yahya, even though he’s never won a UFC fight. Despite being arguably the world’s only major global promotion, they book these events like a regional promotion trying to get regional attention, because, for that one night, that’s what they are and what they’re desperately trying to do.

Jingnan Xiong is one of the greatest Chinese mixed martial artists on the planet. This is her UFC debut after a near-decade as a reigning world champion. She is fighting one of the best-known women in the company on a Chinese card airing on Chinese time for a Chinese audience.

They’re three fights into the prelims.

Jake Matthews vs Carlston Harris is on the main card.

At a certain point I think you just have to stop pretending and add a No Girls Allowed sign to the main card graphics. Both women deserve better. I’m very, very worried about Xiong cutting back down to 115 after all of her success in ONE came at 125 and I hope it doesn’t bite her in the ass. That said, JINGNAN XIONG BY DECISION.

FEATHERWEIGHT: Zhu Kangjie (21-4) vs Rodrigo Vera (21-1-1)

Welcome to your third, final, and probably best double-debut fight of the night. Zhu Kangjie was 2025’s Featherweight Road to UFC winner, which everyone has forgotten because, for one, all three of his tournament wins were decisions, for two, the tournament took an entire goddamn year, ended an entire goddamn year ago, and an entire goddamn year later Zhu is only now making his UFC debut, and for three, it’s Road to UFC and the company practically stopped acknowledging its existence after its inaugural season. Ramon Taveras was supposed to be here, but he possibly wisely decided not to head off to China to fight a Chinese tournament winner while already on a two-fight losing streak, so in his stead, the UFC hired Rodrigo Vera, who I am weirdly excited to see get a shot at the big show. Vera has, for the most part, been fighting and performing well against very legitimate competition in Mexico, Brazil and his native Peru. Moreover, he’s sporting one of my favorite fighting styles: High-pressure, up-close, in-the-pocket you-will-breathe-when-I-allow-it work, whether it’s grinding takedowns, phone-booth boxing or some particularly vicious clinch knees.

Prospects I actually care about are a rare and finite resource these days. RODRIGO VERA BY DECISION.

WOMEN’S STRAWWEIGHT: Loma Lookboonmee (10-4) vs Jaqueline Amorim (10-2)

Oh, Loma. I believed in you, Loma. I knew Alexia Thainara was probably going to beat you back in September but I just didn’t have the heart to pick against you, and now we’re in Macau and you’re an underdog again. Jaqueline, even if I did not already hold it against you that being an English student has poisoned my brain so badly that I have to backspace over the C I put in your name one out of every four times I type it, I would be obligated to root against you because the world is better when Loma Lookboonmee is ranked. Granted, the world would be much better if the UFC had a damn Atomweight division, but it’s more important that we budget that money and card space for Contender Series Middleweights named things like Joseph “The Land Animal” Kropschot.

For the record, that’s not one of the ones I made up. You can go look. We are all bastards now. LOMA LOOKBOONMEE BY DECISION.

Carl: I think it’s important to note, before anything, that rankings are bullshit and that’s what makes them fun. Company rankings are always going to be marketing machines meant more to say You Should Care About Michael Chandler than to give you any educated idea of what’s happening in a given division; media rankings are always going to be biased by whoever’s making them and how seriously they think people should take Costello van Steenis.

Rather than trying to mash our thoughts together into a sterile, anodyne list made of boring, objective consensus, we’re going to try to have fun with subjectivity. Jess and I have ranked every relevant, active weight class in MMA--sorry, Women’s Featherweight, it’s just not happening--and we’ll be putting those rankings side by side and talking about the differences in our thinking.

Jess: I suppose I should address my methodology before I get too far. I fully expect this process to change slightly as I hone my ranking abilities, but here’s how I got to the people in the places I did.

I first compiled a list of names, mostly from UFC’s rankings, plus Tapology, because I am prone to bouts of forgetting that oh, hey, Jailton Almeida does exist.

Then, I look at the previous five fights, and the last three years of fights. Then, review who on my list beat who else on my list and do my best to sort it out that way. Going forward, I will probably end up incorporating additional factors, like title wins and defenses, finishes, and “did this person get beat by someone real bad who isn’t even on my list?” because that should mark you down some points. But oops, I forgot!

Carl: So, because I am this kind of giant fucking nerd, I already had my own rankings sitting around waiting to be updated for the quarter. I have made certain choices with my time on this Earth.

Rankings are the one thing in life for which I am particularly conservative. With the amount of work it tends to take to get into the top fifteen, and the degree to which comparative analysis makes up my mixed martial worldview, I tend to wait for people to either accumulate too long a string of losses to be tenable as a ranked fighter, lose to people who were so far below them in the rankings that it invalidates their standing, or, most commonly, a mixture of both.

Carl: Heavyweight being bad is not new, Heavyweight has done been bad for most of its time on Earth, but we’re entering this extremely weird era of Heavyweight wherein the UFC is treating the division so poorly that it’s almost kind of interesting again. It’s awful, and it’s especially egregious to be doing shit like booking Curtis Blaydes against rookie marketing prospects over and over until you finally get a Josh Hokit in the top five or canning Jailton Almeida while employing a Tafa brother, but it’s weirdly beneficial for the rest of the world. Half because you get guys like Alexandr Romanov out there serving as a measuring stick for talent instead of being wasted in the UFC, half because it’s a lot fucking easier to campaign for an Oleg Popov or a Phil De Fries to be taken seriously as a top Heavyweight when the UFC is insisting Tallison Teixeira deserves to fight one of the three best men in the world.

Jess: We are deeply, uncomfortably in the squishy, squishy dregs of what is considered Top Tier heavyweights. Pretty soon, Phil De Fries is going to be defending the KSW title against a couch.

Also, I’m confident that both Brothers Tafa are only gonna be around long enough to give Gable Steveson a boosty-uppy to “divisional relevance’.

Carl: I wonder how far beating a Tafa gets you towards the rankings. Funnily enough, in the last few hours word’s come out that Valter Walker, whom the UFC currently ranks at #13, is in talks to fight Thomas Petersen, who is unranked, which makes that Teixeira/Pavlovich fight even funnier.

So, before anything else, I gotta ask: I know I’m already dipping my toes into the waters of subjectivity by still ranking Alexander Volkov above Ciryl Gane given my disagreement with MMA judges, but is having Gane above Tom Aspinall part of your personal vendetta against eyeballs?

Jess: I like eyeballs just fine! Sadly, Tom suffers from a two-pronged problem. Low activity and hasn’t beaten people I have regarded as highly. He’s 1-1 (1 NC) in the last three years, and that one win is Curtis Blaydes. If I consider Blaydes a quality win, it helps Tom more, but it also sadly elevates Josh Hokit. That bridge is mighty tough to cross.

My own issue against putting a thumb on the scale of “yeah, but we all know the other person really won the fight” is that I’m incapable of not just leaning my entire bodyweight on the scale and putting Iron Turtle top 3 at 185. I respect, you, Carl, for being able to maintain professionalism.

Also, I have to go by official results because I’ve honestly not watched so many of these fighters, I don’t have the ability to nudge things towards Cage Justice (My favorite Olek Taktarov movie, by the way).

Carl: My favorite Oleg Taktarov movie is, and will always be, the .wmv rip of YAMMA Pit Fighting I keep on a USB drive around my neck while I sleep.

The Aspinall situation is kind of a pickle. I think the combination of having not really lost and having blown through Volkov, Pavlovich and Blaydes in about five minutes keeps him there for me, but it is also possible that I simply dislike Ciryl Gane and the GameShark that he is using to get infinite title shots. It is Volkov’s turn with the controller and you need to stop being so dang selfish and go to wrestling practice.

The topic of activity brings up a point on your rankings that pained me not to share, and that’s Francis Ngannou. I do not know what to do with him. Lineally-speaking he’s still the top of the heap and I think he could easily be back on top, but he’s got one MMA fight in the last four and a half years, and it’s already going on two years old, and when he does finally break his drought at Rousey/Carano this weekend, even in a best-case scenario, he’s knocking out a Philipe Lins that hasn’t even competed at Heavyweight since 2020 when Tanner Boser knocked him out. Does it matter, or is his simply still being around enough?

Jess: For Big Fran, the pip of activity is good, but the relevant opponent metric is not impressed one whit by Phil Lins. At least a guy like De Fries has the modicum of title fights to bolster his nothing opponents (KSW catching all the strays from me today!)

Regarding Tom, though my horrendous numbers have him at 3, I have the utmost confidence in his ability to beat both our top 5s in short order, and do things that can only be classified as Crimes Against Humanity to the rest of the rankings.

Carl has a few fighters on his list that didn’t make my top 15 cutoff, but the only person he fully has that I did not consider is Jailton Almeida. Applying my rubrics, we have:

2-3 in his last 5 fights, 4-3 in his prior 3 years. Wins over Spivac (20th), Lewis (18th), Romanov (13th), losses to Bladyes (19th), Kuniev (17th), Volkov (2nd). No big wins, clipped by 3 other men on the list. I probably would have slotted him somewhere between 16 and 19.

Carl: I think, for me, the concept of how hard it is to get into the rankings--or at least used to be, before the Josh Hokit/Tyrell Fortune/Tallison Teixeira era--adds a little bit of drag to what it takes to get removed from them, and Almeida’s an interesting case. His best win is either Spivac, Lewis or Rozenstruik, which is middling even if I think Jairzinho is underrated, but his worst losses were Blaydes, who was a top ten lock until recently, Kuniev, whose only loss in a decade was Blaydes, and Volkov, who we both agree is top two and whom Almeida took to a really close split decision. He’s fallen, but I’d still keep him up there. Though what that means for his future as the top Heavyweight prospect of Akhmat or something, who knows.

I also think it’s a damn shame that we both agree Vadim Nemkov rules and we both struggle to get him any higher than the periphery of the top ten because, realistically, what the hell is he going to do for the next few years? I don’t want him stuck in the conglomerated glut of the UFC, but in the PFL his best Heavyweight hopes now come from joining the Pokemon weaknesses graph whereby Popov loses to Goltsov and Goltsov beats everyone but Ferreira and Ferreira loses to Bilostenniy and Bilostenniy beats everyone but Moldavsky and Moldavsky breaks Romanov’s groin so Romanov can lose to Popov. It’s a vicious cycle, Jess, and we are its prey.

Jess: Light Heavyweights, what the hell are we going to do with you. We make you a nice title fight, one guy throws it away out of overwhelming sense of Bushido pride, and the winner tears his knee to smithereens, requiring surgery and a year on the shelf. Was it folly to include Pereira on the rankings after he vacated the belt and moved up to heavyweight? Probably, but I figured I can’t rank a guy in a division he’s never competed in, so here he is at my number 2 spot.

Had I remembered Dovlet or ShoeFace, they probably would have ended up just inside the top 10. Good recent records, but no notable wins, and Dovlet has only lost to Anderson. Carlos Junior a little lower because the loss to EZ Polizzi should be a bigger demerit, though as I explained earlier, I kinda didn’t think of those repercussions initially. Whoops!

Carl, high five on a perfectly placed Corey Anderson!

Carl: Corey Anderson may have forsaken the art of Beastin, but we do not, and cannot, forget. We will Beast for him, 25/8, until there is no more Beastin to be done.

I think ranking Pereira makes sense, or at least as much sense as bothering to rank Light Heavyweight makes these days. The best guy at the class is gone, the UFC is waiting as long as possible to book Ankalaev, Paulo Costa is one win away from a UFC title shot and everyone who wins the belt is immediately struck down by Nike for their hubris and the PFL has a bunch of guys who barely fight to the point that Corey won the belt almost eight months ago and meanwhile Shoeface is fighting Luke Trainer in June. There is so little rhyme or reason to 205 that almost anything is defensible.

But I do need you to tell the people about your deep, abiding love for Bogmen and its role behind Bogdan Guskov, #4 Light Heavyweight In The World.

Jess: The Bogman is honestly a little high, now that I’m giving my list some more scrutiny. But, I think he deserves to be on it. He’s 4-1 (1 NC) in the last three years, with a win over Krylov and a loss to Oezdemir. Those are both middle of the road outcomes. Maybe not deserving of a spot inside the top 5, but definitely on the full 15.

Turning things around on Carl, I do want to know what is keeping Rakic and Walker in your rankings? They don’t have any wins that could be considered relevant, and they’ve mostly been blasted all to hell in their numerous losses.

Carl: I’ll cop to overrating Rakic. I am still stuck on the way he almost beat Jan, and almost beat Jiri, but he didn’t and I should stop giving him the credit for what could have been. Besides which I believe he’s moving to Heavyweight anyway, so one way or another, I must part with my Serbian brother’s 205-pound ranking.

Johnny Walker, I will defend. He benefits deeply from how bad Light Heavyweight is right now. I’ll agree that beating Zhang Mingyang is not a top ten-worthy thing, but on the other hand, you have our other persistently difficult buddy Dominick Reyes at #6, and he just won a tragically uneventful split decision with Walker that was the dictionary definition of a coinflip. But for the whims of a D’Amato, Walker could be your #6 Light Heavyweight right now without having done a single thing differently. So while I do not rate him very highly, I cannot bring myself to drop him entirely from the top fifteen. It’s not that he’s great, it’s that it’s Light Heavyweight.

Carl: Let me introduce the Middleweight division by saying: Fuck Middleweight.

I know we’ve been working on this long enough that your rankings were before Chimaev/Strickland happened, so let me say that I envy you for the time machine that lets you not have Sean Strickland at the top of your rankings. I already miss those days. Despite the likelihood that we will now get multiple title defenses in a year, a thing that was impossible so long as Chimaev held the gold, I would still trade it back in a nanosecond to not have to think about #1 Fighter Sean Strickland again. I am old and cold and the bears are closing in.

I like that Costello van Steenis is up there because I like typing Costello van Steenis. I think there’s a really good chance Eblen’s about to kick him back down the ladder in their rematch, but maybe he’ll surprise us again. I also have to ask you about Top Ten Rodrigocop.

Jess: Gregory Cop is on my list because he’s 6-1 in the past 3 years, with a win over CLD and a loss to Cannonier. Highly cromulent Middleweighting, in my world. It is kind of hilarious that, per Tapology’s UFC rankings, Greg Robot has beat the #24, the #24, and the #24 UFC middleweights over the last three fights.

Hunter Campbell told me that Gregory Rodriques keeps beating his #24 middleweights and I asked him how many #24 middleweights he has, and he said he just goes to the Contender Series and gets a new #24 middleweight afterwards, so I said it sounds like he’s just feeding Contender Series guys to Gregory Rodriques and then Mick Maynard started crying.

So I ask you, Friend Carl. Are Fabian Edwards’s wins over Dalton Rosta better than Roman Kopylov and Bruno Ferreira?

Carl: See, this is where the balance of wins and losses gets to me. I deeply adore Robocop’s world of bionic fistitry, but that knockout loss to Jared Cannonier looms. Ol’ Jerry Crystals has been getting the crap kicked out of him over and over across the last three years, so the sole exception being his knocking out Rodrigues complicates things, because I can’t even bring myself to rank Cannonier right now. Kopylov’s decent but his best win is Chris Curtis, and Ferreira’s best win is a Marvin Vettori who is also on a three-year losing streak, so I need Gregory to beat someone a bit higher before I can find the courage to love again.

But then, this is Middleweight, where the guy we both agree to be #3 hasn’t fought in almost a year for no apparent reason and, if rumors are true, his next bout will be Kamaru Usman. This is a division where Kamaru Usman could be 1-1 as a Middleweight and also the #2 contender to its title. Rhyme nor reason have purchase here, this is simply a Place where things Happen and we must hide in the storm cellar until they tell us who the new Anderson Silva is this time.

I think, to some extent, my desire for competition makes me overrate the PFL’s competitors simply because it’s the division they’re putting actual effort into, but I do think Johnny Eblen could beat most of the UFC’s 185-pound division, so the combination of Edwards going the distance with him and smashing Impa Kasanganay, who almost beat Eblen, still does a lot for me.

Jess: I was unaware of that Dricus/Kamaru matchup rumor. I would like to lay down, now.

At least we both seem to agree that Joe Pyfer is vaguely fraudulent. I’m just glad we’re out of the doldrums of the Bad Divisions and can move on to talking about actually good fighters.

Carl: Seriously, though, Welterweight is so fucking good. Going from Middleweight to Welterweight is like Andy Dufresne crawling out of the Shawshank sewers right now. Every single person in the top ten is great and with the unfortunate example of the slowly falling Jack Della Maddalena, you can make a solid argument for how any one of them could credibly be a top contender within, at most, one more fight. It’s so easy to get deservedly cynical about the state of mixed martial arts right now, so having one weight class with a rock-solid top ten is great.

Like, even the differences in our top tens are fine. It’s a little unfortunate that Ramazan Kuramagomedov is officially retired now after finally getting his moment in the sun, but he definitely deserved to be there. Thad Jean’s got a ton of top ten potential. Myktybek Orolbai’s an awesome prospect. And, most importantly, neither of us ranks Mike Malott, because we are good, holy people.

I was going to ask about Kamaru Usman not making your list, but given the aforementioned likelihood that he’s a Middleweight now, I don’t know that it matters. So, instead, I’ll open with: Isn’t it nice when this sport doesn’t suck, is Thad Jean about to embark on a lengthy reign of PFL terror, and will you ever forgive Yaroslav Amosov for getting killed by Jason Jackson?

Jess: I do wish I had made the list after UFC 328, because Amosov dismantled Joel Alvarez so thoroughly, I would be obligated to put him just outside the top 10.

But look at these men. Not a dud among them! Islam Makhachev needs to get booked, but otherwise, the division is solid! And hey, I get it, if we’re talking inactivity, Shavkat has only fought twice in the last three years. Another guy that hopefully gets back in the cage more regularly.

Usman and Leon Edwards were at the bottom of my complete list, missing out on the top fifteen due to their recent slate of losses and only wins coming against Buckley, who’s okay but not great, and the stinkably bad Colby Covington. Though I know the slightly more older past speaks a lot for both men, but I put in a shorter cut off for evaluations.

Carl: I do miss Shavkat, but more than missing him, I am terrified of what happens when Shavkat comes back after multiple reconstructive surgeries and multiple years of gathering dust and it turns out now his knees don’t bend and he can’t beat Uros Medic.

Whatever my feelings on Usman and Edwards, I am okay rating Colby Covington for nothing, ever again. I have had too much of him for one damn lifetime. I can’t even enjoy him theoretically getting beaten up anymore. We’ve already seen it. There is nothing left for him to offer. Get thee hence. (Editor’s note: What do you know! He did.)

I think there’s one overarching question: How the hell do you unravel the contendership space? It seems like we’re headed for Islam vs Garry later this year, so where do you think Prates and Morales end up? Is there anything left to be done with Della Maddalena now that he’s in freefall? Does Sean Brady deserve another crack at the top? Are we about to have to deal with Top Ten Gabriel Bonfim?

Jess: Surely UFC’s welterweight division won’t see another promising prospect get a title shot postponed due to injury and then injuries and when he returns he’s a shell of his former self, right? RIGHT?

I think the question of UFC’s 170 lb title picture has two answers. There’s the logical answer we would provide, and then there’s whatever bullshit Hunter Campbell does.

Assuming Islam and Ian Machado lock horns, let me dig into the other questions. If you’re content burning a contender, Prates vs Morales in Brazil could be a possible title eliminator.

If JDM truly is on the downward arc of his career, you either let him gatekeep, against a returning Shavkat or possibly Amosov, or you use his “former champion” status as the last foothold bump for someone on the cusp of title contention, though I guess that’s what the Prates fight was.

I think we both know that Sean Brady lost his opportunity at the top with the loss to Michael Moraes. He will have to go on a Jon Fitchian level of dominance to get another shot. He’ll probably just get booked in rock fights with young guys until he stumbles again and then get black holed out of the top 15 per UFC decree.

Bonfim was one of about a clump of seven guys who have a decent win rate over recent years, but haven’t beaten anyone of consequence, so they just missed a spot in my rankings. I guess we’ll see how decrepit Belal Muhammad is in a few weeks.

Carl: I think you are right about Sean Brady and it irritates me deeply. They’re going to try to get Mike Malott in the top ten, and it’s going to involve either Brady, Buckley, or Leon Edwards, and preemptively, everyone involved should feel bad.

But I’ll also say this: If Belal Muhammad cannot defeat a man who got knocked out by Nicolas Dalby, I am quitting mixed martial arts and the next time we meet we are going to be ranking competitive snorkeling.

Jess: Lightweights, my beloved!

I went really hard on the B-League guys for Lightweight, but I abide by the WEC rule, which states that the little guys are really good everywhere. That being said, I am fine with the argument that everyone from Pimblett on down could get dumpstered for an Alfie Davis or a Salahdine Parnasse, whom, I fully admit: I forgot about you, dawg, I’m sorry!

The next time we convene for rankings, Arman Tsarukyan will have: More or Less Real American Freestyle wrestling matches than UFC fights? As we have another strong candidate for “matchmaking is trying to motherfuck this guy.”

Honestly, my only quibble with your list is Dan Hooker, and running it through, it turns out my question is actually: how good do you rate 2026 Jalin Turner? Hooker’s got split decision wins over him and Gamrot, and I’m fine with Gamrot, though he just missed my top 15 cut-off.

Carl: The Salahdine Parnasse situation is weird anyhow. He’s clearly, obviously one of the best Lightweights on the planet, but he’s also in that Phil De Fries position where there just isn’t much competition above him unless he gives up his freedom to sign with a bigger company, most of whom appear to be persistently lowballing him. I get the sense we may have him as a #10-15 fixture for a long time.

Arman has become the locus of my anger with Lightweight. We should be talking about 155 in the same breathless terms of endearment we use for 170, the talent is incredible and the matches are fantastic, it’s just the matchmaking that’s killing everything. Gaethje’s getting the title shot, Ilia wants to go to 170, Arman is banished to the negative zone, Oliveira’s stuck twiddling his thumbs and Holloway is, in theory, fighting Conor fucking McGregor at fucking Welterweight. The only people getting any matchmaking love are Benoit Saint-Denis and Paddy Pimblett and both of those statements are depressing in their own ways.

I think Hooker, Turner and Gamrot form an incredibly complicated Megazord at the outer rim of the top ten. Turner, himself, is a very similar case to the Dominick Reyes/Johnny Walker discussion we were having a few divisions ago: But for the coinflip whims of the judges, Turner could have been riding a split decision streak into the top five, and instead he got sad and let Renato Moicano beat him with libertarian economics and retired for a lil’ bit. So Hooker beating him counts some for me, but it’s the Gamrot win that’s really keeping him afloat right now. I don’t hold getting trounced by Arman against him too bad, but the Benoit loss really sent him down the ladder. I wouldn’t be surprised if they try to hold him back for a big tall giraffe battle with Quillan Salkilld the next time they’re in Australia.

Similarly, let me ask you: Are you really willing to wound me, personally, emotionally, by rating Paddy Pimblett? Do you want me to cry?

Jess: I did say I’m willing to dumpster Paddy. The clump of “good amount of recent wins but nobody actually good” strikes again. At least Alfie Davis beat Gadzhi Rabadanov! At least I’ll be able to drop Pimblett after he loses in July, either to Saint-Denis, or more likely, Max Holloway after Conor pulls out of that fight.

Man, Sallkild versus Hooker makes me think of Shawn Michaels vs Ric Flair, only with far more use of the c-word.

If I get one Fantasy Booking wish for Lightweight, its an Oliveira vs Tsarukyan rematch for five rounds. My guess is that’s going to be sitting in UFC’s back pocket, ready for Ilia to head up to 170 after Fascism Fest in June.

Carl: I feel so bad for Alfie for running into the Usman Nurmagomedov wall. Honestly, instead of reflecting on Parnasse getting stuck, maybe we should’ve spared a thought for Usman. We’re both in agreement that dude’s on the shortlist of the best in the world, but unless he leaves the PFL, what on Earth is there for him left to do? His future is Paul Hughes rematches until the PFL finally gets an Irish champion five years too late for anyone to care.

Oliveira/Tsarukyan 2 feels plausible but I think in their heart of hearts the UFC is hoping a window of opportunity opens up for the house to win again. If Topuria goes to 170, if Gaethje retires like he’s kept talking about after he gets murdered by a Spaniard in front of the White House, if Max is busy at 170 with Conor, if Paddy beats BSD, all they have to do is say Arman vs Oliveira is for the #1 contendership, but in the meantime, Paddy Pimblett vs Michael Chandler 2 for the vacant Lightweight title. Unrelated to anything, by the by, I don’t sleep much anymore.

Also: I really liked that you ranked Akbar Abdullaev and that made it intensely hilarious when ONE cut him like 24 hours after you sent me your rankings.

Jess: I think Usman Nurmagomedov is in a similar spot as mid-title run DJ. His upcoming challengers are going to be pushed too fast, go into the fight underprepared for his skill set, and when Usman wins, the victories will be dismissed because “who was that, anyway?”

As for Akbar, clearly Chatri hates me, personally and is simply A Hater. For Abdullaev and the amorphous collection of ONE, PFL, KSW, and Rizin guys, they’re all just going to flounder for a while, I fear. Well, maybe Akbar can wriggle his way onto the Absolute Championship Akhmat card in June, which just so happens to be headlined by Alexander Shlemenko. That’s a new, viable career path, right?

If only we could have solidarity in the international regional scene and just get all these guys mushed together into one division.

Carl: The Jake Paul NWA model of mixed martial arts. God help us all that that’s our best hope for the future. And godspeed to you, Ilkhom Nazimov, who had one shining moment and will probably never be relevant again.

Carl: There’s a lot of neat things going on in the Featherweight division right now, but none of them mean as much to me as Movsar Evloev getting a title shot. It’s been silly for years now that he’s had to wait, it has progressed to being entirely beyond parody, and if somehow the rumors about Jean Silva getting the next crack at Alexander Volkanovski wind up being true the entire division is obligated to find him and throw him into a moat. I do not care which moat. It can be Ganryujima or it can be a twelfth-century castle. Get it done already. Christ alive.

Over the course of this discussion Arnold Allen reminded everyone that he does, in fact, still belong in the top Featherweight conversation by beating up poor Melquizael Costa, but there’s an awful lot of potential movement still happening, what with Aljo beating Yousef and Steve Garcia about to fight Diego Lopes. Speaking of: I gotta ask you about #3 Steve Garcia. Sing to me of the many punches with which he has punched punchmen.

Jess: The thing I like about the Steve Machine is when he punches a featherweight, they stay having had been punched. As for why he’s so high on my list, let me note that of the 17 featherweights I reviewed, 11 did not have a win over another fighter on my list. I probably should have cleared my head and pulled some more names, but that’s a lesson learned for next time.

Volk and Evloev were the obvious 1 and 2, it’s just a matter of how strongly the losses to now-larger Topuria and always larger Makhachev count against Volkanovski. For me, a little, but only just. The remaining fighters with wins over other notable opponents were Khizriev, Silva, Lopes, and Garcia.

Lopes is in a weird spot. He’s 6-Volk over the last three years, which, hell, any featherweight should be so lucky. He does have a win over Jean Silva, so I understand the argument that he should be higher. It’s not his fault that anyone Alexander Volkanovski is having a bad time, he goes down the street to beat a few more shades of shit out of Diego.

Silva has a gaudy 7-1 record in the last 3 years with the aforementioned loss to Lopes and a win over Arnold Allen. Allen’s stock has definitely improved, as I had him outside my top 15 due to limited activity, and only having managed a win over Giga Chikadze, while losing to Evloev and Jean Silva, a double whammy. Again, not damning losses, but most everyone else at 145 has much glossier records.

Khizriev is 6-0 in the past 3 years, a benefit of PFL’s tournament system. His notable win is Gabriel Braga, who in turn, is notable for his 7-3 record dating back to May 2023.

We finally get to Steve Garcia, with his own 5-0 run and a shiny win over Melq Costa, who is 7-1 over 36 months. Of the fighters discussed, Silva and Lopes have strong cases to usurp Garcia’s spot, and I probably will deemphasize the importance of a big fancy record if there’s nothing in it to offer structure or support.

I’m intrigued at your inclusion of your quasi-nemesis, Pat Sabatini. Glad to see you can put aside your utter indifference of him to recognize his storied accomplishment: beating Tucker Lutz.

Carl: Man, that is a thoroughly comprehensive breakdown. Middleweight could never. I am a big Mean Machine fan and I’m very interested to see how Garcia/Lopes goes, but it’s funny that I still rate him low when his best win is the same best win as Arnold Allen, whom I rate considerably higher, it’s just when Allen beat Calvin Kattar he still looked like he could potentially be a divisional staple and by the time Garcia did it Kattar’s career was a BJ Pennian tragedy sans the horrifying delusions and my deep-seated Chris Benoit redux fears.

I think, the way I look at rankings, it takes both a number of losses and/or some auspiciously poor losses to really jettison you once you’ve earned a top spot. Allen’s path to the upper echelon of the division was middling in name but long on execution, and since getting there the only people he’s lost to are champions or top contenders and he didn’t look bad against anyone but Max Holloway, who does that to everyone. Hell, some people had Allen beating Movsar. Am I among them? No. Do I think they need to accept the love of wrestling into their hearts? Probably! But he still did well enough that it’s thinkable by humans.

Similarly: Volk gets the top spot until someone knocks him out of it. However much I love Movsar, Volk’s Volk. He earned it. Or, y’know, reinherited it after Ilia neatly disposed of his undead body.

I like Timur Khizriev a lot, but I dropped him from my rankings in my last update because the flip-side of the “6-0 in the past 3 years” thing is he’s barely fought in the last three years. I know when we started the PSP rankings we had a rule that fighters got dropped after a year of inactivity, and with the realities of matchmaking and injuries I think that’s a little too strict, but I do think a year and a half is reasonable, and Khizriev’s right about at 18 months since his last fight. I’ll welcome him back with open arms when he’s ready, but until then, we need to see other people.

I do not want to rate Pat Sabatini. I really don’t. It rankles me. It darkens my humours. But he’s on a solid run, his only loss in almost four years was Diego Lopes, and Jonathan Pearce->Joanderson Brito->Chepe Mariscal->William Gomis is a really good run over the periphery of the UFC’s Featherweight roost. It’s not going to get him into the top of the heap--I think he’s stuck until he shows he can hang with someone who’s actually on the list--but it’s worth scraping the bottom of the barrel. Fuck you, Pat. Welcome to the party.

Let me riposte with the Rizin representation on this list. Razhabali Shaydullaev is a bad motherfucker and I think he absolutely deserves his top ten hype. He’s already calling out Luiz Gustavo for the Lightweight title and I’d favor the hell out of him in that fight, and should he win I’m not sure there’s anything left for him to do in Japan. But: I have to ask if Top Ten Kyoma Akimoto exists for a reason other than how hard it is to finally, truly give up on Patchy Mix.

Jess: I will disavow Patchy Mix when I go into the fucking ground.

Carl: We have to give Patchy up. We gotta. We must protect our hearts. The Patchy days are lost.

Jess: I do feel awkward rating Rizin fighters because I have become incapable of either staying up late or getting up so early to actually watch Rizin live any more. I can maybe manage a little bit of NYE JMMA, but I know I can maybe make it to about 1:30 AM otherwise, and I don’t see the point in watching the first five prelim bouts, before the first of three intermissions kicks off. I’m so sorry, Rizin, I’m so sorry Nobuhiko Takada, and I’m sorry most of all to Lenne Hardt for failing you.

I would ask for a PFL vs Rizin crossover, similar to the Bellator X Rizin experiments of a few years ago, but knowing PFL, they would put it on a card in Qatar on a Tuesday morning and I still wouldn’t be able to watch.

But, hey, I’ve got AJ McKee and you’ve got Aaron Pico ranked to keep a flicker of the Bellator flame still burning. And both of those guys have too much of Bellator lore baked into them for me to evaluate either of them properly. I think my brain automatically wants to push Pico aside for his losses as a hyped prospect, while I subconsciously lift up McKee for the cool finishes he no longer pulls off.

Carl: Honestly, given how the PFL is struggling to get traction, I think crosspromotion would do them both good. What’s left to lose? Give me Shaydullaev and McKee. Let’s see if he can steamroll people who are a bit better at wrestling.

I gotta say, I resent ranking Pico almost as much as I resent Sabatini. I hate it any time such a conscious attempt at forced marketing works out. But he beat Pitbull, so what can you fucking do. I can’t wait for them to force Brian Ortega to put off his 155 move for yet another year so Pico can get one more win over a broken husk. Bellator never die, but as it did in life, Bellator never improve, either.

Jess: Oh, bantamweight. Why can’t all the other divisions be more like you? Clearly delineated top contenders, a champion who isn’t beating the drum for a weight class jump. God damn refreshing.

And then there’s Sean O’Malley and Danny Sabatello to ruin my day.

I would probably be down to watch Yan, Merab, and Umar have fights against all of each other for another year or two.

Carl: I have found myself in the incredibly unpleasant position of having to defend Danny Sabatello. I am a Danny Sabatello hater, I wish I was not ranking him, I enjoy it when bad things happen to him, but watching Rizin CEO Nobuyuki Sakakibara publicly single him out as at risk of getting stripped of the title and fired if he doesn’t start finishing people is wild because, for one, hey, Dana White, I didn’t see you there, for two, what did you think was going to happen when you hired him, and for three, Danny is 1 for 4 on finishes in Rizin, whereas Hiromasa Ougikubo--whomst I love dearly--is 0 for 17, and for some reason, his record is fine. Please, I beg of you, do not make me come to Danny Sabatello’s rescue. Life is too short.

Bantamweight is fantastic but it’s also in a bit of a weird spot. A Yan/Merab rubber match is practically obligatory, Umar is right there waiting patiently for his shot, and on the off-chance he wins the belt, he, too, would be an instant pick for a Merab title shot again, and meanwhile O’Malley/Zahabi might as well have Title Eliminator stamped on it.

I also cannot help but feel Bantamweight bears one of the clearest testaments to the different world of rankings within and without the UFC. Some people may have had easier paths than others, but everyone on the UFC side of the Bantamweight list has multiple victories over credible competitors to get where they are now. You and I both have Mitchell McKee in the top ten, and he arguably deserves it for knocking off Sergio Pettis, but one fight before that he was battling Pedro Nobre, who is most famous for being The Neckbrace Guy from the UFC thirteen years ago. What do you do with the dueling modes of ascension in the MMA world, and how can they coalesce to help us force Payton Talbott out of the rankings forever?

Jess: Yeah, it’s tough threading the needle with non-UFC fighters and UFC fighters on the same rankings (I’m not going to use the term UFC level fighter since it’s pretty apparent that it no longer holds the same gravitas as it once did. These are just people at the same job wearing different paper hats.) Best we can do is hold each fighter equally in our hearts and evaluate their own skills and techniques, devoid of the trappings of promotion or unpleasant personalities.

That being said, the day I can drop Sabatello from my rankings can’t come soon enough!

I do feel like I’m giving bantamweight short shrift here. We agree with the top 3, overall we share 10 out of 15, and of the five you have different from me, two just missed the cut, in Pettis and Figueiredo. I think bantamweight is in pretty good shape, both in and out of UFC. Just let Stots go to Rizin and beat up Sabatello again.

Carl: For how good Bantamweight is from a talent perspective, I cannot help feeling as though short shrift is part of its current condition. It’s one of those divisions where you’ve got the top three, who are clearly running laps on everyone else, and then you’ve got a couple breakout fighters like Zahabi or O’Malley who could threaten the top if the stars align and/or UFC management sends a tax-free gift to the judges, and that’s kind of it.

In the UFC, as great as Cory Sandhagen (speaking of which: #13? how dare you) and Mario Bautista are, they’re both boxed out of the top of the heap already. Deiveson Figueiredo and Song Yadong are fantastic, but they’ve had multiple cracks at contention and failed. And as far as the rest of the world, Mitch McKee already knocked off the PFL’s top dog, there’s no one above him to beat, and Danny Sabatello’s already wrestled his way through almost all the relevant Bantamweights in Rizin and they’re already sick of him, and unlike other divisions, there isn’t a bunch of top international competition to draw from. KSW’s Bantamweight champion Vitalii Yakymenko only has two fights in the company. Even OKTAGON’s 135 champ is our old pal Igor Severino, the guy who got DQed for fucking biting Andre Lima in the UFC a couple years ago.

Skill-wise Bantamweight’s some of the best stuff in the world, but in terms of mobility, everyone’s kind of screwed right now.

Jess: Well, they’re all little, so it’s hard to climb.

Carl: I feel like we barely even have to talk about Flyweight. You don’t really need to DO anything with Flyweight. You can simply sit back and let Flyweight exist and it’ll be great, all of the time, forever. Joshua Van? He’s great. Alexandre Pantoja? He was great and he’ll hopefully still be great when his arm is functional again. Tatsuro Taira did as great as you possibly can for getting the shit kicked out of you. Manel Kape would be great if he could just stop with the eyepokes and the slurs all the goddamn time.

My eyes zeroed in on exactly one thing between our lists: Charles Johnson. I love Charles Johnson’s fighting, anyone who has read my event breakdowns knows I am physically incapable of shutting the fuck up about him, and I want so desperately to put him up in the clouds where I want him to be, given that he knocked out Van and Lone’er Kavanagh. But I just can’t get over Alex Perez completely destroying him this year. How did you get over it, and can you teach me your ways?

Jess: Johnson has a win over our consensus number one fighter in the division. Granted, that fight is coming up on its two year anniversary, so maybe the weight I attribute to it isn’t as relevant any more. I also wanted to give InnerG a little boost and nod for dispatching Lone’er Kavanagh, who I bristle at for reasons I can’t quite explain. So I gave Charles the 3 spot based on strength of victories.

But as you said, overall, flyweight is outstanding! We are a match for thirteen fighters, and one of your guys, Steve Erceg, was my last man out. His overall record is good, I just found it hard to put a number by his name because three top fighters have him as a marquee win. Two people making a name off you is ok, but three? Good day, sir!

Also, I admit to putting my thumb on the scale with ranking Amir Albazi. It boosted Horiguchi’s standing and that’s all I care about at the end of the day.

I know this is contradictory because I have other ONE fighters ranked, but I sort of discounted Pacio out of hand. He had that weird trilogy with Jarred Brookins that featured Pacio winning by DQ after getting hit with an illegal brainbuster. Then, in ONE Championship tradition, he goes up in weight to fight the next division’s champ and gets blasted. Great, good job, everyone. Hope we all liked that one MMA fight, there won’t be another for 28 months.

Carl: You know, just now, thinking about the Passion of Pacio has put the Flyweight situation and maybe the whole of the sport into perspective for me.

Flyweight, as a division, got fully harvested by the UFC. They built it by Frankensteining together the bones of the WEC, Tachi Palace and Shooto, and they rode those bones for years, and when they got worn out the UFC did the unprecedented thing of siphoning goddamn near every single Flyweight champion in the world for The Ultimate Fighter, and then over the last five years they peeled off Kape and Horiguchi and Kai Asakura from Rizin. Half the reason the Flyweight division is so great is it’s the only division where the UFC has lived up to its promise to be the gathering place for the best fighters in the world. Damn near everyone is already here, and the only people who aren’t are guys like Ougikubo, who had a shot at the UFC and didn’t make it, or Pacio, who struggles with guys like Brooks who, themselves, struggled in the UFC.

Which is also why it’s so easy for them to do total bullshit like cutting Muhammad Mokaev. The fields are fallow. This isn’t a Heavyweight situation where they need every hand they can get, they can afford to let people go precisely because they did their job so well already. It is instead Mokaev who doesn’t have anywhere to go. ONE is a graveyard for MMA, Rizin is already full up on foreign wrestlers to the point of xenophobia, the PFL doesn’t even bother with Men’s Flyweight. It’s a dustbowl of opportunity. Even Ougikubo is just there so Rizin can keep throwing Shinryu Takahashi at him over and over until the young marketable guy finally wins.

Jess, did I just talk myself into being sad about Flyweight? I don’t like this. What do I do?

Jess: Only thing we can do, Carl: Rewatch Van vs Taira and smile wanly.

Jess: Oh boy, is it time for the desolate potter’s field known as Women’s Bantamweight?

Kayla Harrison. Possibly Amanda Nunes, depending on how bored she is at home with her wife and children. A collection of other women.

I feel sad now, too.

Carl, what is Macy Chiasson doing on your rankings? Her two most recent wins (which are two years old by now) came against Marya Bueno Silva and Pannie Kianzad, who are on a combined 8 fight losing streak. I know I just said women’s 135 is a desolate potter’s field, but there wasn’t anyone else to put on the list? I almost didn’t consider Cavalcanti, Montague, and Pennington, because their only notable wins were also Marya Bueno Silva.

I think the division is just irrevocably broken.

Carl: Unfortunately, Macy Chiasson is on my rankings precisely because the division is irrevocably broken. Planet’s dyin’, Cloud. Once you get past the top five there are no good choices left because there’s nothing left to do. Like, you have Jennifer Maia at #4, and I would love to still rank her, but she’s fucking around in kickboxing now because she can’t get a fight. She’s Invicta’s goddamn champion and they haven’t booked her since December of 2024, probably because as of this week, Invicta, itself, hasn’t promoted an event for an entire year, is three months late to its promised relaunch, and there is no sun yet in sight.

For a similar case in point: You’ve got Lucie Pudilova up there, and she hasn’t beaten anyone with a winning record in two years, and before that she was splitting a two-fight series with Cecille Bolander, who is now 4-2, and Pudilova lost. And I say all of that, but if you then asked me if Pudilova still deserves to be recognized in the top fifteen, I don’t know that I could put up a passionate case against it, because that’s how bad things are right now. When Macy beat Mayra she was still just one fight removed from battling for the world championship, and now, two years later, Mayra is unemployed and Macy’s on a three-fight skid, and I don’t know if that’s disqualifying anymore.

And it’s not like there’s a great green hill out there where talent is waiting to be discovered. I think Lucia Szabova is promising, but I need to see her fight more than one woman with a solid record before I get excited.

What do you think the future holds for Women’s 135? Is Joselyne Edwards going to get a title shot after Kayla and Amanda have their double-retirement fight? Are any of these prospects going anywhere? What happens when a dream dies?

Jess: Man, I don’t know. Can’t put my faith and energy into Bia Mesquita, she’s already 35. Edwards is on a five fight win streak and she’s only just now getting out of fighting the #19 or #16 UFC women’s bantamweight.

Nobody was allowed anything other than a lateral move, because if UFC let someone get momentum and kept winning higher stakes fights, there might be some push for anyone not named Amanda Nunes to get the next title fight.

Come, scream with me in the woods until the ghosts take us, Carl. There is nothing else for us here on the mortal plane of women’s bantamweight.

Carl: It’s appropriate that Women’s Flyweight is the division we have the most agreement on. The top five feel like they’re practically set in stone. However sick large swaths of the internet may be of Valentina Shevchenko she is an absolute institution of the sport, and it’s essentially undeniable that Manon Fiorot is stuck perpetually at #2, and from there it’s just a question of how you root out the Silva/Ditcheva/Blanchfield tier of competition.

Which is not to shit on Taila Santos, who is still great, or Alexa Grasso, whom I forgive for the interminability of her title exchange with Val thanks to her managing to finish Maycee Barber three times in five seconds, or even a Rose Namajunas who, bless her, is still trying and never not at least competitive. But it really is The Top Five and Everyone Else. And, unfortunately, Dakota Ditcheva is both an absolute phenomenon of the sport and stuck already at the top of the PFL with no one above her to fight.

I think, in my head, I inverted Barber and Grasso on your list as a clerical thing, but that may have been presumptuous. Can you shed light, and moreover, can you tell me if I should believe in Wang Cong, because I sure can’t get that Gabriella Fernandes fight out of my head and I think Tracy Cortez might do bad things to her as long as she remembers to stop gluing on her fake fucking eyelashes before she gets into a cagefight.

Jess: Honestly, further inspection might have led me to flipping Barber and Grasso. Grasso has the win over Barber, and while Alexa has two losses recently, they are to my numbers 1 and 4, which ain’t too shabby. Barber’s notable win came against Karine Silva, who didn’t make my top 15.

We both know there’s only one fight for Dakota Ditcheva, but I don’t want to say it because the outcome is going to make me upset, and that’s a clash with Liz Carmouche.

As with any fight or fighter, there’s a simple mental exercise you can perform. Imagine the fighter’s skills as grains of rice. A few grains for good punching power, some more for solid technique and footwork. Take those grains of rice, and place them on one side of a scale. Weigh those techniques against the fighter doing the dumbest fucking thing you can think of, like chosing to ignore an obvious grappling advantage to stand and throw haymakers instead. For that side, hurl a brick at the scale.

So, will Cong Wang beat Tracy Cortez? Will Tracy Cortez hamper herself with cosmetics again? Throw the bricks to the sky and let the fates decide.

Carl: Carmouche/Ditcheva does seem truly inevitable, and although it would be really bad for the prospects of Women’s Flyweight as a division, when the time comes, I will hurl my bricks for Liz and hope she can fuck up everyone’s marketing plans one last time, and may any non-UFC hopes for the division be buried with her eventual retirement.

Jess: Strawweight! I do not believe in the champion. I will never believe in the champion, you cannot make me. Mackenzie Dern is not real. All hail Zhang Weili, the queen without a crown.

I request leniency for not ranking Angela Hill. She was close to making it, she has two wins over other noted fighters, but she’s also got 3 losses to noted fighters. I’m sorry Angie. I’m a weak worm.

Jingnan Xiong is understandably off your list, as ONE froze her out for the last decade, but my brain went “yeah, but she still probably beats most of the women here”. Potential folly, but so be it!

My bottom five were narrowly switched out for basically the five you have. I went with more, yet less impressive wins over fewer, but notable wins plus extra losses. Again: weak worm.

Carl: I will always have a place for Angela Hill in my heart, but realistically, she exists in the same place she has always existed, and that is the forgotten reaches of the outer rankings, and that is where it is easy to forget people. Which is funny, given that I did, unfortunately, remove Jingnan for inactivity and now she has her chance to hop the fence into the top fifteen by beating Angie. I hope she does. But I also hope she can make 115 without killing herself.

Mackenzie Dern as champion is a thing that would simply be funny if they hadn’t spent so, so many years trying so, so very hard to make it a reality. To be honest, I’m almost glad that she did it, not for her achievements as a fighter, but because after watching marketing repeatedly fail to get her there I cannot help feeling some sort of happiness for them. Congratulations, guys, you finally caught the Road Runner. Now find her a title defense she won’t lose.

I think my real question in terms of disparities between our rankings is: Do you hate Amanda Lemos?

Jess: Lemos was hard to place. She beat my top 4 and 5, but she also has losses to 1, 2, 3, and 7. Despite all against top 10 opponents, four defeats is hard to square. Would I take her straight up over Amorim or Alencar? Possibly, but my Tapology record shows that’s nothing to go by.

I think more telling is that I don’t find Loopy Goodinez’s win over Jessica Andrade that compelling any more. I’m sorry, Ms Piledriver, I once had great love for you in my heart, even if you pile drove one of my other favorite fighters on her skull.

Carl: If anything, as much as I also appreciate Loopy, we must hold it against her as a failure of ethics that she failed to stop the Mackenzie Dern future. Hers was our last line of defense and now we are doomed, and if the price is your ranking, she must pay it.

Carl: So, confession: When you sent me your rankings I hadn’t finished Atomweight yet, and I saw that you had only listed ten competitors and thought ‘well, that’ll be awkward, I wonder how we’ll fit ours together,’ and then I tried to do them and jesus christ, Atomweight is dying.

It was always in a precarious position, what with Rizin and Invicta as its only stewards, and now Invicta is so far gone that Elisandra Ferreira is a month away from her Strawweight debut in the PFL, and Seika Izawa is on indefinite hiatus to go have kids, and a half-dozen women fell off my list for either inactivity or weight class changes since the last time I looked at it. RENA has one win over an active Atomweight with a winning record in the last five years, and we both still have her on the top ten, because what else can you possibly do?

I feel terrible for Natasha Kuziutina, who seems cool as hell and who made a big splashy debut on the same event Seika announced her departure, which makes me wonder if Rizin will even bother while she’s gone.

Jess: Can you tell I forgot Seika Izawa vacated to go make babies in the closet with Principal Skinner?

Carl, I miss Hamderlei. I miss her so much. A victim of circumstance across time and space. UFC doesn’t have 105, so she gets beat up by giant strawweights. Forced to fight Ayaka Hamasaki 30 times in DEEP and Jewels and DEEP Jewels and SmackGirl. Signs with ONE which also doesn’t have atomweight so she fights more large strawweights, stuck in ONE while Izawa reaches ascendancy in Rizin, can’t go fight her.

Why does Dana White get several billions of money to do dumb things like Powered Slap while Shannon Knapp gets none money and can’t put on Invictas for until the next Leap Year?

I just want to see fighters that I have a 50-50 shot of being taller than competing regularly. Is that so much to ask?

Carl: I, too, miss Ham, and I hope whatever vault ONE has all their mixed martial artists locked in has airholes and a wheel in it so they can keep themselves entertained during their time in perdition.

I love Invicta, and I will always love Invicta, and I will follow Invicta until one of us is dead in the ground, but when they looked at the company that owned TNA Wrestling and went ‘this is a fine organization to sell ourselves to’ they made a concerted decision to beat me to it, and it sure does seem like we’re there. We can’t pay for Invicta events because we’re too busy putting our money into Carlos Silva’s collection of branded baseball caps. Sorry, ladies.

The UFC could have had Atomweight. They could have had a division where Michelle Waterson-Gomez was a champion like they always wanted. Instead it is going the way of Women’s Featherweight, and this time, it isn’t even Dana White’s fault.

Jess: high pitched screaming from the woods for 9 hours

MVP MMA 1: Rousey vs Carano - Saturday, May 16

Here it is, folks. The Big ‘Un. Ronda Rousey. Gina Carano. Most Valuable Promotions. The fight we’ve been told we’ve all been waiting for. Is it gonna be good? Friend, if they thought it would be good, they’d make you pay for it.

Main Card - Netflix

Featherweight - Ronda Rousey vs Gina Carano

Oh, okay.

We’ve got two fighters here with over two decades of combined inactivity. They’ve each only got one or two opponents on their records still considered active in LIz Carmouche, Holly Holm, and Cris Cyborg, while Amanda Nunes exists in a liminal state of simultaneous active retirement. Any combination of those women would be a much better viewing experience than whatever this sham of a farce fight ends up being.

Ronda is younger, has been more physically active recently with a WWE career that ended after she got upset people booed her. However, her brain is applesauce due to continuous concussive impacts.

Gina is older, but she’s been kept fresh by not getting blows to the head on a regular basis, as her requirements as a Daily Wire streaming star are to grimace and mutter her lines in a flat affect. Her brain is applesauce because of Online.

Expect some awkward shuffling, the most dogshit punches you’ve seen, then an ugly collision that could only be considered a clinch under the most charitable interpretation of the word. A semi-controlled falldown and then an armbar. This whole thing should take about twenty-five seconds. If it lasts longer, someone’s on the take.

Welterweight - Nate Diaz vs Mike Perry

Here we have the dum-dums. The most Florida Man ever assembled (secretly originally from Michigan) and the general of the Dingdong Brigade, Nathaniel Donald Diaz.

Perry has kept busy since his departure from UFC with bareknuckle boxing, and of course, losing to Jake Paul. He also hasn’t fought just regular-degular MMA since 2021, hasn’t won since 2020, and last stopped someone in 2017.

Nate Diaz beat the washed, chopped, and cooked version of Tony Ferguson. Man was a damn Waffle House hashbrowns order at that point.

Mike Perry has never been able to figure out what to do when an opponent throws a jab or uses anything beyond rudimentary footwork. Nate Diaz has half of that equation perfected. Perry is going to get stung a few times, might even get some blood coming out of his nose, but eventually, he’s going to wade in and blast big bombs on Nate.

Heavyweight - Francis N’Gannou vs Philipe Lins

Now if this fight goes more than twenty-five seconds, someone really is on the take.

Lins has not fought at heavyweight since 2020. He’s also giving up a few inches in height, about 5 inches in reach, and when he did fight above 205, he’s about 35 pounds lighter than Francis’s usual weight.

Francis hasn’t really done much in MMA, but Renan Ferreira is probably a lot better than Lins, and N’Gannou handled him easily.

Francis by Unspeakable Violence.

Lightweight - Salahdinne Parnasse vs Kenneth Cross

Parnasse has been beating the hell out of dudes in Poland’s KSW. Most recently, he dispatched Marcin Held, who is somehow only 34. That is interesting to just me.

Do you remember mid-2010s Bellator guy Emmanuel Sanchez? Well, he’s the best win on Cross’s record.

This could be a fun little scrap between two unknown guys that get overshadowed by the bigger names. Sadly, this will probably be the portion of the main card that people go get snacks. Sorry guys.

Heavyweight - Junior Dos Santos vs Robelis Despaigne

JDS hasn’t won in MMA since 2019. He has won some bouts in Karate Combat, but for mixed martial arts, he was last seen with his arm flurping out of the shoulder socket back when Khabib was trying to launder money through Eagle FC.

Despaigne is a tall man who beat terrible guys in MMA and a combo of old and undersized guys in Karate Combat.

This fight is going to be stupid and sad. Gird yourself!

Select Prelims - Live on MVP YouTube and TUDUM. And Poob. Just Poob It

I’m not covering the fight itself, but there’s a guy on the prelims who fought on Golden Boy’s Liddell vs Ortiz 3 card. It’s just kind of interesting that he’s showing up on this sad cashgrab event as well.

Maybe he’ll get booked for Zuck vs Musk in 2030 on Mars.

Flyweight - Adriano Moraes vs Phumi Nkuta

Another fight that was a late notice downgrade. Moraes was supposed to face the embattled former top UFC fighter, Muhammad Mokaev. Unfortunately, visa issues popped up, keeping him out of the event.

Moraes, you may recall, knocked out Demetrious Johnson five years ago. Then he got beat by DJ in back to back rematches. He is a large bantamweight making his first attempt to weigh in at 125 lbs since 2017 and now he’s also 37.

Nkuta is undefeated with no notable wins.

Moraes will probably win, but it’s far and few that can maintain high level of competition in the tiny weight divisions past 35.

Welterweight - Jason Jackson vs Jeff Creighton

This is a lament for what could have been. This fight was originally scheduled as Jason the Ass-Kicking Machine Jackson versus Lorenz Da Monsoon Larkin.

Jackson and Larkin had been punching dudes the hell out in the sputtering, dying days of Bellator. This was supposed to be a Super Punch Battle. But Larkin is hurt and out of the bout.

Jeff Creighton lost on TUF 33. He beat Joey Davis, but that’s the kind of late-era Bellator errata that only appeals to me specifically.

I need Jackson to pummel Creighton to set up the rain check of him versus Larkin at MVP MMA 2, which will never happen.

Catchweight (130lbs) - Aline Pereira vs Jaden Masson-Wong

Did you know: Aline Pereira is Alex Pereira’s younger sister? She has none of the accolades of Alex, but she does share a similar genetic structure!

Masson-Wong hasn’t fought MMA since 2020, and she hasn’t won in MMA since 2018.

Oh wow I could not possibly begin to guess who is expected to win this contest!

Catchweight (165 lbs) - Chris Avila vs Brandon Jenkins

It is the Contractually Obligated Nate Diaz’s Friend booking portion of the card. Chris Avila wasn’t UFC caliber in 2016, he wasn’t Bellator caliber in 2019, and I don’t think he’s MVP MMA caliber in 2026.

Brandon Jenkins was also not UFC caliber, and he’s also lost in Bareknuckle MMA as well as Karate Combat.

Get ready for heavyweight level technique, with middleweight level gas tanks.

SATURDAY, MAY 16 FROM THE MANDATED NECESSITY OF THE APEX
PRELIMS 2 PM PDT / 5 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 5 PM / 8 PM

Wasn’t that big double-championship plus title eliminator plus inexplicable Jeremy Stephens appearance last week fun? Isn’t it nice when things matter?

Well, I hope you enjoyed it while it lasted. This week we’re back in the Apex for a fight card with two ranked fights, multiple debuts, and Tuco Tokkos booked above a top-five women’s fight. Next week we’re off because everyone needs a goddamn break. The week after that the UFC’s in Macau, which means it’s another post-midnight special for the stateside audience and will go largely unwatched. The week after that? We’re back in the Apex for a card with the attempted deconstruction of Belal Muhammad featuring a Bryce Mitchell fight.

And after that it’s the White House, capping off a bad month in MMA with the single most cursed event ever to make air.

We are in the Apex. We never left the Apex. We will never leave the Apex, no matter where we go.

MAIN EVENT: PASSING TRAINS
FEATHERWEIGHT: Arnold Allen (20-4, #7) vs Melquizael Costa (26-7, #12)

This is not the future Arnold Allen was meant for.

Allen spent years as the Featherweight heir apparent. At the height of Conormania, when the UFC was so desperate for UK talent that for a terrible moment in time Paddy Holohan was in a main event, Arnold Allen was there. Top contender in Cage Warriors, regional champion in the lesser English circuit, nearly undefeated altogether--he was a perfect candidate for furthering the UFC’s international expansion, and audiences already bought him as a serious prospect after just his debut fight.

In 2015.

Eight months passed before the world saw him again. And he won! But it was another thirteen months before his third UFC appearance. Fourteen to the next one. Another year, after that. This became the patch on Allen’s career: He was unanimously agreed to be one of the best Featherweights in the world, he was well-rounded, iron-chinned and capable of imposing his gameplans on everyone he met, but he couldn’t stay healthy or active, and by the time 2021 rolled around he was about to enter the top ten and thanks to the odd span of his inactivity the best victory of his career was over Gilbert Melendez, who had been a top Lightweight a decade prior, hadn’t won a fight in six years, and retired immediately afterward.

It wasn’t Arnold, it was his timing, and he was as frustrated by it as anyone. By 2022 he managed to notch multiple fights in a year again--just the second time in his then-seven-year run in the UFC--and after obliterating Dan Hooker and psychically causing then-contender Calvin Kattar’s knee to collapse in midfight, he was finally ready to get the shot at the top he’d been meant for back in 2015.

As it turned out: Eight years wasn’t long enough to prepare for Max Holloway. That’s okay, though! That’s not the end of the world. It’s Max Holloway, he did that to goddamn near everyone, and Arnold put up a very good fight and even held Max to a one-round margin on one of the scorecards. Max was bound for Lightweight soon enough, the space would open, and Arnold would have his chance to shine again.

At least, he would have a few years prior. Lost opportunities were perceived as the curse of Allen’s strength of schedule, but that missed the true danger of how the division had changed around him. When Allen joined the UFC, Dennis Bermudez was a top ten Featherweight. By the time he broke into the single digits, Allen’s peers in the top ten had shifted, but they still included aging fighters like Chan Sung Jung and Edson Barboza.

By the turn of 2024, the new generation was on its way in. Ilia Topuria was about to be the champion. Killers like Movsar Evloev, Lerone Murphy, Diego Lopes and Jean Silva were beginning to churn through the rankings. The Brian Ortegas of the world were falling to pieces.

While no one was looking, Arnold Allen became the veteran standing in the middle of the tides of time, and they were no kinder to him than any of the hundreds who came before him. Between his professional debut in 2012 and his top contendership match in 2023, Arnold Allen went 19-1. In the last three years, he’s 1-3, and that sole victory came against Giga Chikadze, who is, himself, nearing 40 and seemingly on his way out. Allen couldn’t outgrapple Movsar, just like he couldn’t outgun Jean Silva.

But he’s never looked terrible. He hung in there with Movsar and even won the fight on a handful of media cards. He went toe to toe with Jean and won the first round. He isn’t dying in the cage, he isn’t humiliating himself, he just hasn’t quite been able to hang, and in some ways that’s so, so much worse. When a fighter is simply washed up, when BJ Penn is out there dropping decisions to Dennis Siver, it’s easy. It’s painful to watch, but it’s easy to recognize that someone is simply done. When a top fighter is still so, so very close to still being a top fighter and they just aren’t quite there anymore, you have to embark on the difficult journey of figuring out how much they have left and where they belong.

That’s where opportunity comes for the fighters who need it. Melquizael Costa needs it, because he was never supposed to get this far in the first place.

There was no deeply intentional marketing plan for Melk. The UFC had scouted him, they were well aware of his appearances in the Legacy Fighting Alliance and his wins in Mexico, but he wasn’t signed because they had big things in mind for him, he wasn’t plucked out of the ether as a special attraction, he wasn’t even contracted for the Contender Series. Lightweight veteran Thiago Moisés was supposed to fight top prospect Guram Kutateladze at the start of 2023, Guram had to pull out two weeks ahead of time, and Melk was conveniently available. Just another in the increasing army of short-notice contracts the company relies on these days to fill the holes in their schedule.

Which is a fucking shame, because Melk’s story is the kind modern dreams are made of. He was a poor kid in Brazil who grew up dealing with constant ostracization thanks to his vitiligo--though he’s noted that his fellow kids didn’t really give a shit, it was their parents who constantly pushed him away for fear that he was diseased, because no matter where you are in the world, parents just don’t understand--and he found his will to be out in public thanks to the combination of a love of martial arts and the only great mixed martial arts fighting game ever made, 2011’s UFC Undisputed 3. A fifteen year-old Melk saw WEC veteran and fellow vitiligo case Scott Jorgensen in digital form, and learning that someone like him could be a star in the sport helped Melk find both his confidence and his dream.

It’s a great background! It did not stop him from getting strangled by Thiago or pounded out by Steve Garcia a couple fights later, and by the turn of 2024 Costa was already 1-2, banished to the early prelims and being placed in fights that could easily have ended his contract. As it turns out, after the mile of crap he dealt with to get here, he was not prepared to let go that easily.

Melk turned his fortunes around and became the first person in the UFC to tap out Shayilan Nuerdanbieke, a name I deeply miss typing on a regular basis. He didn’t get another fight in 2024 (because the UFC, emphasizing their disinterest, didn’t actually offer him a new contract until the end of the fucking year) and he made up for it by scoring a ridiculous four wins in nine months over the course of 2025. If you were watching the sport, once every 73 days you saw him show up and batter progressively tougher opponents in progressively wilder ways. He out-gritted Christian Rodriguez, the man who slew Raul Rosas Jr. He out-crazied Julian Erosa, who throws more flying knees than jabs. He took on Morgan Charrière, owner of some of the heaviest kicks in the division, and put a shin upside his forehead in barely over a minute.

But he didn’t legitimize himself as a threat to the division until this past February. Dan Ige has been Featherweight’s gatekeeper for damn near a decade, and in that time he’s shared the cage with a laundry list of greats, from aforementioned contenders like Barboza and Kattar and Jung to the new guys like Lopes, Murphy and Evloev. Ige hadn’t always won, but he’d always made a solid accounting for himself, and in all of those ring-hours with all of those men he had been beaten, but never stopped. Not by Josh Emmett’s punching power, not by Bryce Mitchell’s grappling. In eight years and twenty fights, win or lose, Dan Ige always made it to the final bell.

Seconds before the first round could end, Melquizael Costa hit him square in the face with a spinning kick and pounded him out.

He wasn’t supposed to be a martial artist. He wasn’t supposed to be in the UFC. He was such an afterthought that the matchmakers let him dangle in the wind, unsigned, as a successful UFC veteran in the prime of his career. Now he’s the first man to ever kick the Featherweight door down, and he has a shot at becoming one of the top ten in the entire world. It’s a great addition to an already great story, and a great shot in the arm for one of the best divisions in the sport, and a great main event in a place that is often stuck with the dregs, and a great opportunity for an underserved fighter who has more than earned it.

All of which makes me really sad that I’m picking ARNOLD ALLEN BY DECISION. I would love to be wrong about this one. I’ve been rooting for Costa since that first matchup with Moisés, but a lot of his success comes from the looseness of his style. He’s mobile and lanky and he keeps himself open so he can jump on guillotines or swing wild kicks into tight spaces, and that works really well on competitors that don’t can’t take advantage of it. Allen does not have this problem. He boxed with Max Holloway, wrestled with Movsar Evloev, and brawled with Jean Silva. He’s extremely composed and extremely adaptable, and as much as I’d like to see Melk pull another spinning kick out of his ass and shock the world again, I don’t think Allen’s time in the top five is done yet.

CO-MAIN EVENT: GETTING KIND OF UNCOMFORTABLE
FEATHERWEIGHT: Dooho Choi (16-4-1) vs Daniel Santos (13-2)

So this is weird, right? This is really fucking weird?

I don’t mean Dooho Choi. Nothing is weird about Dooho Choi. He was the second-most-promoted South Korean fighter next to Chan Sung Jung himself, he had one of the best fights in UFC history with Cub Swanson, he had a bad streak of knockout losses afterward that included somehow getting knocked out by Jeremy Stephens, he went off for his mandatory national military service, came back after four and a half years and had his grand return spoiled by a point-deduction draw with Kyle Nelson, a man best known for Having A Beard and Getting Knocked Out Regularly, and he’s only back to his winning ways thanks to a knockout over a man who makes train noises and a white guy from Pennsylvania who calls himself Señor Perfecto.

See? Completely normal. By the standards of mixed martial arts this is breakfast at an IHOP. Dooho Choi is not the problem.

Daniel Santos isn’t the problem, either. At least, not intentionally. It’s a little weird that he’s only managed five UFC fights in five years, and it’s a little weird that he went from losing to Julio Arce to breaking John Castañeda’s face, and it’s a little weird that he’s a Brazilian fighter nicknamed after the creepy fucking cat-children from Thundercats except they spelled it “Willycat” for what I assume are please-don’t-sue-us reasons because god only knows how vicious the lawyers in charge of Thundercats are, but he shares a division with a guy named Nate Wood, so honestly, who’s throwing stones. All of that? That’s fine. That’s all just fine.

As of now, there are about one hundred Featherweights signed to the UFC. There’s a bit of number-fudging there, as it’s counting some Contender Series folks and some only semi-active folks and the like, but 100 is a lot more satisfying than “ninety-something” so we’re gonna stick with it. Out of those one hundred fighters, exactly three hail from South Korea: Dooho Choi, Jeongyeong Lee, and JooSang Yoo.

And it’s very easy to put all of their names together, because as of this weekend, Daniel Santos will have fought all three of them in consecutive bouts.

That’s weird! That’s fucking weird, right? This fight was supposed to happen back in September and it was already weird then because Santos had just fought and beat Lee, after Choi got injured the UFC made it even weirder by rebooking Santos into a fight with Yoo on the following weekend, and now, seven months later, they’re finishing the job by rebooking this fight. South Koreans make up roughly 3% of the Featherweight roster and in just a few days Daniel Santos will have fought all of them in a row.

I don’t know what kind of 2026 Alex Stiebling shit we’re onto, here, but boy, it’s a series of weird choices. Both of these men could use fights to push them up the ladder after their long periods of inactivity, but you probably didn’t need to have them do it against each other, especially with the possibility that, should he win, Santos will have defeated 33% of the entire South Korean contingent in the UFC.

Save us from the sweep, Superboy. DOOHO CHOI BY TKO.

MAIN CARD: KETLEN VIEIRA VS JACQUELINE CAVALCANTI IS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PRELIMS
BANTAMWEIGHT: Malcolm Wellmaker (10-1) vs Juan Díaz (15-1-1)

Living by hype means dying by hype. Malcolm Wellmaker was one of the UFC’s big breakout prospects of 2025, an undefeated man with a near-total finishing rate who kept getting big right hook knockout finishes that inevitably got reposted by the 60-70% bot population of social media, which is, as we know, the best possible route for success. It was impressive, it was exciting, and it was also thoroughly astroturfed. His first opponent was Cameron Saaiman, a fellow former Contender Series prospect now stuck on a losing streak, and his second, even more hilariously, was Kris Moutinho, who was 0-2 in the UFC and known solely for catching hideous beatings. They intended to step him up a little with Serhiy Sidey, who did, at least, have a couple wins, and when he pulled out it was going to be Cody Haddon, a veteran of one UFC fight, and when he couldn’t make it either they threw up their hands and pulled out the old matchmaking special: Picking up a regional guy who fights at a lower weight class with less than a week to prepare so the marketing guy can still get his win. Unfortunately for them, they picked out Ethyn Ewing, who turned out to be really fucking good at fighting.

So now Ewing’s knocking on the door of the rankings and Wellmaker’s stuck fighting debutants in the Apex. As Wellmaker and Saaiman before him, Juan Díaz is this year’s model of Contender Series Guy. He’s relatively young at 27, he’s kicked around Mexico’s regional circuit for the last few years with a bunch of success--the only man to beat him, Rodrigo Vera, is making his own UFC debut at the end of the month--and, as a sign of just what the exchange rate is like out there these days, Juan holding the Bantamweight Championship of the Lux Fight League, which regularly runs intentionally mismatched record-padding cards out of gymnasiums built for 3,000 people, entitled him to a shot at the Contender Series opposite Kwon Won-il, who spent six years in ONE Championship and unsuccessfully fought for their 145-pound title last year. Whatever the economics of the fight, from a skill perspective, it was apparently entirely apt as Juan crushed him. He outjabbed him, outkicked him, stumbled him with several big right hands and knocked him out with that spinning back elbow that’s quickly becoming a part of the overall MMA meta the same way calf kicks did a decade ago.

Great performance, solid offense, Juan’s got a lot of promise as a fighter, MALCOLM WELLMAKER BY KO. For all of his offensive prowess, Juan also keeps his head on a stick and takes punches to land them. All it’s gonna take is one.

LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Modestas Bukauskas (19-7) vs Rodolfo Bellato (13-3-1) Christian Edwards (8-4)

The Modestas Moment came and went. Khalil Rountree Jr. kicking his kneecap out back in 2021 took away both a year of his career and his UFC contract, but by 2023 the UFC needed a warm body to keep Tyson Pedro on an Australian card, and Modestas came back fully recovered, better than ever, and prepared to take the entire world by storm. Up until half a year later, when Vitor Petrino knocked him right the fuck out again. But two more years and four more victories and not only was Modestas right back in the mix, he was fighting for a long-awaited spot in the top fifteen! Which was denied to him when Nikita Krylov knocked him out just three seconds before the final bell. 2021 is 2023 is 2026, and like so many who’ve known trauma, Modestas is stuck in the cycle of reliving his pain.

Rodolfo Bellato is on the opposite end of the philosophical spectrum, existing in a persistent cycle of comedy. Seven years ago Bellato was a big, promising prospect out of São Paulo’s regional scene, but his run came to an end when our last-paragraph buddy Vitor Petrino knocked him cold. Three years and three wins later, Rodolfo got his shot at the Contender Series and found himself fighting for a UFC contract against, of all possible people, Vitor Petrino, who knocked him out again. Three more fights later Bellato finally made it to the big show, and got a nice soft target in comedy jobber Ihor Potieria for his debut, after which everything got real weird. A majority draw with Jimmy Crute. A No Contest with Paul Craig after Craig landed an illegal upkick that had the audience (unfairly) questioning Bellato’s heart. A loss to Navajo Stirling, the most featureless of Light Heavyweight prospects. And there, at the end of all things, Bellato saved his contract by knocking out Luke Fernandez, which happened two months ago and I will bet everything in my pockets that you already forgot it happened.

There is nothing in my pockets, just as there is nothing keeping the Light Heavyweight division from falling into the lake of fire. MODESTAS BUKAUSKAS BY DECISION. UPDATE: Rodolfo got pulled from the fight on Tuesday and replaced by Christian Edwards, who is debuting for the company despite being 50/50 in the last five years and being one fight removed from losing to Luke Fernandez, the man Bellato destroyed, so we’re trading up to MODESTAS BUKAUSKAS BY TKO.

BANTAMWEIGHT: Timmy Cuamba (10-3) vs Bernardo Sopaj (12-3)

One of the most pernicious aspects of the modern UFC is the way damn near every fighter goes through the same Play-Doh press. I would love to tell you about Timmy Cuamba’s long history in the B-leagues, or Bernardo Sopaj’s time with Bahrain’s BRAVE Combat Federation, but they resolve in exactly the same way. Both men got brought up in 2024 as short-notice replacement signings to keep one of marketing’s players on an event--in Cuamba’s case it was Bolaji Oki and in Sopaj’s it was Vinicius Oliveira, so one of those straws was decidedly shorter than the other--both men dutifully lost, and both have been spinning their wheels ever since. Cuamba lost another fight before winning two, Sopaj sat on the sidelines for a year before winning his next fight and this time he’s been out of action for sixteen months.

“Why don’t people care about the UFC like they used to” is one of those recurring questions that’s very easily answered by the most sparing glance at its sociopolitical perspective, but this, here, is maybe the best example of its fundamental issues as a functional organization. Both of these men were signed and booked as afterthoughts, and now Cuamba’s on a two-fight winning streak and Sopaj has only managed one cagewalk in the last two years, and these two things are considered sufficiently equal enough that they’re putting them together, and they’re doing it in the Apex where they know half of the audience won’t be watching, and all of that is, itself, still being booked more notably than a top five fight at Women’s Bantamweight.

I hate the UFC’s politics, and I hate the era of favoritism we’re stuck in, but as tempting as it would be to blame all of the sport’s woes on its crippling addictions to fascism and bigotry, it’s a lot simpler: You cannot ask the audience to care when the company itself very visibly could not care less. No one is buying that the matchmakers are in any way invested in Cuamba/Sopaj, nor that there’s any hope it will lead anywhere. BERNADO SOPAJ BY DECISION.

WELTERWEIGHT: Nikolay Veretennikov (14-7) vs Khaos Williams (15-5)

I actually didn’t do this on purpose, it’s a fun kind of serendipity, but on the extremely appropriate topic of the UFC’s complete lack of giving a shit we have this fight. Nikolay Veretennikov is a five-fight UFC veteran who just came off his best performance in the company, having punched and elbowed the shit out of poor Niko Price this past February. Khaos Williams is a former prospect who has fallen into the danger zone, having taken two consecutive losses for the first time in his entire career. This is a battle of legitimate veterans with fifteen UFC bouts between them.

As I write this, it is 10:34 PM EDT on Monday, meaning this event takes place in about four and a half days. This fight has not been officially posted. It wasn’t on their TV breakdown, it’s not on their social media, and it’s not on the UFC’s official card, which, coincidentally, still lists multiple fights that have been publicly scratched by injuries. Several databases list this happening, but they have it as a prelim. I am relying on Marcel Dorff, a Dutch journalist, whose twitter account is, inexplicably, the most consistently accurate source for card news on the entire internet. Not the UFC, the canonical organization in the annals of mixed martial arts, but one load-bearing reporter everyone relies on.

I wish this was a real sport. KHAOS WILLIAMS BY DECISION.

PRELIMS: FUCK YOU, DUDE
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Tuco Tokkos (11-5) vs Ivan Erslan (14-6 (1))

With the greatest of sadness, I must announce that this is, officially, the end of our streak of weekly updates on the ongoing humiliation of the Heavyweight division. For the first time since March 7 we have zero Heavyweight fights on the docket. We’ll pick it back up for Sergei Pavlovich vs Tallison Teixeira out in Macau, but for this one tragic moment in time, we must content ourselves with Heavyweight Junior, which is nearly as bad. Tuco Tokkos is 1-2 in the UFC and that one victory came against Junior Tafa, which is almost worse than having never won. Ivan Erslan can attest: He’s 0-3. I know my particular neurodivergent obsession with fight records can get grating because fighters aren’t always reducible to numbers, but two fights before he was in the UFC Tuco was beating up the 1-13 Brian “Stone Handz” Jackson, a man who mysteriously loses almost all of his fights by TKO within 90 seconds. Ivan was, at least, fighting and competing with slightly credible folks out in KSW.

That does not mean that they should, necessarily, be here, but you go to war with the Light Heavyweight division you have, not the Light Heavyweight division you want. IVAN ERSLAN BY DECISION.

LIGHTWEIGHT: Artur Minev (7-0) vs Tommy Gantt (11-0 (1))

On the ongoing topic of short-notice replacement signings and the way the Contender Series is running the shape of mixed martial arts through the Amigara Fault hole, we have this fight. Tommy Gantt is one of those ideal things DWCS lives on: Guys who look great if you aren’t fully paying attention. An undefeated 11-0, 10 of them finishes, and at Lightweight, the best division in the game? Surely, that’s a future star and if you look at the records of the men he fought absolutely nothing weird will jump out at you.

Ah. Right. Obviously. Was one of those guys 10-40? Jesus fucking christ.

The first time I put Tommy Gantt’s name into my high-tech tape research machine it fed me a video of him going almost two and a half rounds with Josh Henry. Josh Henry is the 11-7 in that long string of numbers and he fights at Lightweight despite being 5’4”. Do you remember Kyle Prepolec, the late replacement signing the UFC made last year who got destroyed repeatedly during their trips to Canada? Prepolec knocked Henry out in two minutes. Gantt took eleven. He was supposed to fight Trey Ogden tonight, and Ogden couldn’t make it, so instead the UFC went out and hired Fury FC prospect Artur Minev, who is also undefeated, also finishes almost everyone he fights, and also has fought nothing but jobbers and rookies and only in the last year has moved up in the world to dealing with competitors with double-digit loss counts.

I focus so much on the numbers because I still believe in the idea that the UFC should, in theory, be a place for people who have already proven they belong here, and the closer it comes to being the same kind of talent training ground the regional scene represents, the closer it comes to no longer having a reason to exist at all. TOMMY GANTT BY DECISION.

WOMEN’S BANTAMWEIGHT: Ketlen Vieira (15-5, #5) vs Jacqueline Cavalcanti (10-1, #11)

I don’t think Women’s Bantamweight is going to survive Kayla Harrison’s retirement. We’ve been talking about the UFC’s sheer disregard for the division for what feels like eons, there’s barely thirty women signed to the class and that includes a couple retirees and folks that haven’t fought in years and the Mayra Bueno Silvas and Hailey Cowans of the world that are almost assuredly on their way out, so realistically it’s closer to 25. The next title fight is built around a champion who’s ready to leave the sport and a hall of famer coming out of retirement for what could easily be a Georges St-Pierre one-night-only special. The closest thing the UFC has to a woman getting a push at 135 is Joselyne Edwards, and even that is in the form of a five-fight winning streak that’s only gotten off the prelims once. Ketlen Vieira is one of the best women in the weight class, it’s been five years since she lost to someone who wasn’t either a world champion or a top contender; Jacqueline Cavalcanti is a perfect 5-0 in the UFC , which leaves her tied with Edwards for the second-longest winning streak in the division.

But both women combine for a grand total of one stoppage victory in the UFC. So this top five fight is buried in the prelims of an Apex card between Cody Brundage and Tommy Gantt. This is how inherently worthless Women’s Bantamweight is to management, and once Kayla’s gone and Amanda’s back in the history books, I fear they’ll put it in the same potter’s field Women’s Featherweight got dumped in. JACQUELINE CAVALCANTI BY DECISION.

MIDDLEWEIGHT: Andre Petroski (13-5) vs Cody Brundage (11-9-1 (1))

Cody Brundage may not be long for this MMA world, being on a three-fight losing streak and a sizable (and sensible) underdog here, so I want to take this moment to give him his laurels for what might be one of the funniest UFC careers of all time. Fifteen fights. Hell, fifteen fights in just under five years. That’s silly, and that silliness was pretty defining for our man Cody. In all, in order:

• After getting knocked out in a 2020 Contender Series fight against William Knight, one of the UFC’s other funniest men, Cody gets signed in September 2021 as a short-notice replacement to keep Nick Maximov’s UFC debut alive; Maximov wins and is cut a year later after going 2-2

• Brundage rebounds in March and July with two upset stoppages, the first against Dalcha Lungiambula, who is cut at the end of the year after going 2-5, and the second over Tresean Gore, who is still around and kicking today at 3-4

• Cody proceeds to lose his next three fights, getting knocked out in one round by Michał Oleksiejczuk and choked out in two by Rodolfo Vieira, and is served up as a victim to rehabilitate UFC marketing project Sedriques Dumas, who is now 3-5 (1), hasn’t won in two years, and is also still here

• In one of the funniest things to happen in quite some time, Brundage rescues his contract from the void by beating Jacob Malkoun in September of 2023 after Malkoun blows a wildly one-sided 10-8 round by elbowing Cody in the brainstem, which draws an immediate disqualification

• In a somehow even funnier moment, Brundage is once again called upon to pump up a DWCS prospect, this time the undefeated 6’4” finishing machine Zach Reese, whom Cody knocks out with a powerbomb in under two minutes

• For scoring one of the best knockouts of the year, Cody is rewarded by being served up to -1600 favorite Bo Nickal on UFC 300, who chokes him out in two rounds

• Undaunted, a second Brundage Comedy Special occurs, this time as a trilogy: In July 2024 Cody is served up to knockout machine Abdul Razak Alhassan as a rehabilitation fight, only for Brundage to get a No Contest after he, too, elbows Cody in the back of the head, after which Cody is iced for almost a year only to return in March 2025 for a knockout victory over Julian Marquez, the man who once parleyed a UFC victory into fumbling Miley Cyrus (no, really) and was now four years removed from his last victory, and having scored an actual, uncontroversial victory, Cody is thrown to the wolves once again, this time for the undefeated Mansur Abdul-Malik, only for that, too, to end in what ultimately became a No Contest after Mansur headbutted him into a knockdown

• As with so many of our best performers, Brundage’s magnum opus was followed by disappointment, as the last nine months have been a split decision loss to Eric McConico, a brutal knockout loss to Cam Rowston, and another split decision loss to Donte Johnson, the 5’8” Middleweight

These are the things dreams are made of. Those dreams are generally confusing and unpleasant and a way to cover up the sport eating the rare long-term enhancement talent alive, but as Norman McCay once said, it’s flattering to be remembered somehow. If this goes the way it most likely will and this is the end of the ballad of Brundage, then godspeed to you, Cody. May you and your manager-trainer-wife move on to the Elysian fields of one of the several bareknuckle fighting organizations that exist where the B-leagues used to be. ANDRE PETROSKI BY DECISION.

WOMEN’S STRAWWEIGHT: Alice Ardelean (11-7) vs Polyana Viana (13-8)

Strawweight has kind of formed itself into a pair of tracks. In one, whether you’re winning or losing, you are within the relevant artery of the division and you will, eventually, get somewhere. In the other, you are swimming through the sea of irrelevance and hoping to hang on long enough that someone throws you a ladder. Alice Ardelean is 2-2. The two women she lost to are 2-2 and 1-2 and the two women she beat are 0-3 and 1-4. Polyana Viana is 4-7 and the four women she beat combine for a grand total of 5 UFC wins in 17 bouts. She hasn’t won a fight in almost four years and she’s been stopped in every subsequent attempt. Whoever wins this fight is still completely lacking in momentum and will still exist to be preyed upon when marketing decides the next Hailey Cowan needs a winnable match, but by god, it’s better than losing, I suppose.

That said: Only one of these women lost a fight to Shauna Bannon and the streets do not forget. POLYANA VIANA BY DECISION.

FLYWEIGHT: Daniel Barez (17-7) vs Luis Gurule (10-3)

We may have lost last week’s episode of Heavyweight madness, but we are carrying on its theme of Flyweights in desperate straits, and if they offered me that trade on any kind of regular basis we would never see a Tafa brother again. Daniel Barez has been in the UFC for three years, he is only just now passing three fights, and two of those ended with his getting choked out. Management saw enough potential in Luis Gurule and his angry swinging haymakers to make him the rare Flyweight to go straight from Contender Series to main-card attraction, and one year later he’s 0-3. Neither man has a particularly comfortable grip on his contract and both have been betrayed by the weaknesses of their game, with Barez suffering against superior grapplers and Gurule troubled by people who’ve figured out that punches can travel in straight lines.

Whoever loses, may you go on to have a fun time in Rizin. DANIEL BAREZ BY DECISION.

WOMEN’S STRAWWEIGHT: Shauna Bannon (7-2) vs Nicolle Caliari (8-4)

What did I just say about the god damned streets. The company’s spent the last three years trying to find people that could feasibly lose to Shauna Bannon, whose presence as a Paddy Holohan student out of Ireland means I have now referenced Paddy Holohan twice in a single write-up and will punish myself accordingly after you see yourself out. The last time we saw Shauna they gave her Sam Hughes, which was both understandable, as Hughes is a 6-6 journeywoman by UFC standards and thus a logical jump, and predictable, as she mauled Shauna on the ground and choked her out. This means there is no way to go but backward, and in this case she is backing directly into Nicolle Caliari, whose entire UFC career is a pair of losses. It is a testament to the world’s feelings about Shauna’s fighting chops that she is, definitionally, far more successful in the UFC than Caliari, and Caliari is still the favorite to win because Shauna Bannon is Shauna Bannon.

Which almost makes me want to pick her. Having seen her lose repeatedly I’ve somehow come around the bend and almost feel the need to root for her success. I am not going to, the call is still NICOLLE CALIARI BY SUBMISSION, but the urge is there, and if Shauna wins this one, y’know what, good for her.

SATURDAY, MAY 9 FROM THE PRUDENTIAL CENTER IN NEWARK, NEW JERSEY
EARLY PRELIMS 2 PM PDT / 5 PM EDT | PRELIMS 4 PM / 7 PM | MAIN CARD 6 PM / 9 PM

This feels like it should be a killer of a show. Khamzat Chimaev is one of the biggest fighters in the sport, the UFC has been endlessly marketing Sean Strickland for what feels like my entire adult life, Flyweight is perpetually amazing, there’s two belts and a Heavyweight title eliminator and a Yaroslav Amosov fight. Everything here should be great.

But the event isn’t sold out. Khamzat is very likely to vanish for another year. Sean’s schtick has never felt more tired. Middleweight is ignoring its top contender, Flyweight turned on an injury, and the Heavyweight title barely exists.

And Yaroslav Amosov is on the prelims, but Jeremy fucking Stephens is on a main card broadcast in 2026.

MAIN EVENT: THE WORST OF BOTH WORLDS
MIDDLEWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Khamzat Chimaev (15-0, Champion) vs Sean Strickland (30-7, #3)

It feels like we briefly made contact with another dimension wherein the Middleweight division was good, and we slaughtered everyone in it to cover up the shame of our reality.

We’re not even a year removed from the most promising moment in the weight class since Izzy’s heyday came to an end. Dricus du Plessis was an active, regularly defending champion. Khamzat Chimaev was ascendant as the scariest Middleweight contender the sport had seen in years. Sean Strickland had been boxed out of title contention, but was still vital at the top of the pecking order. Nassourdine Imavov, Anthony Hernandez, Caio Borralho and Reinier de Ridder were all knocking on the door to the top five. Israel Adesanya, Robert Whittaker and Jared Cannonier were all functional filters of aging veterancy. Things were messy and silly and gross and disappointing, as the Middleweight division so often is, but by god, there was a genuine sense of promise.

It is mid-2026. Khamzat Chimaev won the title nine months ago and went right back to fighting once a year. Dricus du Plessis went from the first defending champion since 2022 to completely unbooked and rumored to be fighting Kamaru Usman. Anthony Hernandez’s rise up the ranks was brutally halted by Sean Strickland, Reinier de Ridder fell apart against Brendan Allen, and Caio Borralho fell off in the great Fighting Nerds failure of 2025. Izzy’s body turned to dust in realtime. Rob got his teeth broken on live television. Jared was inexplicably thrown at a Welterweight.

But Nassourdine Imavov’s still good, though! He beat Jared, he beat Allen, he beat Caio, and he became the only person other than Alex Pereira to ever knock Izzy out on his feet. Five-fight winning streak, destroyed a living legend, hasn’t had or lost a shot at the top yet, conveniently French and thus a treasured commodity for the UFC’s marketing department, #2 in the division behind only former champ Dricus, big adherent of the company’s house style of cheating a bunch and getting away with it. Sure, the rest of the division’s hopes and dreams may have burnt to the ground, but at least the sport did its job and gave us an undeniable, indisputable top contender to the Middleweight crown.

He is, of course, not in this fight.

The last time we had to deal with a Sean Strickland fight I made a shitty Animorphs photoshop of his slow turn into the new Colby Covington by virtue of his ever-sadder attempts to be offensive and attention-grabbing to stay relevant in an era of the sport where the UFC has a camera angle devoted to Kash Patel’s Knockout Reactions Corner, but little did I know that it would, instead, portend the return of the era where the UFC picks a guy they just cannot fucking stop giving title shots. Back in his competitive prime, Colby infamously got three shots at the belt in six fights, and they were earned by beating Robbie Lawler, Tyron Woodley and Jorge Masvidal respectively.

Seanby Stricklington is about to get his third shot in seven fights, thanks to his having, y’know, actually won and defended it once. Definitively, he’s the better model. How do his shot-earning fights stack up, compared to Colby beating on former champions?

Well, he got the initial shot at Izzy by beating Abus Magomedov back in mid-2023, and Abus was a grand total of 1-0 with exactly 19 seconds of fight time in the company. So that’s not a great look. After losing the belt to Dricus, in a division awash with contenders, Sean--by his own admission!--turned down bouts with Rob and instead got his rematch by beating no less than Paulo Costa himself, who had one victory in the past five years and it was over Luke Rockhold, who, himself, had only one victory in the last seven.

That’s pretty bad! Funnily enough, Sean got here with his only victory in years that was worth a damn. Anthony Hernandez was on a great run as the baddest motherfucker in the division, a cardio king with killer combinations and aggressive chokeholds and an eight-fight winning streak, and, because God is dead, Sean Strickland fucking destroyed him. Completely outclassed him and knocked him out midway through the third. The kind of fight you could have run back ten times with exactly the same result.

Great performance. Great victory!

Imavov still should’ve gotten the shot.

Strickland and the UFC have defended his getting yet another title fight by, obviously, noting his victory over Imavov back in 2023. It’s true! It was also a short-notice fight three and a half years ago. Strickland at that time was one for his last three, coming off a loss to Jared Cannonier, and only barely more separated in time from getting knocked the fuck out by Elizeu Zaleski as a Welterweight. They already spent two years trying to keep Sean on top. He lost his belt to Dricus, he got fast-tracked right back to Dricus, and he got beat way worse the second time around. Anyone who isn’t a Strickland, a Colby or a Ciryl Gane would have to bust their ass all the way across the division to get another stab at it. Strickland beat Imavov? Khamzat beat Dricus, get back in fucking line.

And it’s particularly galling because, honestly, presuming Chimaev wins--spoilers for my pick here, I suppose--who the fuck knows when we’ll get another Middleweight Championship match?

When we assembled for Chimaev’s shot at Dricus back in August I painted a picture of Khamzat as simultaneously inevitable and unavailable. By 2025 the UFC had already been trying to matchmake Chimaev into championship opportunities for years, and it was his own schedule that tended to fuck it up. He couldn’t make it to a title eliminator with Leon Edwards because of COVID, he couldn’t get his shot at Izzy because he wanted to be a Welterweight, he couldn’t fight for Welterweight contendership because he could no longer make Welterweight, he couldn’t take on Dricus at UFC 300 because of Ramadan.

I have seen many grapplers in my time with combat sports. Khamzat is one of the scariest. Any idiot who watched him casually converse with people at ringside while deadlifting Li Jingliang or throw Kevin Holland around by his neck could have told you about Khamzat’s title potential. The only question marks dogging him were historical issues with his gas tank and his own inability to show up more often than once per calendar year.

The Khamzat that showed up against Dricus very visibly had zero fucking problems with his gas tank. I, like most, worried that either Khamzat needed a finish in the first round and a half or Dricus would drown him in the championship rounds, and instead, Khamzat just rolled him for twenty-five minutes. How thorough a domination was it?

Many were dismayed and disappointed by Khamzat’s performance, because we have so destroyed all forms of meaning in the mixing of the martial arts that taking a guy who’d burned through damn near the entire Middleweight division including four separate world champions and dominating him so badly you outland him by more than a 10:1 ratio is disappointing because it was all wrestling and he didn’t finish him. Fighting a living chaos elemental like Dricus du Plessis and controlling him for five full rounds was the biggest possible testament to Khamzat having addressed his cardio issues.

Sure is a shame about the ‘never showing up’ part, though.

This is a problem with the UFC as a whole at the moment. Tom Aspinall is out of action and can’t defend his belt thanks to Ciryl Gane’s lust for eye jelly. Carlos Ulberg just won the Light Heavyweight title last month and he’s going to be out for at least the rest of the year with a torn ACL. Islam became the Welterweight Champion in November and he isn’t scheduled yet; Ilia nabbed the Lightweight belt in June and his first defense will be this June, just barely shy of twelve months later. Petr Yan and Joshua Van both won their championships on December 6, and Van is only now defending his half a year later, and Yan got fucking back surgery at the end of January. The only male champion with a defense to his name is Alexander Volkanovski. If you expand this to the women you increase the count to two defending champions, thanks to Valentina Shevchenko, but you add two more to the MIA column, with Kayla Harrison about to hit a year post-title win thanks to her own neck surgery and Mackenzie Dern sitting on her Strawweight title since October.

Khamzat is not the only inactive champion. But he is a historically inactive fighter.

Which puts me in the terrible position of almost wanting Sean Strickland to win.

In a perfect world, I would enjoy both of them somehow losing, because buddy, it’s not like Khamzat’s social persona is any better than Sean’s, as the unbelievably tiring ‘I’m gonna beat you up’ ‘no I’m gonna beat YOU up’ ‘well me AND my friends are gonna beat you up’ ‘well I’m gonna SHOOT YOU with my GUNS’ press tour for this godforsaken fight has demonstrated. Let there be no doubt that both of these men are terminally lame. But by god, Sean Strickland will, at least, show up to work more than once a year.

Unless you want him to fight Robert Whittaker, in which case combat sports are suddenly beneath him.

This fight feels very much like a binary check on wrestling. Khamzat can punch, but his approach to striking has never been particularly technical. He isn’t a jabber, he doesn’t really care about combinations, he just likes to throw really, really hard. That’s the kind of thing Strickland feeds on. His complete disassembly of Anthony Hernandez served as a potent reminder just how good he is at his brand of defensive striking, and how easily he can take someone apart if they don’t have anything better for him than winging punches and bad entries. If this fight stays standing, Sean has the poise and the gas to cruise to a decision.

But as much as he and his training partners tout his secret reputation as Middleweight’s dark horse grappling king, we already saw Strickland get wrestled, repeatedly, by Dricus. The only reason Dricus didn’t ragdoll him just as much in their rematch was his having figured out Sean’s striking rhythm well enough that he no longer had to. We already have firsthand experience with Sean’s trouble with aggressive, powerful wrestling.

And we already have firsthand experience with just how much better Khamzat is at that game than Dricus was.

KHAMZAT CHIMAEV BY SUBMISSION. And then we can all gather here next January for Chimaev/Strickland 2 after Sean wins another title shot by valiantly vanquishing Gregory Rodrigues.

CO-MAIN EVENT: THE MAIN EVENT
FLYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Joshua Van (16-2, Champion) vs Tatsuro Taira (18-1, #3)

The story of the Flyweight division is the story of squeezing some of the best stuff in the history of the sport out of perpetually weird situations.

Like, down to the roots. The very first Flyweight fight in UFC history was Demetrious Johnson vs Ian McCall back in 2012, it was supposed to kick off a tournament to crown the first champion, and Johnson’s announced victory was actually a tabulation error by the judges. Had they scored it correctly the fight would’ve been a draw, and as a tournament bout--to this day, the last tournament held in the UFC proper--that meant it would have gone to an exceedingly rare extra round.

Johnson eventually won the tournament and the title. He would go on to become, numerically, the greatest UFC champion of all time. He presided over an eleven-fight reign as a champion who was funny, charismatic, amazing at everything, occasionally did shit no one had ever seen in a fight before, and always, always won. The weird part of this isn’t DJ, it’s the way this infuriated the UFC. Dana White spent most of his time as champion gnashing his teeth about his mere presence, to the point that towards the end of his run he was being pushed so hard to fight a champ-champ match with Bantamweight kingpin T.J. Dillashaw that he was repeatedly threatened with the entire division being shut down just to spite him.

And when he lost the title? The UFC traded him to ONE Championship in exchange for Ben Askren. Then the man who beat him, Henry Cejudo, threw the Flyweight title away. Then Deiveson Figueiredo tried to win it but was ineligible because he missed weight. Then he did win it, but went to a draw with Brandon Moreno after losing a point for hitting him in the dick, which turned into a two-year, four-fight odyssey that saw both men hot potatoing the title back and forth three separate times. And when Moreno finally came out of their series the victor, he immediately fell to Alexandre Pantoja, a man who’d already beaten him twice before, and Pantoja became the first man since Demetrious Johnson to defend the belt multiple times. By the end of 2025 he was the second-best Flyweight in UFC history, a fighter with a great chin, fantastic grappling and sheer, indomitable grit such that no one was sure who could take the belt away from him, or, for that matter, how.

And then, twenty-six seconds into fighting Joshua Van, Pantoja slipped and fell and broke his arm.

So, hey: Congratulations, Joshua Van! Second-youngest champion ever, right after Jon Jones! Went from barely-ranked at #14 to top contender and champion in the space of two fights!

Which was three fights after he got knocked out by Charles Johnson, the #13-ranked man in the division.

Van is presiding over a profoundly weird time for Flyweight. The matchmaking is all over the place, with prospects and veterans being jumped back and forth with little rhyme or reason. Longtime divisional stalwarts like Brandon Moreno and Tim Elliott are falling down the ladder while rookies like Lone’er Kavanagh are springboarding off of their bodies. The UFC has been repeatedly raiding Japan for Flyweight talent with mixed results. Rizin Bantamweight champ Kai Asakura tried, failed, and is now off to 135 pounds again. Rizin Flyweight champ Kyoji Horiguchi returned, succeeded, and has a title eliminator with Manel Kape booked in June.

And Tatsuro Taira is here, getting a shot at becoming the first Japanese champion in UFC history.

Everyone expected this to happen a year and a half ago. By mid-2024 Taira was already 6-0 in the UFC and he’d displayed all the tools necessary to be a contender. Any doubts about his ability to strike had been resolved with his laser-beam knockout over Carlos Hernandez; any doubts about his ability to hang with the top ten were settled when he managed to destroy Alex Perez’s knee with a takedown. Taira walked into his second main event against Brandon Royval as an undefeated favorite.

He walked out demoted. It was a hell of a fight, one of the better bouts in 2024, but he still lost. And this is where the matchmaking parallelogram of Flyweight starts to bring that weirdness back into things.

See, Joshua Van was a UFC project. They brought him in as a short-notice signing, but they took an immediate shine to his style, his attitude, and his lack of any form of leverage thanks to his being all of 21 and more than willing to take whatever they give himyouthful vigor. But Van lost to Charles Johnson. Johnson, despite being at the periphery of the rankings, now has knockout victories over both the champion and Lone’er Kavanagh, now ranked #6 after beating Brandon Moreno, who Taira previously beat to get this very shot because Moreno was, himself, pushed out of contention after losing to Brandon Royval. Royval was up at the top of the division after beating Taira, but he lost his title eliminator to Van and got flattened in one round by Manel Kape. Kape, now #2, was beaten by both Horiguchi, Asakura and Pantoja, but his UFC momentum had been halted by undefeated wunderkind Muhammad Mokaev, who was promptly fired for the sin of wrestling.

So the #1 contender is out indefinitely, the #2 contender has a loss to the only top contender the UFC fired, the #3 and active title contender is barely removed from losing to the guy the #2 contender who isn’t getting the shot just knocked out, the #4 is 2 for his last 5 and has lost fights to everyone who’s held the belt in the last four years, the #5 guy has been back in the UFC for less than a year and is already one bout away from the belt, and the #6 guy is on the precipice of title contention despite just getting knocked out by the #13 guy.

The same guy who also knocked out the champion.

Who won his belt because of a cartoon pratfall.

It’s all silly and capricious and it’s all, secretly, amazing. Every one of those guys is a great fucking fighter with an identifiable style and personality. Pantoja is an unstoppable hunter who is very publicly courageous about his missing father issues. Kape is a sometimes-too-flashy-for-his-own-good knockout hunter who fucking loves slurs and being weird about genetics. Royval is a haymaker-winging madman who loves brawling just a bit more than his career allows him to. Horiguchi is a humble athletic wonder who darts in and out swinging punches and takedowns too fast for anyone to stop him.

Joshua Van is a stoic striker so solid in both offense and defense that providence cannot help but shine upon his efforts. Tatsuro Taira is an ultra-technical grappler whose calm approach belies the absolutely terrifying ways he can hurt people.

It’s Flyweight. It’s the best shit in the sport. Has been since day one, will be until they shut it down because people refuse to stop taking each other down and it’s harshing the TKO c-suite’s ketamine buzz. Until then: I have had faith in Taira this whole time and I absolutely refuse to stop now. TATSURO TAIRA BY SUBMISSION. Break the fucking curse.

MAIN CARD: HE CAN’T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH IT
HEAVYWEIGHT: Alexander Volkov (39-11, #2) vs Waldo Cortes-Acosta (17-2, #4)

Sometimes you have to accept that they just don’t fucking like you. Alexander Volkov is one of the longest-tenured Heavyweight contenders left in the sport--we’re closing in on his fourteenth consecutive year of being relevant to the top fifteen, let alone the top five--and is only now putting in some of the best work of his career. He outboxed and knocked out top striker Jairzinho Rozenstruik, he outgrappled PFL finalist and wrestling monster Alexandr Romanov and pounded him out in two minutes, he took down pre-crisis Tai Tuivasa and outworked wrecking ball Sergei Pavlovich, and as the capstone to a beautiful run, he won a title eliminator against Ciryl Gane. Except for the part where he lost. 90% of fan scores and 95% of the media cards went Volkov’s way, but, in a familiar refrain, one of the consensus worst decisions of the year went to Gane. It was so bad that Dana White pulled out his signature “we’ll make it up to him” catchphrase in the post-fight press, and, predictably, their idea of making it up to Volkov was having him fight the lower-ranked Jailton Almeida on the same card where Gane was getting his title shot, and after beating Almeida, the UFC gave Volkov this.

Hi, Waldo. They really like you. You are their beautiful Contender Series child and they must make you a success. Three years ago, Waldo’s undefeated record and debut winning streak were both snapped by the unranked Marcos Rogério de Lima, and two fights later de Lima was cut from the organization--off of a win over Junior Tafa, who is also still here--and Waldo was fighting former champion Andrei Arlovski. A hair under one year ago, the UFC gave Waldo a shot at the top three and Sergei Pavlovich outfought him easily. Three fights later, Waldo is competing in a title eliminator and Sergei is booked for Macau later this month where he will fight the #13-ranked Tallison Teixeira. As it turns out, when you almost never shoot takedowns, try to punch everyone and take every fight the UFC gives you, you, too, can be a top contender. And Waldo’s been busy! Winning three fights in three months is a particularly crazy schedule. But he did it to Ante Delija, in a bizarre fight that was almost a knockout loss and an eyepoke-based no contest before Waldo turned it into a knockout win, and Shamil Gaziev, who has been looking steadily worse and worse for the last year, and Derrick Lewis, who appeared to be actively melting into the floor out of exhaustion after one and a half rounds.

Regardless of what happens here the future is Josh Hokit vs Salsa Boy for the Heavyweight Championship. Please prepare yourselves accordingly. ALEXANDER VOLKOV BY DECISION.

WELTERWEIGHT: Sean Brady (18-2, #6) vs Joaquin Buckley (21-7, #9)

There are few Welterweights I feel worse for than Sean Brady. After Leon Edwards and Belal Muhammad got their long-belated cracks at the top of the mountain, Sean became the last man standing for the ranks of the underappreciated 170-pound contenders. 8-1 in the UFC with Belal as your soul loss is a hell of a record. Going to London, dominating Leon in front of a home crowd and becoming the first man to ever finish him is a hell of an accomplishment! Being #2 in arguably the most talent-rich division in the sport right as it gets its most visible champion in years? Hell of a position. But, as I have referenced a couple times, Brady learned a valuable lesson about the true nature of the sport once he fashioned his seat at the table.

“I even said that to (UFC matchmaker) Hunter, I was, like, talking about the rankings, and he said, ‘The rankings really don’t matter.’ He was like, ‘At the end of the day, the UFC is gonna put whoever they want in there for the belt.’”

Unfortunately, the Welterweight division now has people in it who are really, really good at knocking people out, and you are a wrestler and a grappler, and they already have enough of those. Sean got stuck fighting all the way down the rankings against Michael Morales, and Morales crushed him in one round, and just like that, Brady is fighting to stay in the top ten at all.

Joaquin Buckley is behind the eight-ball in a slightly more organic and slightly more deserved way. He struggled mightily to make an impact at Middleweight, but dropping down to the Welterweight division reinvigorated his career and turned him into a genuine contender! But when you look at the people they put in front of him, a pattern emerges. Alex Morono. Vicente Luque. Stephen Thompson. Colby fucking Covington. The UFC gave Buckley a steady diet of old, fading veterans to propel him up the ladder, to the point that he was initially slated to face Ian Machado Garry before the company went ‘wait, jesus, what are we thinking’ and split them so Garry could face a relevant contender and Buckley could pull Colby out of the giant freezer full of microwavable leftovers Panera Bread keeps their food in, and it was working perfectly well right up until it turned out Kamaru Usman is still actually better at fighting than most of the division. Buckley lived by the old man sword and died by the old man sword, and now his space in the pecking order is gone and he has to fight someone more his speed.

The cynical nature of matchmaking aside, though: I’m into it. Buckley is a big power guy, more muscle and strength and giant takedowns than any particular focus on out-techniquing his opponents; Brady is a technique guy who wants his fights on the floor so he can methodically break people down and, eventually, strangle them. It’s an interesting clash of styles. I’m siding with SEAN BRADY BY DECISION but Buckley’s likely to have more chances to actually end the fight.

LIGHTWEIGHT: King Green (34-17-1 (1)) vs Jeremy Stephens (29-22 (1))

We’re breaking the format here because what the fuck are we doing with our limited time on this bitch of an Earth.

When the UFC brought Jeremy Stephens back last May I, like most of the mixed martial arts world, was perplexed. Jeremy Stephens was a 50/50 journeyman enjoying an unexpected late-career contendership resurgence almost an entire damn decade ago in 2018, and after a lengthy winless streak he got cut for it. Over the course of those eight subsequent years, across multiple organizations, Stephens is one for his last ten, and that one win was a PFL bout against Myles “Thundercat” Price, an Irish fighter who is 11-10 and had just been choked out by the equally aged Anthony Pettis and was about to be finished just as badly by 2017 UFC washout Marcin Held. Stephens beat him by split decision. At the time of his re-signing he hadn’t even had an MMA fight in almost three years, having spent his time instead fighting for the Bareknuckle Fighting Championship. You could not get less relevant if you tried.

But, hey: The card was in Des Moines, where Stephens was born, and they had an opening, and the recently re-signed Mason Jones needed a name for his return, and a handful of people still remember Jeremy Stephens from his UFC highlights, which include getting verbally eviscerated by Conor McGregor at a press conference, cheating to beat Josh Emmett and somehow getting away with it, and knocking out Rafael dos Anjos in 2008 which is dangerously close to being twenty fucking years ago. It’s not less stupid, but stupid things happen, so sure. Fine. Fine! I get it.

King Green is on a two-fight winning streak. King Green is borderline-ranked. King Green just became the first person to ever knock out UFC marketing darling Daniel Zellhuber back at the end of February. In exchange for this, he gets to fight a man whose last UFC win happened four days before MythBusters got cancelled. This fight is not in Des Moines, it’s in New Jersey. The UFC is no longer quietly kneecapping their competition, they already let Jeremy go fight in BKFC again after his return. King Green isn’t Mason Jones, he isn’t an unknown who needs a push, he’s as old as Jeremy.

Tatiana Suarez was stuck on the prelims. Gabriella Fernandes was stuck on the prelims. Bia Mesquita was stuck on the prelims. Douglas Silva de Andrade was stuck on the prelims. Carlos Leal was stuck on the prelims. Alex Perez and Charles Johnson were stuck on the prelims. Two fights down from here you will find Joel Álvarez and Yaroslav Amosov stuck on the prelims. Mason Jones, the man they fed Jeremy Stephens to in the first place, spent his last fight stuck on the fucking prelims.

King Green vs Jeremy Stephens is a main card fight on a numbered, two-title show.

KING GREEN BY DECISION.

PRELIMS: REPAVING THE ROAD
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Ateba Gautier (10-1) vs Ozzy Diaz (10-3)

Generally, when we use the phrase ‘rehabilitation fight’ around these parts, we’re talking about the time-honored tradition of taking a marketing prospect who finally lost a fight and fixing them up by giving them a nice, easy win so they get back on track. This is no longer sufficient for the UFC, so we’re innovating a hot new matchmaking technique this week: The “you didn’t win the right way” rehabilitation fight. Ateba Gautier has been one of the company’s biggest up-and-coming knockout punchers for a year, now, and he has been dutifully destroying every victim sent his way, but this past January the matchmakers made the terrible mistake of deciding four fights was enough time to give him his first opponent to have ever actually won a fight in the UFC. Ateba still won, but he was a -1000 favorite against Andrey Pulyaev and not only did Ateba have to take him to a decision, he looked confused, exhausted, and thoroughly mortal by the end of the night. Such a victory is unbecoming of the man corporate has ordained as the next big knockout king, so congratulations, Ozzy Diaz, as a man whose three losses all came from big power-punching guys bumrushing you up close and crushing you in the first round, you are here to make Ateba look good. They are, in fact, so set on this fight that this is the second time they tried to book it! Ateba was supposed to crush Ozzy last October and Ozzy was injured and couldn’t make it, and in the time since Ateba has won two fights and Ozzy is only now coming off the shelf, and they want this knockout so fucking bad that they just rebooked it anyway.

I am picking against you because I know the law of averages, but Ozzy, if you wanted to sling the best punch of your life and just completely ruin matchmaking’s day, I would appreciate you for it forever. Until then, ATEBA GAUTIER BY TKO.

WELTERWEIGHT: Yaroslav Amosov (29-1, #14) vs Joel Álvarez (23-3, NR)

First, a note, for both transparency and a pet peeve: Yaroslav Amosov is only kind-of sort-of ranked #14. As of this writing, this is how the UFC’s official Welterweight rankings end:

That’s not how rankings work. That’s barely even how numbers work. For christ’s sake, fix your shit before you give me an aneurysm.

Everyone had some level of concern about Amosov’s UFC debut last December. To some extent this was because of his status as one of the last beloved B-league champions standing, what with his background as the embattled Bellator champion who took a hiatus to go defend his homeland of Ukraine against Russia; to another, it was a reflection of the latent awareness that Amosov is heading into his mid-thirties and Patrício Pitbull has taught people to leave beloved memories in the past rather than allow themselves to feel the crushing pain of hope. But when Yaroslav met the inevitable measuring stick that is Neil Magny, he easily outwrestled him, controlled him, and choked him out in a single round, proving that sometimes faith does, in fact, endure. And now he’s in the top fifteen at the hottest division in the company and there isn’t a lick of dead space to be found and as an import from another company who favors wrestling they’re not gonna make a damn thing easy on him. Joel Álvarez is a dude the company has wanted on their ladder for seven goddamn years. He was the UFC’s figuratively and literally big Spanish star, a 6’3” Lightweight with flying knees and armbars and reach enough to take out everyone in the division, except, as a 6’3” Lightweight, making weight damn near killed him and it turns out being huge doesn’t keep Arman Tsarukyan from wrestling you to death. Joel had a spot in the top fifteen last year, and the UFC teed him up for a big fight with Benoît Saint Denis, and then Joel thought about cutting to 155 to fight another guy who stood a really good chance of wrestling him and decided to go to Welterweight again, where, fortunately for him, there are no wrestlers to worry about.

YAROSLAV AMOSOV BY DECISION.

LIGHTWEIGHT: Grant Dawson (23-3-1) vs Mateusz Rębecki (20-4)

Grant Dawson, you will never know justice. Dawson notched nine undefeated fights in the UFC across 145 and 155 pounds but only barely scraped a ranking. People like to say it was because he had weight management problems, but we know from experience they don’t really care about that unless they choose to, and one look at a Grant Dawson performance, all double-legs and the grinding, long-term pursuit of a rear naked choke, is enough to remind you that wrestling is the true enemy of the matchmakers. When King Green notched a big upset by blowing up Dawson with a single punch it was all they needed to derail him for good. It took three fights for Dawson to get back in the ranks and upon arriving he was immediately destroyed by Manuel Torres, thus proving his weakness to punch-type Pokemon. There’s a not-so-subtle hope that vulnerability will rear its ugly head again here, as Mateusz Rębecki is a best bout machine with short, stocky boxing and giant, swinging haymakers and he’s also one for his last four because it turns out we’re still a couple more years of roster dilution away from ‘hits really hard’ to be enough of a skillset to make it through the rankings. But Mateusz can also wrestle, and he’s got a chin, and the plan is that those two traits will be enough to keep Dawson from implementing his gameplan.

I am choosing to have faith in the double. GRANT DAWSON BY DECISION.

LIGHTWEIGHT: Jim Miller (38-19 (1)) vs Jared Gordon (21-8 (1))

Here, we have our elder council of combat. Jim Miller is the veteran of veterans, a man that made his professional debut when Rich Franklin was still the best Middleweight on the planet and the Lightweight division didn’t even exist in the UFC, and he is no longer any particular threat to the rankings or the pecking order but he’s fan-beloved and increasingly likely to abruptly destroy his peers who are aging less gracefully. It would be tempting to say that Jared Gordon is in a similar position--he’s only a bit younger, he only started fighting a couple years later, he is equally adrift in the world of mixed martial arts--but, as anyone with eyes knows, Gordon beat Paddy Pimblett at the end of 2022 and got screwed out of a decision for reasons that are definitely rooted in judging incompetence and in no way whatsoever indicative of corporate corruption, which means Jared Gordon is at least as good at fighting as the man who just competed for an interim world title. Which makes it very embarrassing for the UFC that Gordon got pounded flat by Rafa García the last time we saw him and I’m sure there will be some real soul-searching in the depths of TKO over their awareness of talent.

I will always appreciate Jim Miller The Fighter, and the recent news that his absence over the last year was spent helping his son fight and beat rhabdomyosarcoma was wonderful and indicative that he has his priorities correctly aligned, and I also think he’s probably going to get punched a lot and lose. JARED GORDON BY DECISION.

EARLY PRELIMS: SUDDENLY, SABATINI
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Roman Kopylov (14-5) vs Marco Tulio (14-2)

They wanna trade you in, Roman. They’ve soured on you. You were their fancy new kickboxing toy seven years ago, and now you’re one loss away from a 50/50 record in the UFC, and they are tired of it. When it was Albert Duraev, sure, whatever, Duraev did that to a lot of people and he’d still be doing it today if he hadn’t vanished into dust and dreams. When it was Anthony Hernandez three years later, well, hell, that’s fine, too, Fluffy’s great and in a better universe he’d be fighting for the title tonight. But you’re the reason we’re stuck with Paulo Costa. You are the man who made him relevant again. You were Paulo’s first ranked victory in six fucking years, and now it’s a year later and you’re on two straight losses and Paulo is one steroid bust or charity basketball game away from the Light Heavyweight title and the UFC wants to feed you to Marco Tulio and forget you ever existed.

This is the last chance, Roman. You will either kick this man or you will be condemned to the trash can. I urge you to remember that you are actually really good at this. ROMAN KOPYLOV BY DECISION.

FEATHERWEIGHT: Pat Sabatini (21-5) vs William Gomis (15-3)

On one hand: I deeply appreciate the talents both of these men possess, even if I do so begrudgingly in the case of Pat Sabatini, the singular wrestler who has never once done anything for me. They’re extremely solid and Gomis in particular has fantastic defense and they both have amassed far better records here than the UFC would lead you to believe. Either of these men could be ranked. Either of them could beat a David Onama or Brian Ortega tomorrow. Pat, Billy, you are the exact kind of unheralded, underappreciated talents that form the foundation of this sport, and in that, I love you. But you also both beat my beautiful baby boy Joanderson Brito and for committing this unforgivable sin you must be destroyed.

The canvas will turn to lava. The lighting struts will rain from the sky. Conor McGregor will begin throwing loading dollies into the ring until everyone inside of it is dead. The judges will evaluate the carnage and decide on WILLIAM GOMIS BY DECISION before sealing away all memory that he ever existed.

MIDDLEWEIGHT: Baisangur Susurkaev (11-0) vs Djorden Santos (11-2)

Management went all-in on Baisangur Susurkaev last Summer. He, as you may very dimly recall, is the man who knocked out Murtaza Talha on the Contender Series, made his UFC debut four days later, and choked out Eric Nolan. Great story! The UFC made him a damn preliminary headliner on the Chimaev/du Plessis pay-per-view over it! Except, if you read the fine print, Talha was a Contender Series loser who got his second shot at the show by beating the 0-8 Oleg Klimov, and Nolan was hired specifically to fight Susurkaev despite being a career Welterweight, so when they tried to step Susurkaev up to the real competition of Eric McConico, a man coming off a knockout loss and an absolute coinflip of a split decision against Cody Brundage, who is 5-8-1 (1) in the UFC, they were anticipating another big highlight stoppage. And, to his credit, Baisangur did knock McConico out! But he lost the first round, and he punched McConico in the dick in the third before finally stopping him a minute later, and he looked pretty tired and decidedly mortal in the process. So what do you do with your prospect now?

Remember the conversation we were having back in Gautier/Diaz about giving successful fighters match-ups designed less to challenge them and more to hopefully make them succeed they way they were initially supposed to? You find the one guy Ozzy actually beat and you hope your new guy can beat him even worse. BAISANGUR SUSURKAEV BY TKO.

FLYWEIGHT: Clayton Carpenter (8-2) vs Jose Ochoa (8-2 (1))

There is something to be said for the joy of Flyweights fighting out of desperation. There may not be a single division in the sport with as little wasted space as 125, damn near everyone is exceptional in some way, and it’s a sign of just how painful that can be that Clayton and Jose are fighting to avoid having three losses in the UFC, but the four men they lost to are Tagir Ulanbekov, who is perpetually in the top ten, Jafel Filho, one of the scariest grapplers in the company, Asu Almabayev, who is 6-1, and Lone’er Kavanagh, who is #6 and a win away from top contendership. Everyone on that list fucking rules. Damn near everyone at Flyweight rules.

But not everyone can rule the mountain. CLAYTON CARPENTER BY DECISION.

Welcome to May. If you are a more internationally-situated UFC fan: Congratulations! This month is going to rule for you. If you’re part of the UFC’s mostly-stateside audience you can just go back to sleep, as half of this month’s events start at 4 in the morning and they’re taking the weekend of the 23rd off entirely. But Anatoly Malykhin/Reug Reug 2 is scheduled and Benson Henderson is coming out of retirement for the third time in the PFL and fucking Rousey/Carano is this month, so really, what else could matter?

THIS MONTH’S PUNCHSPORTS EVENTS

• UFC Fight Night: Della Maddalena vs Prates, May 2

• UFC 328: Chimaev vs Strickland, May 9

• UFC Fight Night: Allen vs Costa, May 16

• UFC Fight Night: Song vs Figueiredo, May 30

• PFL Sioux Falls: Storley vs Zendell, May 2

• PFL Brussels: Habirora vs Henderson, May 23

• PFL MENA 9: Pride of Arabia, May 24

• ONE Friday Fights 154: Kane vs Malykhin, May 15

• ONE Fight Night 43: Tang vs Gasanov, May 25

• RIZIN 53: Nazimov vs Gustavo, May 10

• MVP MMA 1: Rousey vs Carano, May 16

IS THERE ANY NEWS

“I don’t know what the hell is going on with ONE Championship” is a recurring sentence in these reports, but at this point, I really, genuinely don’t know what the hell is going on with ONE Championship.

April was supposed to be a big, eventful month for ONE. ONE 174, their first main-line, numbered event since November! The announcement of fights for their return to America in June! The debut of ONE Samurai, their new major fight series, along with the rematch between star players Rodtang and Takeru, their two biggest stars!

But just before the end of March, ONE 174 was quietly cancelled. The same goes for that stateside visit to Denver, which was, itself, a rescheduling after its initial cancellation last year. No announcements, though--just the silent removal of the events from their website. But, hey: Samurai’s still on, and no matter what else is happening, ONE always has Rodtang!

Up until two weeks before the event, when ONE announced that it was suing Rodtang.

Despite being their star player, Rodtang and ONE have not seen eye to eye in awhile. ONE gets mad about Rodtang missing weight and being unprofessional; Rodtang gets mad about his contract status. In the weeks leading up to Samurai 1, Rodtang began publicly discussing his understanding that he was no longer contracted to ONE and was acting as a free agent, and ONE, and its lawyers, disagreed. The threat of a lawsuit led to Rodtang publicly accusing ONE of hiding his contract from him, only providing it in English, and tricking him into signing it in the first place.

Your mileage may vary as to whose case was more accurate, but I would, in general, advise you not to believe in Chatri Sityodtong. The two sides ultimately came to peace long enough for Samurai 1 to happen, which had subsequently become a double swansong: ONE and Rodtang seemed to agree that whatever happened he’d be out of his contract afterward, and Takeru, who did ultimately knock Rodtang out and win, was adamant about retiring afterward. (Chatri took time out of the post-fight presser to insult Rodtang for letting fame and money go to his head, because every promoter is secretly Dana White.)

So it’s all going fine, except they’re so poorly administrated that their biggest main event of the year was a double retirement match and half of it had to be sued into performing, and multiple events are getting wordlessly cancelled, and their longest-ever-tenured Women’s Champion is making her UFC debut this month because ONE shut down her entire division, and despite having scheduled cards advertised through the end of the year there are currently zero announced fights after May 22.

But everything’s great at ONE.

WHAT HAPPENED IN APRIL

The month was SUPPOSED to start with ONE 174 on the 2nd, but it was quietly cancelled with no announcement a week and a half beforehand because ONE is a healthy, well-administrated company.

So instead we kicked it off on April 4 with UFC Fight Night: Moicano vs Duncan, a particularly weird and unfortunate night in the Apex. Kai Kamaka III came back and won a split decision over Dakota Hope, Dione Barbosa beat Melissa Gatto, Tresean Gore notched a comeback submission over Azamat Bekoev who continues his tumble to the bottom, Alice Pereira knocked out Hailey Cowan with a big knee, Darrius Flowers busted Lando Vannata up in six minutes, Alessandro Costa punched out Stewart Nicoll’s liver, and Thomas Petersen took an extremely Heavyweight decision over Guilherme Pat. Up top, José Mauro Delano got the nod over Robert Ruchała, Tommy McMillen got the full marketing press from the UFC in a real sloppy knockout win against Manolo Zecchini, Ethyn Ewing counterpointed it with a genuinely pretty and comprehensive punching of Rafael Estevam, Abduyl-Rakhman Yakhyaev managed to choke out Brendson Ribeiro, and Virna Jandiroba outscored Tabatha Ricci while commentary got mad at her for not finishing the fight. Your main event was, on paper, an inexplicable mismatch between Renato Moicano and Chris Duncan, and as it turns out that was also the case in practice, as Moicano did more or less whatever he wanted and tapped him in the second.

The 10th brought us PFL Africa 1: Pretoria, and I always feel bad that I don’t have enough awareness of the African fight scene to be able to speak on it with any sense of authority or experience, and then I noticed that the PFL’s main social media channels made zero mention of PFL Africa, nor did they post a single highlight of it after it happened. They reserved it for the PFL Africa account, which (unironically, mathematically correctly) has 1/100th its followers. I don’t know what they want, nor do I know if they have a plan. But Nkosi Ndebele won again, and that’s always nice.

The same night also got us ONE Fight Night 42: Mann vs Dzhabrailov, and technically that’s a regular card main evented by an MMA bout, which mostly makes me wonder what the fuck they’re doing being as in the same month they fired their MMA executives. Joshua Perreira knocked out Gilbert Nakatani, Hiroba Minowa choked out Karen Ghazaryan, and in the main event, Dzhabir Dzhabrailov punched out Chase Mann in half a round.

One day later, we got PFL Chicago: Pettis vs McKee, a night of much wrestling. Down on your prelims Valanti Atsas took a decision over Nate Jennerman, Biaggio Ali Walsh got his contractually obligated easy meal by knocking out Dash Harris in under a minute, Alexandr Romanov continued to quietly be a good Heavyweight by grinding and ultimately choking out Rodrigo Nascimento in two rounds, Paulina Wiśniewska justified her own hype by just savaging Kana Watanabe with ground and pound until a mercy stoppage halfway through the second, Omar El Dafrawy knocked out James Vake in about a minute, and Jena Bishop pretty easily choked out Borena Tsertsvadze. Your main card was every promoter’s nightmare, an Oops! All Decisions special. Gabriel Braga beat Cheyden Leialoha, Viviane Araujo outdid Shanna Young, Renat Khavalov outpointed Raufeon Stots, and despite everyone’s craving for more random spinning shit, Mitchell McKee stayed undefeated by outwrestling Sergio Pettis.

But we weren’t done with the weekend, as the 11th brought us UFC 327: Procházka vs Ulberg, and, boy, it was a lot. Three early prelims included Charles Radtke beating Francisco Prado, Vicente Luque choking out Kelvin Gastelum, and Chris Padilla going to an absolutely inexplicably scored draw with MarQuel Mederos that is currently under appeal. Your main prelims saw Tatiana Suarez survive an early scare to choke out Loopy Godínez, Mateusz Gamrot unsurprisingly dominating and getting an arm triangle against Esteban Ribovics, Kevin Holland shutting out Randy Brown, and Aaron Pico outworking a very tired-looking Patrício Pitbull. Up top, Cub Swanson retired after pretty easily knocking out Nate Landwehr, Dominick Reyes won an absolutely-nothing-happened split decision over Johnny Walker, Josh Hokit took a big giant sloppy brawl with Curtis Blaydes, and Paulo Costa won a back-and-forth with Azamat Murzakanov after knocking him out in the third. The main event saw longtime prospect Carlos Ulberg meeting fan favorite Jiří Procházka to fill the vacant 205-pound throne, and Ulberg managed to very visibly tear his ACL in half a couple minutes into the fight and still lure Jiří into a left hook counter that floored him and won Ulberg the belt. Unfortunately: He still doesn’t have an ACL. Look forward to more championship bullshit.

And a very long 48 hours of MMA ended with Rizin Landmark 13, which, despaite Landmark’s usually svelte nature, was a 16-fight card with two title fights and a bunch of wild shit. A bunch of two-round special bouts in the prelims! A kickboxing bout between Ryusei Imamura, who mostly does special-rules bouts under the Knock Out brand, and Yu-ki, who mostly just loses constantly! Weird acts of promotional malfeasance! Seika Izawa announcing temporary retirement to go have a baby! Do you remember James Gallagher, the guy Bellator hired as their Conor McGregor understudy? He was there! He got choked out. Ayaka Hamasaki came back and got tapped in a round by Natasha Kuziutina and the crowd was very quiet about it. Shinryu subbed King Shaka, which would beu more impressive if he had won any fights in the last two years. Azizbek Temirov knocked out Ryuya Fukuda and then Kaleo Meheula knocked out Kenka Bancho himself Kyohei Hagiwara, but the last one didn’t count because Meheula missed weight. Yoshinori Horie only barely scraped a split decision off Patricky Pitbull, Danny Sabatello defended Rizin’s Bantamweight title by soundly outwrestling Joji Goto only to get chastised and threatened with a pink slip by CEO Nobuyuki Sakakibara for not finishing his fights (which, for some reason, isn’t a problem with Hiromasa Ougikubo), and in the exceedingly obvious main event, Razhabali Shaydullaev destroyed Yuta Kubo in a single round, defended Rizin’s Featherweight title, and then admitted he’s not sure if there’s any competition for him left there and he might need to go to the UFC.

April 16 brought the PFL’s return to Ireland in PFL Belfast: Kelly vs Wilson. It was supposed to be a big Paul Hughes main event, but Hughes couldn’t make it and without him, admittedly, the card was a little bit dire. Like, “your next most visible bout is Dovlet Yagshimuradov beating Tyson Pedro” dire. Chelsea Hackett beat Andrea Vázquez, I guess, and you had a TUF 32 reunion as Giannis Bachar showed up to get choked out by David Martinez while Omran Chaaban knocked out Chequina Pedro, and one-time Bellator title contender Pedro Carvalho was there to beat Sergio Cossio, but yeah, if you like people with Wikipedia pages, it was rough. Ireland got a couple, with Caolán Loughran stopping Alan Philpott, Eoin Sheridan beating Chris Mixan and Rhys McKee getting a decision against Alex Lohoré, but all eyes were on the new main event, where slightly troubled Kiwi prospect Jay Jay Wilson had his Paul Hughes bout replaced by a fight with another huge Irish prospect in the undefeated Darragh Kelly, who vowed to put himself right beside Hughes in the international conversation. Instead, Jay Jay knocked him cold in thirty-seven seconds.

A couple days later saw the 18th and the UFC’s return to Canada for UFC Fight Night: Burns vs Malott. They packed 2/3 of the Canadians on the roster onto the show and hired a couple more for good measure, but the prelims didn’t go the Great North’s way, with the Canadians going 1 for 5, including John Yannis knocking out Jamie Siraj, JJ Aldrich outworking Jamey-Lyn Horth, Gokhan Saricam smashing Tanner Boser and Robert Valentin choking out Julien Leblanc, but Melissa Croden managed to outpoint Darya Zheleznyakova for the lone Canadian win, and in unrelated fights, John Castañeda went to a draw with Mark Vologdin and Márcio Barbosa knocked out Dennis Buzukja in just barely over a minute. The main card started off with an internationally irrelevant fight, as Gauge Young got the split nod over Thiago Moisés, and Canada suffered one more hit when Jai Herbert knocked out Mandel Nallo, but the three big fights went their way, as Jasmine Jasudavicius outworked Karine Silva, Charles Jourdain narrowly edged Kyler Phillips, and in the main event, Mike Malott knocked out a very tired Gilbert Burns in two and a half rounds, prompting Gil’s belated retirement.

But the UFC’s month didn’t come to an end until the 25th and UFC Fight Night: Sterling vs Zalal. It was a very long night in the Apex with just two finishes in thirteen fights, one on each side of the event, so rather than keep using the words ‘outpointed’ and ‘outworked’ like I constantly do, we’ll say on the prelims Talita Alencar, Victor Valenzuela, Francis Marshall, Cody Durden, Michelle Montague and Eric McConico all got their hands raised in a respectable manner by delicious points based victories while Jackson McVey had to resort to scandalous, barbarous violence and choke out Sedriques Dumas, which is actually just fine. Up top, Ryan Spann got the main card’s only finish by punching out Marcus Buchecha, while Raoni Barcelos got his long-belated entry into the rankings against Montel Jackson, Davey Grant turned away newcomer Adrián Luna Martinetti, Rafa García got past Alexander Hernandez, and Joselyne Edwards jumped the line by beating Norma Dumont. The main event was, in fact, a fun grappling fight with Aljamain Sterling and Youssef Zalal, but most of the fun was Sterling styling on him en route to a wide decision victory.

And the month as a whole capped off with ONE Samurai 1: Rodtang vs Takeru 2 on the 29th, which is just too goddamn many numbers for one label. It was ONE’s biggest swing in a long time--new branding for a new event series, a big splashy showing in Tokyo, a fifteen-fight card--so it pissed them off just a touch that all anyone could talk about leading up to it was their suing star player Rodtang over contract issues to make sure the main event actually happened. They made it to launch, the card was about 40% MMA to 60% kickboxing, zyour MMA highlights included Kanata Nagai beating Atsuya Kanbe, Keito Yamakita armbarring Ryohei Kurosawa, former DEEP champ Tatsumitsu Wada squeaking past Seiichiro Ito, Itsuki Hirata choking out Ritu Phogat, Chihiro Sawada continuing a great run by becoming the first person to ever submit former title challenger Ayaka Miura, and in the co-main event, Avazbek Kholmirzaev scored an upset knockout over Yuya Wakamatsu to win the Flyweight title. For once there were more decisions in the striking sport than MMA, but in the biggest matches, Marat Grigorian torched Kaito Uno in two minutes, Jonathan Haggerty defended his Bantamweight Kickboxing title against Yuki Yoza, Nadaka Yoshinari held onto the Atomweight Muay Thai Championship against Songchainoi Kiatsongrit, and in the big main event, Takeru knocked out Rodtang to avenge his earlier loss and win an interim belt that super doesn’t matter because he had been clear that he was retiring and, despite ONE trying to nudge him into changing his mind, he insisted he was now very retired.

WHAT’S COMING IN MAY

We kick off the month with a double-header on May 2, and first blood goes to UFC Fight Night: Maddalena vs Prates, because Australia’s government has finally paid the UFC enough to run an Australian fight card in Australian time, meaning it will air in America at 4 AM Eastern. For those braving the time zone dilemma, you are getting all the Australianism you can stomach, including the return of Dom Mar Fan, Colby Thicknesse vs Vince Morales, a wrestle-off between Jacob Malkoun and Gerald Meerschaert, Junior Tafa vs Kevin Christian in a battle of people who both lost to Billy Elekana, Tai Tuivasa vs Louie Sutherland, Shamil Gaziev vs Brando Peričić, Tim Elliott vs Steve Erceg, Beneil Dariush being excuted by Quillan Salkilld, and in your main event, Jack Della Maddalena returns from his title loss against Carlos Prates.

Your American card of the night instead belongs to PFL Sioux Falls: Storley vs Zendeli. It’s a weird goddamn card that swings between unknown prelims like Brett Bye vs Taylor Michels and bigger ones like Taila Santos vs Yan Qihui, but your main card sees Magomed Magomedov take on Lenadro Higo, Renan Ferreira attempt to get his groove back with Sergey Bilostenniy, Simeon Powell vs Emiliano Sordi, Gadzhi Rabadanov vs Aleksandr Chizov in what could be a Lightweight title eliminator, and in your main event, former Bellator interim champ Logan Storley takes on PFL 2024 European champ Florim Zendeli.

The 9th brings us UFC 328: Chimaev vs Strickland, because Sean Strickland needs another title shot and nothing else matters. The prelims have some highlights, including Roman Kopylov vs Marco Tulio, Pat Sabatini vs William Gomis, Grant Dawson vs Mateusz Rębecki and Joel Álvarez vs Yaroslav Amosov and Jared Gordon vs Jim Miller, but of course, none of those are the prelim headliner, Ateba Guatier and Ozzy Diaz are. Your top-card includes King Green vs Jeremy Stephens, for some reason, Sean Brady vs Joaquin Buckley, Alexander Volkov having to defend his contendership against Waldo Cortes-Acosta, and at the tippy-top you have a championship double-header, as Joshua Van defends the Flyweight title against Tatsuro Taira and Khamzat Chimaev deigns to show up and defend the Middleweight belt against Sean Strickland.

The weekend also gets Rizin 53, which is a little odd. After throwing damn near everything they had at their big Landmark show last month the river’s a little dry, so a lot of their fights on hand are lower-key--like, Shinobu Ota vs Yuto Hokamura as a co-main event lower-key--but Ren Hiramoto vs Kouzi should be a good time, and Ryo Takagi vs Li Kaiwen should be fun, and putting Japanese standout Kouki Nakagawa against the 4-3 Japanese-American Jake Wilkins is very funny, and your main event will have Ilkhom Nazimov making his first defense of Rizin’s Lightweight title against Luiz Gustavo will be unironically great.

The 15th brings us ONE Friday Fights 154, and in one of those ‘what are we doing’ situations the card is only a couple weeks away, the main event is the year-and-a-half-belated Heavyweight title rematch between Reug Reug and Anatoly Malykhin, and it’s on a random Friday card that currently only has two other things announced, and they’re a Muay Thai match with Superlek and Kade Ruotolo having an MMA match with Hiroyuki Tetsuka, the main who retired Shinya Aoki (again).

But the same day brings us another, second ONE event, and this time it’s ONE Fight Night 43: Tang vs Gasanov on Prime Video. Why is the Heavyweight fucking Championship not on Prime? I don’t know. Instead you get Alibeg Rasulov vs Lucas Marques, Yosuke Saruta vs Fábio Henrique, and Tang Kai defending his Lightweight title against Shamil Gasanov.

On May 16, it’s back to the Apex for UFC Fight Night: Allen vs Costa. Do you want to see Tuco Tokkos fight Ivan Erslan? Do you crave Modestas Bukauskas? Have you missed Cody Brundage, Trey Ogden, Timmy Cuamba and Alice Ardelean? Are you prepared for Shauna Bannon vs Nicolle Caliari to be inexplicably booked higher than all of them? All this, plus Choi Doo-ho vs Daniel Santos, Jeremiah Wells vs Nicolas Dalby, Malcolm Wellmaker vs Juan Diaz and your main event of Arnold Allen and Melquizael Costa, coming to a fight warehouse near you.

But the big story of the month belongs not to the UFC, Rizin or even the PFL, but to Jake goddamn Paul and Netflix. MVP MMA 1: Rousey vs Carano will kick off their first run at the world of mixed martial arts, and honestly, all things considered, it’s a pretty fuckin’ good card. You’ve got a couple inexplicable bits, like Chris Avila coming out of the shadows to have an MMA match with Brandon Jenkins, David Mgoyan meeting Albert Morales, Alex Pereira’s sister Aline challenging Jade Masson-Wong and no less than Namo Fazil vs Jake Babian, but those are still acceptable prospect fights, and besides, the main card is oddly stacked. Former Bellator champion Jason Jackson takes on Jeff Creighton, Muhammad Mokaev faces former ONE champion Adriano Moraes, UFC Heavyweight champ Junior dos Santos is going to try to punch Robelis Despaigne, French star Salahdine Parnasse is facing Tuff-N-Uff champion Kenneth Cross, Francis fucking Ngannou will most likely do terrible things to Philipe Lins, Mike Perry and Nate Diaz are somehow going to fight a five-round match, and in your incredibly funny main event, Ronda Rousey comes out of ten years of retirement to face Gina Carano, who has not fought since 2009.

On the 23rd, PFL Brussels: Habirora vs Henderson is just going to be so fucking weird. Do you remember Joe Schilling? The kickboxer who was supposed to help Bellator and GLORY popularize kickboxing in America a decade ago but he kept getting shithoused by Hisaki Kato? After seven years away from everything but Karate Combat, he’s back to fight Donegi Abena, GLORY’s Light Heavyweight kickboxing champion, except it’s an MMA fight. 2025 PFL Bantamweight champion Marcirley Alves is back, and he’s fighting Naoki Inoue, who was Rizin’s Bantamweight Champion until December. Two-time UFC cast-off Jared Gooden is here! He’s fighting Boris Mbarga Atangana, the undefeated PFL Europe standout. Taylor Lapilus is here, on a three-fight PFL winning streak, to meet Jake Hadley, who is 1 for his last 3 and coming off a loss. And your main event is Patrick Habirora, the undefeated 25 year-old PFL phenom, vs Benson Henderson, who was a UFC and WEC champion a decade and a half ago and is now 42 and coming off his second or third retirement.

One day later it’s PFL MENA 9: Pride of Arabia and, like, look, I know I shit on the Emirati cards a lot, but no joke I can make is more devastating than this: Do you remember Mohammad “UAE Warrior” Yahya? The guy who kept getting booked every time the UFC went to Abu Dhabi and every time he just got beat up worse and worse, three times in a row? He’s in the main event. Good luck, guys.

Our long-ass month finally ends on the 30th with UFC Fight Night: Song vs Figueiredo, the company’s annual trip to Macau, China, which means this, too, airs at like 1-4 AM if you live in America. Which is a shame, because there’s actually some really good shit on it. Loma Lookboonmee vs Jaqueline Amorim, Aoriqileng vs Cody Haddon, Rei Tsuruya vs Jesús Aguilar, Alex Perez vs Sumudaerji, Muslim Salikhov vs Jake Matthews, Angela Hill vs Xiong Jingnan, Sergei Pavlovich vs Tallison Teixeira, Zhang Mingyang vs Alonzo Menifield--a lot of that genuinely doesn’t suck and I would love to watch it, but I’ll tell you, man, not wake-up-at-4-AM love. Your main event is Song Yadong vs Deiveson Figueiredo to see who still has a shot at sticking around in the top five and it’ll be interesting, but with how Figgy’s been fighting lately I would not be confident enough to say it’ll be great.

CURRENT UFC CHAMPIONS
Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs

Tom Aspinall - 15-3 (1), Either 1, 2 or 0 Defenses Depending On How You Look At It

You know, once upon a time, the UFC would’ve killed for a Tom Aspinall. Entire years of UFC events were spent desperately trying to get a Dan Hardy or Darren Till or Jimi Manuwa into championship pictures so they could cash in on UK superstardom. And somehow, Tom Aspinall just fell into their lap. They didn’t go out of their way to softball him, they didn’t put a ton of effort into marketing him, they just let him mulch everyone in his path. In 2025, Tallison Teixeira has a main event in just his second UFC bout: In 2022 Tom Aspinall had to notch five straight stoppages to get his first crack at the top of the card against Curtis Blaydes, and it ended with his knee imploding fifteen seconds into the fight. When he lost that fight, Francis Ngannou was the reigning UFC Heavyweight Champion of the World. By the time Tom returned in the Summer of 2023, it belonged to Jon fucking Jones. Within one fight Aspinall was a top contender again, and with Jon comically scheduled to defend his title against Stipe Miocic, who hadn’t fought in two and a half years, Aspinall was left in a holding pattern--until Jon injured himself in training. With barely two weeks to prepare, Tom Aspinall fought Sergei Pavlovich for an interim championship. Sergei was the most devastating knockout artist in the Heavyweight division: Tom knocked him out in sixty-nine seconds. Not only did it give him gold, it gave him a golden ticket. The sole purpose of an interim champion is to one day reunify the belts, and that meant Tom had a shot at Jon Jones, one of the biggest fighters in the history of the sport. All he had to do was wait. And wait. And wait. Tom waited so fucking long the UFC made him defend his interim title in a rematch with Blaydes--which he won easily, knocking him out in 60 seconds--on July 27, 2024. Four months later, Jon Jones returned and had his fight with Stipe, who by that point had been effectively retired for almost four years. Unsurprisingly, Jon won. Equally unsurprisingly, Jon and the UFC refused to commit to fighting Aspinall. Jones reportedly held the UFC up for a huge payday, and when they shockingly agreed, he changed his mind. In the end, the most obvious pair of conclusions happened: On June 21st, during the press conference after Fight Night Baku, Dana White announced Jon was retiring and Tom was being promoted to Undisputed Champion; an hour later, coincidentally, news broke that Jon was being summoned for arraignment in July on charges of leaving the scene of an accident after drunkenly crashing another car and leaving another heavily-inebriated half-naked woman behind in it and also threatening the police over the phone when they called him. It is the only way the Jon Jones story could possibly have ended. Tom Aspinall was an interim champion for 588 days, and he made his first undisputed one against Ciryl Gane at UFC 321 on October 26--and, because this division is fucking cursed, it ended in a No Contest after Gane poked him in both of his eyes at once. The UFC has decided this is mostly Tom’s fault, which has nothing at all to do with Tom’s dad talking about how he shouldn’t sign a new contract. A rematch has been vowed, but Tom had to get eye surgery to regain his sight and the UFC doesn’t want to wait when there’s marketing to be done, so Ciryl Gane and Alex Pereira will fight for an interim title at the godforsaken White House.

Light Heavyweight Champion, 205 lbs

Carlos Ulberg - 14-1, 0 Defenses

It’s so hard not to skip to the punchline on this one. Carlos Ulberg’s combat sports career is more mixed than MMA alone would lead one to believe. He started as a mixed martial artist all the way back in 2011, but after winning his debut fight, he decided to give fighting a break for almost half a decade. Then it was boxing, and then it was MMA again, and then it was kickboxing, and for a brief period of time it was both at once. The rise of Israel Adesanya led the UFC on an all-out talent search for big, credible strikers from Oceania, and that is how despite being just 3-0 as a mixed martial artist, Carlos wound up on the Contender Series in 2020, and just a few months later, in March of 2021, he was debuting in the UFC. They hyped him, they gave him a spot on the pay-per-view prelims, they booked him against the 1-1 Kennedy Nzechukwu and despite having half his experience Ulberg was the heavy betting favorite, because everyone knew they wanted him on top. Which was unfortunate, because Kennedy knocked him out in two rounds. Carlos described the loss as the most important moment of his career--half for the lesson of the loss itself, half for the $50,000 bonus that gave him his first taste of actual profit as a professional. He vowed to take his career more seriously, he vowed to prepare for his fights as though every one mattered rather than simply being happy to be in the UFC, and four years later, he was the top contender for the Light Heavyweight crown. A testament to determination and a good mindset? Absolutely! But also a bit of a testament to the careful cultivation and protection of a prospect. Carlos did his job and beat everyone the UFC put in front of him, but the people put in front of him tended to be carefully picked. At one point he beat a genuine prospect in Nicolae Negumereanu, and the UFC followed it up by giving him Ihor Potieria, the man Nicolae had just knocked out in his previous fight. Stiff prospects like Aleksandar Rakić and Azamat Murzakanov flew past in the background, but Da Woon Jung and Alonzo Menifield had to be destroyed. The UFC spent a year and a half trying on three separate occasions to book Ulberg against Dominick Reyes, and by the time they finally got there, it was, somehow, impossibly, a title eliminator. But Ulberg won, just as he’d won every fight since his meeting with Kennedy Nzechukwu, and he proceeded to his title fight with Jiří Procházka for the championship Alex Pereira had left behind to try his hand at the Heavyweight division. It was fun, it was fast, it was dramatic and it was definitive. In just a hair under four minutes, Jiří was flat on the canvas and Carlos Ulberg, five years after his debut, was the Light Heavyweight champion of the world. He also very visibly tore his ACL in half right in the middle of the fight and could barely move. If Jiří had simply backed away, hacked a few leg kicks and kept his distance, the fight would’ve been stopped between rounds, but he chose to engage and got flattened by a left hook counter for his troubles, and the result was a brand new titleholder who proceeded directly to the emergency room after the fight and had knee surgery less than a week later. For the third time in six title reigns, the new champion has an injury so bad it will prevent them from defending their title for at least the rest of the year. Will we get an interim title? Will yet another champion have to give up the gold? Will Paulo fucking Costa wind up technically a 205-pound champion? Stay tuned.

Middleweight Champion, 185 lbs

Khamzat Chimaev - 15-0, 0 Defenses

Yeah, this was probably inevitable. When Khamzat Chimaev showed up in the UFC in the middle of the Fight Island pandemic era and wrecked two people in ten days at two different weight classes, the world was prepared to believe he was special. When he ended Gerald Meerschaert with one punch less than two months later, all doubt was cast aside. The fighters, the audience, and the UFC itself were all true believers in the championship future that lay ahead for Khamzat Chimaev. Khamzat, in response, retired from mixed martial arts. As it turns out, fighting in the middle of a COVID pandemic makes it more likely you’re going to get COVID. Who’dve thunk? After a year, some prodding from Dana White and reportedly a lot more personal prodding from Ramzan Kadyrov, the dictator in charge of Khamzat’s native Chechen Republic, Khamzat returned to the sport a year later. His dominance continued unabated, but his schedule never recovered--in fact, it worsened. After a particularly unfortunate 2022 episode involving Khamzat torpedoing his own pay-per-view main event against Nate Diaz after missing weight by almost ten pounds and very nearly cancelling the event altogether, he instead wound up strangling Kevin Holland, taking another year off, moving permanently to Middleweight, and adopting a new schedule whereby he fought only once every twelve months, and every time he appeared, something bizarre would happen. In the first episode of New Khamzat he showed up in 2023 for what was supposed to be a long-awaited showdown with Paulo Costa, but Costa, as he is wont to do, pulled out and resulted in Welterweight champion Kamaru Usman stepping in with just days to prepare. Even weirder: He gave Khamzat the closest fight he’d ever had. One judge scored the fight a damn draw. Khamzat’s struggle with a career Welterweight gave a lot of folks pause when, one year later, he returned to face Middleweight kingpin Robert Whittaker. Rob was universally respected as one of the best 185-pound fighters in UFC history, and while he’d lost, he’d lost only to the best and never easily. Khamzat steamrolled him in three and a half minutes. He face-cranked him so hard it snapped a previous palate injury and left Rob’s bottom teeth floating in his mouth. By the time Khamzat came back in 2025 for his long-awaited shot at the belt, Dricus du Plessis had etched his spot in the record books as one of just five men to ever defend the Middleweight championship multiple times. He’d beaten everyone the UFC put in front of him, and he was still a betting underdog. The conventional wisdom was Khamzat would choke Dricus out in the first two rounds or Dricus would drag him through a difficult back half of the bout. As it turned out: Everyone was wrong. Khamzat did hand out one of the most one-sided championship victories in UFC history, but rather than destroying Dricus, he just outwrestled him for five straight rounds. He didn’t engage on the feet, he didn’t land much in the way of heavy ground-and-pound, and he isn’t even credited with a single submission attempt. Khamzat landed 529 strikes and only 37 of them were considered significant. But Khamzat won, unquestionably and easily, and now he has the belt everyone long assumed he’d get. Despite the multiple assurances that Nassourdine Imavov was the #1 contender, the UFC unsurprisingly, booked Sean Strickland. They’ll meet at UFC 328 on May 9.

Welterweight Champion, 170 lbs

Islam Makhachev - 28-1, 0 Defenses

The prophecy has been fulfilled. Khabib Nurmagomedov was considered by many to be the greatest Lightweight of all time, but in the later stages of his career he began to repeatedly reference his lifetime friend and training partner Islam Makhachev as not just his successor, but the man who would break the mold he’d left behind. And the fanbase was more than willing to buy another Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov protege coming in and wrecking shop--until he got knocked out by Adriano Martins. Khabib’s aura of invulnerability came from the simple, so-obvious-more-people-should-try-it factor of simply never losing a damn fight. When Islam got torched in under two minutes by a man that couldn’t beat Donald Cerrone, that aura vanished. A lot of folks still thought he could be a champion, but most felt the greatest-of-all-time lane was closed to him. It turns out there’s another way to regain that sense of unbeatable awe, though: Just don’t lose for so goddamn long people forget it ever happened. In the ten full years since that Martins bout, Islam has not lost a single fight. Most of the time, he hasn’t even lost a round. He worked his way up the Lightweight ladder and began to rack up incredible achievements. He tore through top prospects with virtually no effort, he choked out one of the best MMA grapplers ever in Charles Oliveira, he outlasted and later knocked out one of the two men with a claim to the all-time Featherweight crown in Alexander Volkanovski, he choked out Dustin Poirier and he broke the Lightweight title defense record after stomping Renato Moicano. And then he traded in his record-breaking reign to challenge for Welterweight gold. Jumping divisions is always difficult, but the 15-pound leap from Lightweight to Welterweight is a mountain, and no Lightweight champion had ever managed it. Even BJ Penn, the canonical first man to hold gold at both, had to do it in reverse: He failed at both of his attempts to win Lightweight gold and shocked the world by abruptly taking it at Welterweight instead, and it would be five more years before he finally got his shit together and won a title in the division that made him famous. His subsequent attempts all ended in defeat, half because Matt Hughes and Georges St-Pierre were both great and half because BJ was just a Lightweight. Even though Islam was Islam and widely agreed to be a monster in the cage, Jack Della Maddalena had won the Welterweight title with some of the cleanest boxing the UFC had seen, and his championship victory over wrestler Belal Muhammad had people convinced that Islam, at best, would struggle. They met in the main event of UFC 322 on November 15, 2025, and there was absolutely no struggle. Islam kicked Jack’s leg to pieces, landed some surprisingly big punches, and took the fight to the ground almost at will, and by the time the fight ended, it felt like Jack never had a chance. The shadow has been stepped out of. Islam Makhachev is a two-division champion. And now he has a brand new horde of contenders beating down his door.

Lightweight Champion, 155 lbs

Ilia Topuria - 17-0, 0 Defenses

One of the most exciting things about following mixed martial arts is picking which prospects you really, truly believe in. There are hundreds of fighters across history that you will enjoy watching, and you may have some hopes for their future, but you don’t necessarily expect the world from them. When Ilia Topuria showed up in the UFC in 2020, if you were paying attention, you knew he was going to be special. The combination of wrestling, grappling and absolutely murderous striking was almost immediately visible, but what really set him apart was the unshakable confidence with which he used it. Even when he went up to 155 pounds on short notice and almost got knocked out by Jai Herbert he survived the onslaught, recovered, came right back at him as though he was utterly unfazed and destroyed Herbert seconds later. That was the truly exceptional danger of Ilia Topuria: His belief in his technique was so absurdly complete that it came across as absurdly silly arrogance and it made huge swaths of the audience disdain him and then he’d somehow always find a way to just go do the damn thing anyway. He outgrappled Ryan Hall. He submitted Bryce Mitchell. He beat Josh Emmett so badly he got a 50-42 scorecard out of it. And on February 17, 2024, he ended Alexander Volkanovski’s historic, nearly-four-year reign as the king of Featherweight by knocking him out in two rounds. When Ilia followed that up by saying he was going to become the first man to ever knock out Max Holloway--a thing Volkanovski, Dustin Poirier, José Aldo and Conor McGregor failed to do--even with his title victory, the audience was still particularly skeptical. He did it anyway. Once again, Ilia walked into a fight with supreme confidence, and once again, it ended with his opponent on the floor, this time in three rounds. Ilia Topuria had knocked out the two greatest Featherweights of the generation and seemed poised for a longer title reign than either of them. And then he quit the division. One of those first overconfident boasts of his had been the desire to move up to Lightweight and knock out Islam Makhachev to become a double champion. The MMA world thought he was talking about a far-away future, but he wanted it and he wanted it now. Unfortunately, so did Islam. Right as Ilia vacated the Featherweight title to move up to Lightweight, Islam vacated the Lightweight title to move up to Welterweight. So Ilia was left to fight for his destiny against Charles Oliveira instead. Oliveira’s always been incredibly tough and dangerous, and he hadn’t been knocked out in almost eight years, and even then it wasn’t unconsciousness but rather because a Paul Felder elbow had broken part of his face. That streak ended on June 28, 2025 when Ilia Topuria punched him limp in two and a half minutes. The UFC may not do double-champions anymore out of sheer promotional frustration, but in any rational sense, Ilia is the king of Featherweight and Lightweight, which gives him a horde of contenders like Arman Tsarukyan, Justin Gaethje, Dan Hooker and Mateusz Gamrot. So he appears to be fighting Paddy Pimblett next. If you ask Ilia, he’s just killing time until Islam wins the Welterweight title, because his destiny is to take his 5’7” frame all the way up to Welterweight so he can kill the king and be the first ever three-division champion in UFC history. Does it sound aggressively silly and arrogant? Of course it does. Do you feel comfortable ruling it out? Then you haven’t been paying attention. Ilia is, however, dealing with some personal issues related to his divorce, so he’s going to be out of action until the Spring, which means the UFC made an interim title bout between Justin Gaethje and Paddy Pimblett for UFC 324 on January 24. Yes, really. How’d that one wind up going, you ask?

Interim Lightweight Champion

Justin Gaethje - 27-5, 0 Defenses

One of the foundational subjective mixed martial arts questions, right alongside ‘who’s the pound-for-pound best’ and ‘what if Cro-Cop ducked that kick,’ is ‘Who’s the best fighter to never win a championship?’ There are different answers for every generation, and one of the complicating factors is the inevitable debate over whether interim titles count. Was Carlos Condit a UFC champion? What about Colby Covington or Yair Rodríguez? It’s still an incredible achievement, but it’s just not quite real the way an undisputed title is. And I cannot imagine what sort of a backhanded career accomplishment it is to be the only person in UFC history to win their division’s interim title twice. Justin Gaethje has been right on the edge of the top for so long he’s got two half-championships in his closet. Back in 2020 he fought Tony Ferguson, then arguably the scariest Lightweight in the world, and beat him so horrifically that his career never recovered, and that netted Gaethje his first interim belt, which he promptly lost to Khabib Nurmagomedov in the latter’s retirement bout. Two years later, Gaethje got his second shot at the undisputed title against Charles Oliveira and he wound up strangled in three and a half minutes. Three and a half years after that, Gaethje was still right there at the precipice of the top, Ilia Topuria needed a break from the sport, and the UFC needed an aging veteran to propel their marketing star Paddy Pimblett to the top, and at UFC 324 on January 24, 2026, they threw Paddy’s big party and Justin crashed it. The UFC will tell you the fight was close, and it was in the sense that it went the whole way and one judge only gave Justin three rounds, but Paddy got brutally beaten and dropped repeatedly. Once again, Justin Gaethje is the interim champion, and because everything sucks, he’ll try to unify the belt against Topuria at the White House.

Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs

Alexander Volkanovski - 28-4, 1 Defense

And just like that, 2024 never happened. For eleven years Alexander Volkanovski was the best Featherweight on the planet, and most of that time was simply waiting for everyone else to notice. He was short and he won by decisions a lot and the world was entirely into Max Holloway so he skated under the radar right up until the moment he finally beat Max. And that wasn’t enough to convince people, so Volkanovski beat him again. And that somehow made the world doubt him even more, so he beat Max a third time. By 2023 Volk was second only to all-time great José Aldo in Featherweight title defenses--and he’d beaten Aldo in a fight, and his only actual loss was an all-timer of an effort against Islam Makhachev that still stands as the closest Islam has come to losing his title as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world, so it was very, very easy to accept Alexander Volkanovski as the greatest Featherweight on the planet. And then he took a rematch with Islam with only one week to prepare and got knocked out in three minutes, and then he came back less than four months later and got flattened by Ilia Topuria, and in the space of two fights the audience went from celebrating him as the best around to calling for his retirement. Volkanovski took an entire year off to heal and rebuild, which was enough time for Ilia to get bored and vacate the belt to go chase Lightweight greatness, and the Topuria/Volkanovski rematch became Volkanovski vs Diego Lopes at UFC 314 on April 12 to fill the vacant throne instead. It was somehow both close and clear. Lopes gained steam in the middle stanza of the bout and at one point dropped Volk, but Volk got right back up and resumed punching him in the face, and by the end of the bout he’d outlanded him more than two to one. The judges sided with him, the audience sided with him, and Alexander Volkanovski became not just one of the rare few to win back a UFC title, but the first man over 35 to ever win a UFC belt in the sub-170 weight classes typically reserved for young lions. His logical next contender should’ve been Movsar Evloev, but the UFC was busy trying to get him to fight an unranked, debuting Aaron Pico, thus clearing the way for a rematch with Yair Rodríguez in Guadalajara for Noche UFC 3 in September. Except the Arena Guadalajara wasn’t done yet, so Noche UFC 3 got moved to the most Mexican of places, Las Vegas, in October, and Alex’s manager said he had an eye injury that needs time to heal, so he took the rest of 2025 off. Good news, though: That left time for the UFC to get new contenders going. Lerone Murphy wound up fighting and knocking out Pico! Aljamain Sterling beat Brian Ortega! Hell, Movsar Evloev is still right there! The UFC looked at all of them and gave them all the finger. At UFC 325 on January 31, fresh off his title victory over Diego Lopes, Alexander Volkanovski had his first title defense against Diego Lopes. Unsurprisingly, the guy who beat Diego Lopes beat Diego Lopes again. The UFC had Evloev and Murphy fight in March and Evloev won a contentious decision, and now Jean Silva is lobbying as hard as possible for the fight, so we’ll see who gets it.

Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs

Petr Yan - 20-5, 0 Defenses

Petr Yan’s road to the top has been incredibly circuitous. When Yan initially won the Bantamweight title back in 2020, no one was particularly surprised. He’d been one of the best in the world for years, he’d put together a six-fight winning streak on his road to the title shot, and the UFC had fed aging legend Urijah Faber to him in an attempt to make him a known quantity. Felling an even greater legend in José Aldo and taking the belt felt like an entirely expected passing of the torch, and a long reign as the division’s standardbearer seemed all but assured. And then, as they so often do, things went wrong. In quite possibly the most infamous title change in UFC history, Yan became the first champion to ever lose his title by disqualification after drilling Aljamain Sterling in the face with an illegal knee. Yan’s team cried foul and the world turned on Sterling, but when they had their rematch a year later, Sterling beat him by decision and that was that. But it was a split decision, and it was close, so the UFC gave Yan another theoretical title eliminator with Sean O’Malley, and this time the world was almost unanimously convinced Yan won--except for two of the three judges, who split in O’Malley’s favor. To top it off, Yan’s attempt to stay in the contendership conversation ran into the brick wall that was the rising Merab Dvalishvili, who handed him the most one-sided loss of his entire life. In the space of two years, Petr Yan went from being perceived as a generational champion to 1 for his last 5 and seemingly eliminated from contendership. After a year off to cope with injuries, reassess his career and figure out how to turn things around, Yan proceeded to take the path that most commonly leads to success: Just fucking beating everyone. He battered Song Yadong, he outpunched Deiveson Figueiredo, he won an exceedingly weirdly-booked matchup with Marcus McGhee, and suddenly, he was on a winning streak and right back in contendership. It might have taken him longer to get an actual title fight were it not for Merab Dvalishvili being a crazy person. Merab was on the greatest championship run the division had ever seen, and after clearing out most of his to contenders and recording a blistering three defenses in a single year, he announced his intention to break a UFC record and cement himself as the greatest 135-pounder of all time by recording a fourth--just two months after the last one--and Petr Yan was available and ready. The world saw the fight as a foregone conclusion, given how one-sided their first match had been, and the world was wrong. Yan put on the best performance of his career, not just battering Merab but outwrestling him, and in one of the best career comebacks we’ve seen, almost five years after he’d given it away, Petr Yan got his title back. He’s on top of the world again, and in all likelihood, the rubber match with Merab will be next. But it’s gonna have to wait until the second half of the year, because Yan’s having back surgery.

Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs

Joshua Van - 16-2, 0 Defenses

It would be disrespectful as hell to Joshua Van to say that no one saw this coming, as many people perceived it as a possibility, but I don’t think anyone saw it coming like this. Van was the Flyweight champion of the Fury Fighting Championships when the UFC came calling, as a 21 year-old regional titleholder with a penchant for collecting knockouts despite fighting at 125 pounds so thoroughly ticks all of their boxes that Van couldn’t have been a more perfect fit without also having a history of racist tweets, and his Contender Series debut was set for August of 2023. But the UFC needed someone to fill in against Zhalgas Zhumagulov, so Van got called up to the big show early and proceeded to justify their faith by beating Zhalgas, and then beating the man he was originally slated to Contend against, and then facing off with Legacy Fighting Alliance champ Felipe Bunes and handing him the first TKO loss of his entire career. In the space of six months, Van went from a little-known regional fighter to a borderline-ranked Flyweight in the UFC. And then he got atomized by Charles Johnson. It was the second loss of Van’s career, the first time he’d ever been knocked out, and the snapping of an eight-fight winning streak, and in many cases, that would’ve permanently ended his momentum. But Van was smart enough to learn from his mistakes, and the UFC was invested enough in him to bring him back up to speed with a gentle hand, and eleven months later he was on a four-fight winning streak again and had successfully made his way to the top ten after knocking out Bruno Silva, which left him in the perfect position to take advantage of an abrupt opportunity. Top contender Brandon Royval had just lost his opponent and needed a replacement, and Van was game to fight for the second time in three weeks if it meant a shot at the belt. It was a close bout, and if Van hadn’t knocked Royval down at the end of the third round he may well have lost, but he did, so he didn’t, and suddenly the prospect was next in line for the title. All but one month of Joshua Van’s UFC career took place during Alexandre Pantoja’s reign as the Flyweight king. His streak was monstrous and he was a sizable favorite coming into his defense against Van, but many were waiting to see if Van’s boxing could defuse Pantoja’s aggression. As it turns out: We’re gonna have to wait a bit longer. Twenty-six seconds into the bout Pantoja busted his own arm on the mat after a head kick gone awry. So Van’s the champion, but it’s under some real weird circumstances, and it means a number of people are immediately gunning for him. Alexandre Pantoja presumably has a rematch as soon as he’s back, but in the meantime, Tatsuro Taira just pounded Brandon Moreno out to make himself a top contender and he’s going to get his crack at Van at UFC 327 on April 11.

Women’s Bantamweight, 135 lbs

Kayla Harrison - 19-1, 0 Defenses

Every once in awhile the inevitable turns out to actually be inevitable. Ronda Rousey parlayed a 2008 bronze medal in Judo into mixed martial arts stardom; Kayla Harrison took the gold medal in 2012 and 2016. The world was already asking her about MMA before the second. The UFC made a play for her, but there was a problem: By the standards of female fighters Kayla was huge. Ronda had competed at 70 kg in the Olympics, which translated to about 154 pounds, well within the range of weight cutting for the insane standards of combat sports and Women’s Bantamweight. Kayla competed at 78 kg, which was almost 172 pounds. Even at a twenty-pound weight cut, her division simply did not exist in major mixed martial arts organizations. So she had to find one that would build it. The Professional Fighters League needed star power, and Kayla was their gal. They founded the first Women’s Lightweight division in a major American organization, and it was populated mostly by Bantamweights and Featherweights who were trying the best they could. For four straight years, Kayla was their recurring, undefeated champion. She won the 2019 and 2021 tournaments, and in 2022 she made it to the finals and looked poised to take it for a third time, as her only competition was Larissa Pacheco, whom she’d already beaten twice. In a massive upset, Larissa took a decision off of her. It was shocking, it was unexpected, and it was also more or less fine, because Kayla was more or less done with the PFL. She took one more fight against Aspen Ladd as a one-off, but her future was with the UFC. Even with her loss to Pacheco, the world was sure she was a future UFC champion--as long as she could stomach the weight cut. And it did, visibly, kill her! But she made it. She choked out Holly Holm in her debut, she took a decision over Ketlen Vieira in a title eliminator, and all she had to do after that was wait. Julianna Peña was a +500 underdog in her own title defense against Kayla, and that turned out to be just about right. On June 7, 2025, at UFC 316, Kayla achieved the inevitable, ragdolled Peña and tapped her out in just two rounds. She’s the best in the world and she’s going to get her shot at the superfight everyone wanted in the first place, as Amanda Nunes is coming out of retirement to face her later this year--actually, this got delayed so much it’s only now finally booked for UFC 324 on January 24, 2026--maybe never? A couple weeks before the superfight Kayla had to pull out for apparently fairly major neck surgery. No word on when she’ll be back or what on Earth happens now.

Women’s Flyweight, 125 lbs

Valentina Shevchenko - 26-4-1, 2 Defenses

After almost two years of suffering, we have gone back to the start. At the end of 2022 Valentina Shevchenko was so thoroughly ensconced as The Greatest Women’s Flyweight that a sizable segment of the fanbase had built an honest-to-god antipathy for her over it. Sure, she won, all the time, and sure, her only losses in almost a decade and a half came to the greatest of all time in Amanda Nunes, and sure, Shevchenko arguably won their second fight, but familiarity breeds contempt, and after watching the purported greatest struggle with a split decision to Taila Santos that could easily have gone the other way, too, a big chunk of the mixed martial world was ready to move on from Val. And then, unexpectedly, it did. Valentina was a -900 favorite when Alexa Grasso shocked the world, choked her out, and took her title away on March 4, 2023. An instant rematch was obligatory, given Val’s long history on top, so half a year later they ran it back at Noche UFC in 2023, and, awkwardly, it ended in a draw. If the rematch had been obligatory, the threematch was mandatory, but a hand injury on Val’s part and the UFC’s desire to put an entire season of The Ultimate Fighter behind their promotion meant a full twelve months passed before they got back in the cage. That’s a long goddamn time, and it left a lot of air, and that air was filled by doubt. Alexa won the first fight, after all--but she was on her way to losing a decision before Valentina made a costly mistake, threw one of her trademark nowhere-close-to-landing spinning back kicks, and got immediately jumped on and choked out for her troubles. Alexa didn’t lose the second fight--but based on the scorecards, she should have, and would have, were it not for one judge handing her a completely indefensible 10-8 in the final round. When the third fight came on September 14, 2024, it was seen as Alexa’s chance to cement her legacy: Either she was the superior fighter and the herald of a new generation for Women’s Flyweight, or the whole thing was just a weird episode. Unfortunately for Alexa, it was the latter. Valentina dominated her. She outstruck her and outwrestled her with almost comical ease, the fight was a complete shutout, and despite their series being now tied at 1-1-1, no one has any doubts about the winner, nor any desire to see them fight again. Once again, much to the internet’s chagrin, Valentina Shevchenko is a champion. And--only two years late--she defended her title against Manon Fiorot at UFC 315. It was close, it was contentious, and it was also a fight the audience does not want to see again. Her next fight was a long-awaited champion vs champion affair against Zhang Weili at UFC 322 on November 15, 2025. After years of watching Zhang dominate her competition, the world felt she had genuine double-champ potential and could be the woman to unseat Valentina. As it turned out: Not even close. Val dominated her in every aspect of the game, Zhang got completely shut out, and her Flyweight hopes are dead in the water. Valentina has multiple title defenses again and is now tied with Amanda Nunes and Anderson Silva for the fourth-most wins in title fights in UFC history. We’ll have to see who they give to her next, but Natália Silva feels like a safe bet.

Women’s Strawweight, 115 lbs

Mackenzie Dern - 16-5, 0 Defenses

On a long enough timeline, the house always wins. Mackenzie Dern signed with the UFC as a 5-0 fighter all the way back in 2018 and they’ve been trying to get a belt on her ever since. She came into mixed martial arts with a pre-existing pedigree as one of the more decorated women in the history of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu: Gi championships, no-gi championships, pan-Am championships, Asian open championships, world championships, ADCC championships, she took them all. And the UFC marketed her as a grappling champion who was bringing some of the best submission offense in the sport to the Strawweight division! But they also marketed her as an extremely conventionally attractive woman who frequently wore bathing suits. It was one of the touchiest things to comment on with her career: Where other women would have to struggle for their matchmaking and featured spots, Mackenzie’s opportunities kept coming, and they were almost always on the main broadcast and, on multiple occasions, in the main event slots women almost never received. And she needed them, because despite being legitimately quite good, she just wasn’t great. She could make it into the top fifteen, and sometimes even brush the top ten, but every time they tried to get Mackenzie into title contention, she’d falter. It was Amanda Ribas in 2019, it was Marina Rodriguez in 2021, and between 2022 and 2024, Mackenzie had the worst run of her life, winning only one out of four bouts, getting shut down by Yan Xiaonan and Amanda Lemos, and taking the first stoppage loss of her career after being knocked out by Jéssica Andrade. She managed to get her way back up the ladder again by outgrappling Loopy Godinez and submitting a struggling Amanda Ribas in a six-years-belated rematch, but with so many losses to top contenders, her path to the title still seemed closed. Then a funny thing happened: Zhang Weili gave up the Strawweight belt to move up to Flyweight and challenge Valentina Shevchenko. Suddenly, the door was wide open. And conveniently, the UFC had booked all the women who beat Mackenzie into other matches, leaving Mackenzie with just one contender left--and it was Virna Jandiroba, a career grappler whom Mackenzie had already beaten back in 2020. The two met at UFC 321 on October 25, and after seven years of effort, the UFC finally got its way. Mackenzie beat Virna again, fair and square, in a close and hard-fought but ultimately clear decision. She is, at last, the Strawweight Champion of the World. And she’s in the exceptionally weird position of being a newly-minted champion that has very recently lost to several of her own top contenders. If Zhang Weili fails to beat Valentina Shevchenko, it’s very likely the UFC will try to pressure her back down to 115 for a money match with Mackenzie, in which case Dern would almost certainly be a big underdog in her own first defense. If not, at this point, it’s either a rematch with Yan Xiaonan, a grappling match with Tatiana Suarez, or the UFC stops pretending entirely and has Mackenzie beat Contender Series women until she turns a profit.

NOTABLE CHAMPIONS ACROSS THE WORLD

Rizin Lightweight Champion, 156 lbs

Ilkhom Nazimov - 13-3, 0 Defenses

After four and a half years we finally have the second-ever Rizin Lightweight Champion, and it feels a little bit like he came out of nowhere. Up until the 2025 New Year’s event, most folks had only seen one Ilkhom Nazimov fight. He’d been operating out in the Russian regional scene, which has the unfortunate crossover of being a) low-visibility and b) notoriously tough, and no matter how good you are, there just isn’t going to be a lot of international broadcast attention on the Tyumen Extreme Sports Expo. Nazimov didn’t get his first real taste of the spotlight until he made it to UAE Warriors, one of the biggest leagues in the middle east; unfortunately, that spotlight included him getting knocked out in eight seconds. Despite the loss, Rizin was in need of locally-appealing talent for their 2023 foray into Azerbaijan--for the folks who aren’t into flags out there, Nazimov’s representing Uzbekistan--and Nazimov was present, ready, and more than capable of beating “The Crazy Cameroonian” Jaures Dea. It was a good win, but it was also on Rizin’s Landmark series, the lesser-advertised prospect showcases. He’d get pulled up to the main show long enough to pound out Sora Yamamoto, but demoted back down to Landmark duty for a win over Sugaru Nii. Those three wins were enough to get him booked for 2025’s New Year’s special--but against the man they call Blackpanther Beynoah, a 5-3 Lightweight. It wasn’t until DEEP champion and Japanese prospect Shunta Nomura had to pull out of his championship bout with Roberto de Souza that Nazimov got his shot at the belt. Given Souza’s years of dominance as the only man to hold the belt in Rizin’s history, Nazimov’s status as a relative unknown and the short-notice nature of his move up the card, the odds were both figuratively and literally against him. He intercepted a de Souza takedown with a knee and knocked him cold in thirteen seconds. However unknown he was last week, he’s one of the most visible Lightweights in the world now. He’ll defend his belt against Luiz Gustavo at Rizin 53 on May 10.

Rizin Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs

Razhabali Shaydullaev - 18-0, 3 Defenses

I asked how long the second reign of Kleber Koike Erbst would last, and as it turns out, the answer was sixty-two seconds. Razhabali Shaydullaev’s rise through the sport has been impressively meteoric. Four years ago he was a rookie fighting on Batyr Bashy cards in Kyrgyzstan as a predominantly grappling-based fighter. Three years ago he was disposing of journeymen in the developmental leagues of Russia’s Absolute Championship Akhmat. Two years ago he was choking out top contenders in South Korea’s Road FC. One year ago he got signed to Rizin. In just six months he choked out a DEEP champion, submitted a Bellator champion and smashed through a K-1 Kickboxing champion with virtually no resistance. He was the favorite against Erbst, but few thought it would be an easy night, with Erbst having been finished only once in his entire career, and even that was an armbar all the way back in 2009 when he was still a rookie. Shaydullaev, as he has been doing for the entirety of his run thus far, destroyed Erbst. He walked through him and flattened him in just barely over a minute. Rizin’s got another gaijin champion, and given how good he’s looked, they may be stuck with him for awhile--or, worse, they might lose him to the UFC sooner than later. With Mikuru Asakura’s victory over Chihiro Suzuki on the same night he’s the logical next contender, but that would just be stupid, so instead it was Shaydullaev making his first defense against Viktor Kolesnik at Rizin 51 on September 28: He knocked Kolesnik out in just thirty-three seconds. His successful murders got him the main event of 2025’s Japanese New Year’s MMA special, where Rizin secretly hoped their big national star Mikuru Asakura would get the job done; Shaydullaev chain-suplexed him, grounded him, and laid an unconscionable amount of ground and pound on him in one of those Japan-likes-to-let-its-heroes-die moments before the ref finally called the fight in just shy of three minutes. Shaydullaev’s the best guy in the company, and now there’s a question of what’s left for him to do. For now, inexplicably, the answer was carrying the murder of the 5-2 Yuta Kubo at Rizin Landmark 13 on April 11, which is wild because they already fought at the end of 2024 and Shaydullaev destroyed him in seven and a half minutes. Try to control your shock: This time it only took Shaydullaev four.

Rizin Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs

Danny Sabatello - 18-4-1, 1 Defense

When Naoki Inoue won Rizin’s Bantamweight title I wrote that Rizin was one step closer to its dream of an all-Japanese championship roster, and it’s fitting that as gaijin once again take over the majority of the championship belts in the biggest organization in Japan, Danny goddamn Sabatello is one of the men to do it. Sabatello has been dogged by a reputation as a grinding wrestler without a ton to offer since 2020, when he got the call to compete on Dana White’s Contender Series, won, and was notably not offered a contract on the grounds of Boring Grappler. He made the move to late-stage Bellator instead, where he attempted to establish himself as their own personal Chael Sonnen: An indefatigable wrestling machine whose mouth ran just as hard as his double-legs. But it never quite caught on. The talk seemed a bit forced, the wrestling wasn’t that fun to watch, and all his 1980s wrestling promos about the bums in Bellator’s Bantamweight Grand Prix ended with an elimination at the hands of Raufeon Stots. Sabatello swore he’d won and that he’d get revenge; instead he ended his Bellator tenure getting choked out by Magomed Magomedov, decisioned again by Stots, and losing out on a shot at the PFL after going to a draw with Lazaro Dayron, who would’ve won the decision were it not for a point deduction. It was a bit of a shock when Sabatello signed with Rizin in 2025, but it seemed to have paid off when he scored his first knockout in six years during his debut against Shinobu Ota and swore he’d reinvent himself as Japan’s new American superstar. Then he went back to wrestling. It was still enough to get him his shot at Inoue’s belt at 2025’s New Year’s special, and despite the common wisdom of judging favoritism, a very close split decision went Danny’s way. It took three years longer than he intended, but Danny Sabatello is holding gold. Now we see if he can, in fact, become Big In Japan. His first title defense was against Joji Goto at Rizin Landmark 13 on April 11, and, unsurprisingly, he wrestled Goto to a broad decision.

Rizin Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs

Hiromasa Ougikubo - 30-8-2, 0 Defenses

It’s been an incredibly long road to gold for Hiromasa Ougikubo. He was a teenager when he made his professional debut all the way back in 2006, and even at 19, he was notable for the tough, gritty way he handled his grappling. Within a year he was a Shooto rookie tournament winner, within a dozen fights he was a regional champion, and a year later, he was Shooto’s Bantamweight World Champion. And then he immediately lost it after getting choked out by some guy named Kyoji Horiguchi. Having faced a level of force he didn’t feel he could contend with, he dropped down to Flyweight, where he was an immediate success, winning the Vale Tudo Japan tournament and, ultimately, the 125-pound Shooto title. That win got him called over to America for the most talent-rich season of The Ultimate Fighter ever, 2016’s Tournament of Champions, where he distinguished himself as one of the best fighters in the house and even beat a young Alexandre Pantoja on his way to the finals. Unfortunately, he couldn’t get past Tim Elliott. He returned to Japan, where, in his absence, Rizin had been reborn in the ashes of Pride FC, and as one of Japan’s best fighters, he got immediately called to the show--where he was immediately defeated by some guy named Kyoji Horiguchi. Ougikubo went back up to Bantamweight and fought his way to a title shot at company star Kai Asakura, but Asakura lanced him with a knee and ended his title hopes again. Undeterred, Hiromasa entered Rizin’s 2021 Bantamweight Grand Prix and stormed the bracket, winning four fights in a year and two in the same night, including the sweet revenge of a championship final where he defeated Asakura and staked his claim as the best Bantamweight in Japan. And then South Korean Kim Soo-chul beat him. So Ougikubo dropped back down to Flyweight for 2022’s massive Bellator vs Rizin supercard--where he was, for the third time, beaten by some guy named Kyoji Horiguchi. Someone should find out if that dude’s any good at fighting. Ougikubo still got his shot at Rizin’s Bantamweight title, but Juan Archuleta beat him, and for the first time in seventeen years of fighting, Ougikubo found himself on a three-fight losing streak. But Horiguchi, Rizin’s Flyweight champion, left the company to return to the UFC, and with the throne empty, Ougikubo wanted one more shot. He went back down to 125 pounds, he entered the 2025 Flyweight Grand Prix, he ran the table one more time, and at the 2025 New Year’s Special he faced and defeated Yuki Motoya to win the tournament and, with it, the vacant belt. It took several tries and almost twenty years, but by god, Hiromasa Ougikubo is the world champion. He’ll try to defend the belt for the first time against Shinryu Takahashi at Rizin Landmark 14 on June 6.

Rizin Women’s Super Atomweight Championship, 108 lbs

VACANT - The source of life and death

The world has long wondered who or what could beat Seika Izawa, and as it turns out, the answer is childbirth. At Rizin Landmark 13 on April 12, 2026, Seika took to the ring and announced her pregnancy and, accordingly, her hiatus from the sport. After four straight years as the undisputed best Atomweight in the world, the queen has abdicated the throne. She vowed to one day return and take back the belt from whichever unlucky woman gets it in her absence, but obviously there’s no timeline for said return, nor should there be. All eyes now turn to the rest of Rizin’s Atomweight division, which is, like, four people. Ayaka Hamasaki’s back in Rizin, but she got armbarred pretty easily by the debuting Natasha Kuziutina. Moeri Suda and Saori Oshima are always around on loan from DEEP. I’m sure they’d love to belt up RENA, but she spends half of her time closer to Strawweight. It’s a loss for mixed martial arts, we are all happy for Seika and wish her well, and god bless Rizin, which can never, ever have a full complement of champions.

ONE Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs

Oumar Kane - 7-1, 0 Defenses

The triple championship days are over, and we can go back to appreciating ONE’s Heavyweight division for just how silly it really is. Oumar Kane’s origins are very serious: He grew up near Dakar, the capital of Senegal, and established himself as an undefeated star of Laamb, better known as Senegalese wrestling, a particularly harsh form of the sport that takes place on sand or turf and is fought in tiny shorts. As a giant 6’4” muscle monster with a wrestling background, Kane was an internationally visible talent, and ONE picked him up just one fight into his MMA career and promoted him as an undefeated monster of African wrestling. And it was true! For two fights. In his third bout with ONE, “Reug Reug” lost his undefeated streak in 2021 after gassing just two rounds in against Kirill Grishenko, but the actual ending of the fight was a bizarre sequence involving Grishenko throwing a punch right at the bell that appeared to graze Kane’s chin, only for Oumar to motion that he had been illegally punched in the throat after the bell and collapse onto the mat. After replays showed the punch barely connecting, the fight was ruled a TKO, and Oumar was accused of pulling a soccer dive. He spent three years building a three-fight winning streak--including a kickboxing match with “Boucher Ketchup” Mamadou Kamara, who is not a fighter but an influencer, and who fought exactly the way that sounds--and eventually that led him to a November 9, 2024 showdown with triple champ Anatoly Malykhin. The resulting fight was, to be gentle, pretty dreadful. Malykhin didn’t know how to get in on Kane, Kane repeatedly backed himself into a corner to focus on countering, and outside of the first round and a bit of the fifth, very little actually happened. But a takedown in the first round, a yellow card on Malykhin’s part for grabbing the ropes and a flash knockdown in the fifth were enough for Kane to win the title by split decision. “Reug Reug” is the champion. ONE was trying to position Marcus “Buchecha” Almeida as the top contender, but given that Kane beat him to get his title shot in the first place--and, uh, Buchecha left the company after the fight--and they don’t have any other fucking Heavyweights except, like, Kirill Grishenko--unsurprisingly, ONE decided to just book a rematch an entire year later. Kane vs Malykhin 2 was scheduled for ONE 173 on November 16, 2025, but Reug Reug managed to get concussed in a car accident and the fight had to be postponed. It’ll now happen on May 15, 2026.

ONE Light Heavyweight Champion, 225 lbs

Anatoly Malykhin - 14-1, 0 Defenses

ONE Middleweight Champion, 205 lbs

Anatoly Malykhin - 14-1, 0 Defenses

For the second time in as many title reigns, ONE has managed to put a ton of hype behind a champion only to squash them prematurely. Anatoly Malykhin is one of the most successful marketing campaigns ONE ever ran: An undefeated, heavy-punching Russian Heavyweight with a 100% finishing rate. He knocked out everyone he faced, he carried ONE’s Heavyweight division as an interim champion while standing champion Arjan Bhullar was having contract issues, and when Bhullar finally re-entered the fold, Malykhin destroyed him with ease. But ONE had greater hopes for Malykhin as their spearhead for real international notoriety: They would make him the first three-division champion in the history of mixed martial arts. And it’d be real easy, because the other two belts were held by one guy. Reinier de Ridder had been their superstar double-champion, but his relationship with ONE had soured, and they cashed in by having de Ridder face Malykhin, twice, at both his weight classes. Malykhin destroyed him and became the first-ever 265, 225 and 205-pound champion the sport has ever seen--admittedly easier when you consider 225 is not a division that exists in almost any other federation on Earth. But he did it! And then they organized his first-ever title defense by having him put the Heavyweight belt on the line against Oumar “Reug Reug” Kane, and he lost a split decision, and now he is a lowly two-belt schmuck. It’ll be interesting to see what they do with Malykhin now, given that the last 205-pound fight ONE promoted was Malykhin’s bout against de Ridder, and the last 225-pound fight ONE promoted was Malykhin’s 2022 bout with de Ridder. He was hoping to get the Heavyweight title back at ONE 173, but with Reug Reug injured, Malykhin was left waiting until their new date on May 15.

ONE Welterweight Champion, 185 lbs

Christian Lee - 18-4 (1), 0 Defenses

ONE Lightweight Champion, 170 lbs

Christian Lee - 18-4 (1), 1 Defense

It took three tries, but by god, Chatri gets what Chatri wants. Christian Lee, the male half of the first family of ONE Championship and its homegrown golden boy, was very mad about losing his lightweight championship in a controversial decision to Ok Rae Yoon last year. He demanded the decision be reviewed and overturned and his championship reinstated. Unsurprisingly: This did not happen. After months of complaining and just shy of a year of waiting, the two had their long-awaited rematch and Lee left nothing to chance, knocking Yoon out in six minutes to reclaim his belt. Having finally retrieved his title, Lee, being a responsible champion, proceeded to immediately challenge ONE’S 185-pound champion, Kiamrian Abbasov, for his title, a move that was definitely in no way influenced by ONE’s repeated attempts to get his sister Angela Lee double-champion status. Fortunately for Christian, Abbasov horribly botched his weight cut: He came in overweight, lost his title on the scale, and was visibly depleted in the fight. Which is particularly lucky, because Abbasov beat Lee senseless in the first round to the point that a standing TKO would not have been an unreasonable stoppage. But whether from his failed weight cut or simply from punching himself out, Abbasov was exhausted by the second round, and Lee mounted a gutsy comeback and ultimately stopped him with ground-and-pound in the fourth round. After three attempts, ONE has succeeded in getting two belts on a Lee. Unfortunately, it was followed by tragedy. After the passing of his younger sister Victoria, Christian took the whole of the year to, understandably, grieve. ONE planned his comeback for February of 2024, but, y’know, that clearly did not happen. ONE held an interim title fight between Alibeg Rasulov and Ok Rae Yoon to welcome him back--but that didn’t exactly happen either, as Rasulov failed hydration tests, became ineligible to win the title, then won the fight anyway. Lee vs Rasulov was scheduled for October. And then November. It finally happened on December 7, 2024--and it ended in a No Contest after two rounds thanks to Christian unintentionally gouging Rasulov’s eye. They ran it back almost a full year later at ONE 173 on November 16, and this time Lee knocked him out in the second round, marking Lee’s first win in three years.

ONE Featherweight Champion, 155 lbs

Tang Kai - 19-4, 1 Defense

Tang Kai has been flying under the radar for some time, and in hindsight, that was clearly a mistake. He made his professional debut as a 20 year-old collegiate wrestler and won a rookie featherweight tournament in China’s WBK (after investigating, we THINK it’s World Battle Kings), but his stylistic limitations became apparent when he moved up to Kunlun Fight--and stopped fighting rookies. Dominant decision losses to ACA standout Bekhruz “Ong Bak” Zukurov and Road to UFC runner-up Asikeerbai Jinensibieke made Kai’s weaknesses too apparent to ignore, and he made the tough call to commit to his dream, pack up his life, and move away from home to start training with real fight camps, most notably Shanghai’s Dragon Gym and Phuket’s legendary Tiger Muay Thai. It’s worked out quite well: He hasn’t lost a fight in five years. Three knockout wins in China’s Rebel FC got ONE’s attention, and since debuting with the organization in 2019, Kai has soundly defeated everyone in his path. He claims his wrestling base makes him impossible to take down and he proves it by using it almost entirely defensively, vastly preferring to bludgeon his opponents on his feet. His fight against Thanh Le, while blistering and difficult, was proof: He evaded every takedown attempt, widely outstruck him, dropped him with punches and leg kicks alike, and took the belt he’s held for two years. And then, absolutely nothing else happened. It took ONE almost a full year to book another match for Tang Kai, and it was just an instant rematch with Thanh Le with no fanfare, and it was delayed by eight full months thanks to an injury. So after more than a year and a half without a fight, Tang Kai finally fought Thanh Le again, and this time, he knocked him out in three rounds. Congratulations, Tang Kai: You are back at square one. His position hasn’t improved much, either. He was supposed to defend his title against Akbar Abdullaev on January 10, and Abdullaev pounded him out in the fifth round, but he also missed weight by a pound and a half and thus was ineligible for the championship. So, hey: Still a world champion! You just got knocked out a little bit. It’s fine. After almost another year and a half of inactivity Tang Kai will get another shot at defending his title on May 15, this time against Shamil Gasanov.

ONE Bantamweight Champion, 145 lbs

Engh-Orgil Baatarkhuu - 14-3, 0 Defenses

By god, ONE had an MMA title change hands in 2025. Enkh-Orgil Baatarkhuu is one of the precious few success stories for ONE’s feeder system. He was a 5-2 champion in the small (but competitive!) regional scene in his native Mongolia, which put him on ONE’s talent-scouting radar for their Warriors of the Steppe tournament in 2022. Enkh won two fights in six days to earn his contract with ONE, where he quickly discovered that no matter where you go in the wide world of sports, being a grappler-type Pokemon makes companies less invested in promoting you. Enkh went 6-1 across two years--8-1, if you count those aforementioned tournament wins--and finished most of his opponents, but title contention eluded him in no small part thanks to ONE’s turn away from mixed martial arts as a whole. It wasn’t until December 6 that Enkh finally got his long-belated shot at Fabricio Andrade’s Bantamweight title, and the first round and a half looked pretty thoroughly one-sided in Andrade’s favor, as most had figured it would be given the gap in Enkh’s striking game, and Andrade battered him to a near-stoppage on a couple occasions. But Enkh, as it turns out, is tough as shit. He weathered the storm and used his grit, his power and his wrestling to turn the tables, and towards the end of the fourth round, an exhausted Andrade gave up the ghost and got himself strangled. Enkh-Orgil Baatarkhuu is ONE’s Bantamweight champion, and his very first act as a champion was to call for a cross-class title match with Tang Kai, because weight classes aren’t real.

ONE Flyweight Champion, 135 lbs

Avazbek Kholmirzaev - 16-2, 0 Defenses

There’s a certain kind of tragedy in winning a championship during what certainly seems to be the waning days of a promotion’s time with mixed martial arts. Avazbek Kholmirzaev is by no means new to ONE, his title victory came a whole eleven fights into his time on their roster, but he spent a great deal of that time nigh-unto invisible. He got his start in his native country’s Uzbekistan MMA Association, but like so many of his countrymen, the successes that built his career came from the bigger, more popular Alash Pride FC, Kazakhstan’s biggest promotion, which is large, well-populated, and also the kind of bullshit record-padding organization that books main events between promising prospects and 5-11 guys who mysteriously always lose within three minutes. But he was on the positive side of the equation, and he knocked people out with spinning kicks, so ONE scouted him for their expansion across the East and he proved to be a natural fit--for the prelims. Avazbek almost never left the first few fights of the cards he was booked on, right up to his championship-opportunity-earning victory over no less than the 11-10 Jeremy Miado this past December curtain-jerking an Amazon Prime card, and an unkind man would probably intimate that his shot at Yuya Wakamatsu’s Flyweight Championship was an attempt to get Yuya a win, being as it was ONE’s big Ariake Arena show in Tokyo and they were attempting to showcase as much of their Japanese talent as possible. It was going well for Yuya right up until he ate a spinning elbow to the dome and went down in a heap just moments before the second round was about to end. Avazbek is a champion and he should be duly proud, and now we’re just left to see what being an MMA champion in ONE means in 2026.

ONE Strawweight Champion, 125 lbs

Joshua Pacio - 23-5, 1 Defense

It’s been a difficult couple of years for Joshua Pacio. “The Passion” stands as a true veteran of ONE Championship, having made his debut--and his first, unsuccessful attempt at winning the Strawweight title--all the way back in 2016. Pacio established himself as both a fan favorite and a solid promotional favorite for the company, and when he lost his second bid for the title against Yosuke Saruta in 2019, ONE, in a trick they’d become very friendly with over the years, gave him an instant rematch anyway. Pacio knocked Saruta out in the rematch and became easily the greatest 125-pound champion in ONE history, ultimately defending the title three times--including a trilogy match against Saruta. By 2022, Pacio was a crown jewel for ONE’s lineup. Which is when he promptly got wrestled into paste by UFC cast-off Jarred Brooks. Rather than having him defend the title, ONE booked Brooks into grappling matches, and in the meantime Pacio fought and defeated undefeated prospect Mansur Malachiev to earn himself a rematch. Multiple delays ensued, but on March 1, the Brooks/Pacio rematch finally came. Fifty-six seconds in, Pacio attempted a standing kimura on Brooks, who hoisted him off the ground, suplexed him, and knocked him out. Unfortunately, this was a problem. Under ONE’s ruleset, slams that land headfirst are illegal. ONE has been regularly criticized for this--less for the rule itself as for ONE’s tendency to selectively enforce the rule, using it to benefit fighters they would like to succeed. ONE, of course, denies this vehemently. However you draw your own conclusions, at the end of the day Jarred Brooks was disqualified, and thus, by DQ, Joshua Pacio is now a three-time Strawweight champion. He almost immediately announced he has torn his ACL and was out for an entire year. On February 20th, 2025, Pacio and Brooks finally fought again and it was weird, but definitive. Jarred Brooks seemingly exhausted himself after a round and Pacio pounded him for the entire second round, which eventually elicited a mercy stoppage from the ref. ONE has only one 125-pound champion again. So he, of course, challenged for the 135-pound title next. Pacio vs Wakamatsu happened at ONE 173 on November 16 and ended in Pacio getting smashed in six minutes.

ONE Women’s Atomweight Champion, 115 lbs

Denice Zamboanga - 12-2, 0 Defenses

Denice Zamboanga, to be clear, is not the problem with ONE’s women’s divisions. She’s a good fighter. She’s been trucking along in ONE since 2009, she’s proven herself repeatedly as a solid all-around competitor. She’s tough, she’s talented, she’s never been finished. She’s also never beaten a top fighter. She’s fought 0-0 rookies, she’s beaten journeywomen on losing streaks--in a dozen fights with ONE, she’s only beaten someone coming off a victory at all twice. She was also notably defeated by Seo Hee Ham, the top Atomweight contender and former Rizin champion, twice in a row. It was consequently a bit of a surprise to Ham when ONE announced an interim title fight to make up for Stamp’s injury absence and she wasn’t in it. Instead of her, the #1 contender whose only loss in ONE was to Stamp herself, it would be Denice Zamboanga, the woman she beat, against Alyona Rassohyna, a woman she also beat and who, as a bonus, had not fought in ONE since September of 2021--when she lost to Stamp Fairtex. This was all supposed to end in a unification match with Stamp at ONE 173 on August 1, but in early May, ONE announced that Stamp had reinjured her knee and was going to miss at least the rest of 2025. With the awareness that it would have been close to two and a half years between title fights, Stamp ‘voluntarily relinquished’ her title. This wound up being even more infuriating when ONE failed to rebook Denice for so long that upon finally scheduling her again, they chose ONE 173 on November 16, where Stamp Fairtex, who is now healthy, will be fighting a completely unrelated kickboxing match. Denice will face Ayaka Miura. Rather: Denice was going to face Ayaka Miura, but at the end of August she announced medical issues will prevent her from fighting. So they made an interim title fight for Stamp’s return against a non-#1 contender, and then they stripped Stamp for being unable to compete, and then they didn’t schedule the next championship fight until the card where Stamp was making her return anyway, and now Stamp is healthy and fighting but the Atomweight champion isn’t. Stamp lost and Denice has yet to be rebooked. Just fucking stop already.

Invicta Bantamweight Championship, 135 lbs

Jennifer Maia - 23-10-1, 0 Defenses

It did not take Jennifer Maia long to find her way back home to Invicta after the UFC cut her in 2023, and it only took a year for her to reclaim gold in the company she left behind. This is, in fact, Maia’s third stint with Invicta: The first time around was back in 2013, when Invicta was barely a year old and Maia was only a couple years and nine fights into her career, and it saw Maia distinguishing herself as a hot prospect but failing to get past the top ranks. She came back in 2016 as a more seasoned fighter and captured its Flyweight championship, but, as is the fate of all regional champions, she traded the belt for a ticket to the UFC. Her half-decade in the big show was by no means bad--she even fought Valentina Shevchenko for the UFC’s 125-pound title--but she still couldn’t crack the top of the mountain, and eventually, the UFC got tired of her derailing prospects and let her go. It only took two fights for Maia to dethrone Talita Bernardo and gain her second Invicta gold. Hopefully she sticks around this time.

Invicta Atomweight Championship, 105 lbs

Elisandra Ferreira - 9-2, 1 Defense

The only major Atomweight division in America is back, and as happens so often, it belongs to Brazil. Elisandra “Lili” Ferreira started competing as an amateur at 19, lost all of her amateur fights, and proceeded to turn pro anyway, because giving up sucks. She spent the first third of her professional career fighting at Strawweight simply because Atomweight opportunities are few and farbetween, but she made the turn to the lower weight class in 2021 and never looked back, and boy, it’s worked out for her. With one exception--a loss to Anastasia Nikolakakos, maybe the best Atomweight on this side of the globe--Ferreira’s cleaned house on the division. She made the jump to Invicta in 2023, and a year and a half later she’s 4-0 and the new bannerwoman for its most unique weight class, thanks to a hard-fought decision over Andressa Romero on September 20, 2024. Invicta’s 2024 comeback has reclaimed its first lost title; now we just have to see who they line up to test Ferreira over the next year of its renaissance. Her first at-bat came against Ana Palacios at Invicta FC 61 on April 4, and Ferreira earned a near-shutout on the scorecards.

PFL Heavyweight Championship, 265 lbs

Vadim Nemkov - 19-2 (1), 0 Defenses

When the PFL announced that it was going to crown a standing Heavyweight champion, they had a raft of interesting options. Oleg Popov, their 2025 tournament champion, had a strong argument. Denis Goltsov, 2024 champion and the only man in almost ten years to beat Popov, could’ve called dibs. Hell, the PFL still technically has Francis Ngannou, the best Heavyweight on the planet, under contract. They, of course, did not choose any of those men. They chose Renan Ferreira, the 2023 tournament champion whose only fight in almost two years was a TKO loss to Ngannou, and Vadim Nemkov, Bellator’s best Light Heavyweight. Nemkov, a Fedor protégé, hadn’t lost since 2016, when he got himself punched out by Jiří Procházka and narrowly edged out by Karl Albrektsson, and it’s a testament to both his skills and the world’s dim view of the Heavyweight division that when the PFL acquired Bellator and Nemkov announced he was leaving 205 for the 265-pound world, instead of the expected fretting about how a 6’1” man would contend in the world of the big boys, more or less everyone said “Yeah, that’s fine.” And lo: It was. Nemkov choked out 2021 PFL champ Bruno Cappelozza, and then he choked out the ever-pained Timothy Johnson, and when he fought Renan Ferreira at PFL Champions Series 4 on December 13, 2025, shockingly, he choked him out, too. Nemkov’s now the only major Heavyweight champion in American MMA outside of the UFC. Hopefully it pays off.

PFL Light Heavyweight Championship, 205 lbs

Corey Anderson - 20-6 (1), 0 Defenses

One of the best Light Heavyweights in the world isn’t in the UFC, and they have only themselves to blame. Corey Anderson was the precise kind of fighter the UFC wanted when they first got ahold of him in 2014: Big, young, athletic, talented, undefeated. He had all the makings of a future champion, and his victory on The Ultimate Fighter 19 (jesus christ) cemented him as a prospect to watch. Unfortunately, he had also barely been in the sport for a year and only had four professional fights to his name. In short order he’d suffered his first loss, and a couple years later, a pair of back-to-back knockouts in 2017 sent him to the realm of afterthoughts. But a recommitment to his wrestling style, an extremely well-aged victory over Glover Teixeira, and a devastating knockout over Johnny Walker got Anderson back in the title picture, and in 2020, he fought Jan Błachowicz to determine the #1 contender to the soon-to-be-vacated belt. They’d done battle once, five years prior, and Corey had won a clear decision. This time, Jan flattened him in three minutes. Despite his top-ten ranking and the four consecutive fights he’d just won, the UFC decided to dump Corey, sending him from main event to unemployment in a week. Corey went straight to Bellator and proceeded to become one of its best stars, and he would have become the first man in America to beat Vadim Nemkov had they not banged their heads together and ended the fight prematurely. Corey lost the rematch, but he became the last man to hold Bellator’s Light Heavyweight title after beating Karl Moore, and on October 3, Corey had a champion vs champion match against the PFL’s 205-pound tournament champion, Dovletdzhan Yagshimuradov. Corey had pounded him out in Bellator four years prior, and while he didn’t get the stoppage in the present, he did get the win, and in so doing he became the inaugural PFL Light Heavyweight Champion. What that actually means going forward, we’ll have to see.

PFL Middleweight Championship, 185 lbs

Costello van Steenis - 18-3, 1 Defense

For years, the Professional Fighters League has threatened to crown standing champions. Did they carry through any of their major tournament winners? Nope. Did they bring out their holdout Bellator champions? Not exactly! Did they at least make a big hubbub about finally going through with it? Of course not. Instead, just five days before PFL Champions Series 2, their promotional debut in South Africa, they abruptly announced that Bellator champ Johnny Eblen was suddenly the first-ever PFL Middleweight Champion, and his match with Costello van Steenis was the first-ever defense of the title. Costello, himself, was a Bellator veteran who’d been absorbed in the PFL buyout, but he’d always played second fiddle in the organization, unable to get through the John Salters and Douglas Limas of the world, and thus said world was mostly overlooking him as a challenger. The first three rounds of Eblen gradually grinding him into dust bore out that expectation, but then a funny thing happened: The inexhaustible wrestler got tired. Eblen found himself punched up by van Steenis in the fourth round, and he seemed to be pulling it together again in the fifth, but right before the bell could ring van Steenis managed to take his back and sink in a choke, and with just seven seconds separating him from an almost-certain decision victory, Eblen passed out. Costello van Steenis is the first man to truly hold a standing PFL Championship, and he became the second man to defend one after knocking out Fabian Edwards on March 20.

THE PFL WELTERWEIGHT CONUNDRUM

Yeah, I don’t quite know what to do here. On February 7, the (technically) final Welterweight champion of Bellator, Ramazan Kuramagomedov, beat 2024 PFL tournament champion and undefeated favorite Shamil Musaev and became the first official PFL Welterweight Champion. In his post-fight interview he immediately retired. On one hand, the PFL still lists him as their officially reigning champion. On the other, the PFL’s Youtube channel has a video on it named RAMAZAN KURAMAGOMEDOV ANNOUNCES THIS WAS HIS LAST FIGHT and in their own description phrase it as “announcing his retirement.” Does the PFL have a Welterweight champion? I don’t think even they know. So, as of March 1, 2026, I’m leaving ol’ Matthew Lesko here until the PFL clarifies its own title situation and I am on pins and needles to see how long it’ll take before I remove this section.

PFL Lightweight Championship, 155 lbs

Usman Nurmagomedov - 21-0 (1), 1 Defense

The Nurmagomedov family is trying to run the sport, and Usman is their B-league beachhead, but that assault has proven to be an awful lot rockier than the rest. As the kid brother of Umar and the cousin of Khabib, Usman had great expectations thrust upon him very early in his career, and he dealt with them the way regional talents with great camps traditionally do: Squashing severely overmatched competition until you get a contract from one of the big companies. Bellator won the Usman bidding war and brought him over in 2021, and he proved to be one of the breakout stars of their final days, blitzing his way up the Lightweight ranks, knocking off several contenders and ultimately beating Patricky Pitbull to win the 155-pound championship and securing his reign by retiring former star and UFC champ Benson Henderson. It was 2023, and even though Bellator’s upcoming death was clear, Usman was a name and widely considered one of the best Lightweights in the world. Unfortunately, then, things got weird. He was a massive, -2200 favorite to beat Brent Primus in the waning days of Bellator, and he did--and it became the first non-win of his career after failing a drug test for something that was never disclosed. He carried Bellator’s title over into its new life as a colony of the PFL, and he immediately ran into controversy after barely scraping a majority decision off of Irish superprospect Paul Hughes. The world wanted a rematch for the inaugural PFL Lightweight Championship fight, and on October 3, at the PFL’s big Dubai show, they got it--and this time, it waws even closer, with media scorecards split right down the middle. This, by itself, is not that unusual, nor is one fighter winning a controversial decision unusual. It is unusual when the decision is not only unanimous, but one judge scores the entire fight as a 50-45 shut-out. So Usman’s last two wins were dubious, and his future as part of the PFL depends on how they treat their own championship, but for now, he is the damn champion. He notched his first title defense by choking out Alfie Davis on February 7.

PFL Women’s Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs

Cris Cyborg - 29-2 (1), 1 Defense

Are you noticing how all of the inaugural PFL champions are just Bellator’s champions? Funny, that. Cris Cyborg is the greatest Women’s Featherweight of all time, and we all just kind of have to deal with that, because Women’s Featherweight has only barely ever existed. Strikeforce set the standard back in 2006 because Gina Carano was one of their biggest stars, and that star lasted right up until 2009, when they attempted to put a belt on her and failed because Cris Cyborg punched the shit out of her. In the following sixteen years Cyborg’s only lost one mixed martial arts fight, and it took Amanda Nunes, the greatest Women’s mixed martial artist of all time, to do it. Aside from that one loss, she’s run the table. She was the Strikeforce Featherweight Champion until it closed, and then she was Invicta’s Featherweight Champion until they let the UFC have her, and then she was the UFC’s Featherweight Champion until Amanda dropped her, and Cyborg promptly went to Bellator and won their title, too. When the PFL brought her over in the Bellator buyout, they set her up for an interpromotional superfight against Larissa Pacheco, a two-time PFL tournament winner and the only woman who’d ever beaten Kayla Harrison. On one hand, Pacheco’s one of just six women to ever make it to the final bell with Cyborg. On the other, she lost 4-1. In the ultimate act of promotional cowardice, the PFL promoted Cyborg to champion status three days before her appearance at the PFL Champions Series on December 13, 2025, meaning her fight with Sara Collins was, technically, a title defense. It was as one-sided as you’d expect. In theory, this is great! The biggest female fighter outside the UFC has a belt and the PFL is bringing back a division the UFC threw in the garbage. In practice, Cyborg didn’t even get out of her post-fight interview without noting that after her next fight she’s going to retire from MMA in favor of focusing on her boxing career. So welcome back, Women’s Featherweight. I hope you still exist by 2027.

SATURDAY, MAY 2 FROM THE RAC ARENA IN PERTH, AUSTRALIA
EARLY START TIME WARNING | PRELIMS 1 AM PDT / 4 AM EDT | MAIN CARD 4 AM / 7 AM | EARLY START TIME WARNING

Remember all those various comments over the last few years about the Australian government getting in on the bribe-the-UFC-for-shows game? Congratulations, Australians! Your tax dollars have finally convinced the UFC to program your shows for your own time zone. Welcome to a new era of fight cards that start at shitty times for the rest of the audience instead of you, for once, as well as a level of regional appeal so wide in its scope that for the first time ever we’re going to be using a new metric to track it. It’s going to be very subtle, so make sure you keep your eyes peeled.

MAIN EVENT: SWIFT RECOVERY
WELTERWEIGHT: Jack Della Maddalena (18-3, #1) vs Carlos Prates (23-7, #5)

Despite the UFC’s best attempts to drag everything down into the muck, the Welterweight division is still really fucking cool.

They’re working on dragging it down--look out for the rise of Make Malott--but for now, for however long anything good can last, this is one of the last bastions of quality in the UFC. Everyone’s good, everything’s fun, there isn’t a single bad fighter or outright hype job in the top ten. Hell, half of said top ten have held the championship, and out of the half that haven’t you’ve got a good three and a half guys that are right there orbiting the title picture.

Jack Della Maddalena is the half. For three straight years JDM was damn near everything the UFC could possibly want. A complete striker with some of the best boxing in the business and virtually no desire to wrestle, a career finisher with beautiful liver punches, a young man on a Contender Series contract with plenty of longevity and virtually no leverage, and he even had the courtesy to hail from Australia, the territory the UFC was actively trying to conquer. Had Jack also dabbled in using his free time to post about bigotry and libertarianism on the internet, he would have been their perfect starchild.

As it was, they had to simply settle for watching him punch everyone, and punch everyone he did. Between his Contender Series fight in 2021 and his title win in 2025 Jack fisting his way up the ladder made him one of Welterweight’s hottest prospects, and he was aided in no small part by the rare and welcome decision not to softball him. Ramazan Emeev is a hard draw for your second fight in the UFC. Randy Brown is a tall order at any point. Hell, the UFC wanted Jack in the cage with Sean Brady all the way back in 2023, and they should be thankful to this day that Brady had to pull out and Jack wound up dealing with a lesser grappling in Bassil Hafez, because Hafez damn near won and Brady would probably have tied 2023 Jack into a pretzel. Instead, watching him struggle to climb the ladder didn’t just him good will with the fanbase, it forced Jack to round out his gameplan and fix his weaknesses.

The Jack Della Maddalena that almost got wrestled to death by Bassil Hafez in 2023 was an entire league apart from the Jack Della Maddalena that shut down Belal Muhammad and won the Welterweight Championship in 2025.

Unfortunately, the Islam Makhachev that beat Jack six months later was an entire league apart from him, too.

This is the problem with being #2 with a bullet. You can punish prospects, you can crush contenders, you can win against world champions, but when you meet a man you can’t do a goddamn thing against, it kills your prospects. Islam didn’t just beat Jack, he shut him out. By the midway point of the match Jack looked visibly frustrated and he still had another twelve and a half minutes of getting outstruck and outwrestled to go. 4 for 4 on takedowns, 140 to 30 in the striking, 50-45 on every scorecard. When you lose a title that badly, you don’t get a second shot unless the man who beat you no longer has the belt or there’s no one left between the two of you, and that means holding onto your spot at the top of the division with every erg of strength in your fingertips.

Carlos Prates is an excellent example of how this can be inverted. When you get to the top and then you lose, it’s a big, big problem. When you lose on your way up, as long as you didn’t get smashed, no one really gives a shit.

Some part of that, I think, is the lesser toll associated with failing at jumping the line. By 2025, Carlos Prates was already a big fan favorite of a prospect. “Guy who knocks everyone out” is still the single most successful schtick in the sport, and in a single calendar year Prates went from his UFC debut to 4-0 with a perfect record of striking stoppages, and it’s damn near impossible not to get a great deal of hype from the fanbase when you keep flooring everyone you face.

But where the UFC brought Jack up the hard way, Carlos got the softer road. Trevin Giles was coming off a stoppage loss when Prates debuted and knocked him out. Charles Radtke was 2-0 when Prates got ahold of him, and neither of the two were world-beaters. Li Jingliang was coming off a loss, a spinal injury, and two years on the shelf when he walked into a Carlos Prates left hook. Neil Magny wasn’t just coming off a loss, he was coming off a TKO loss just 77 days before the UFC asked him to fight the scariest knockout puncher at Welterweight. Everyone knew Carlos was a big threat; everyone knew Carlos had been carefully cultivated.

Accordingly, when the UFC booked Ian Machado Garry, the #7 man in the division, against Carlos Prates, then stuck at #13, it was a surprise up until it wasn’t. Garry had just lost his undefeated streak to Shavkat Rakhmonov and the UFC wanted him to fight another striker; Prates was a much better finishing machine and the house likes to hedge its bets. Garry took Shavkat to the limit but still lost a decision, and Prates put up a solid fight and nearly finished Garry in the home stretch, but couldn’t stop Garry from grappling him for the first three and a half rounds.

Ian stumbled on his way up, then picked up a couple solid victories over difficult opponents and now he’s in title contention--because Shavkat’s out of the picture with an injury. Carlos stumbled against Ian, then took out his anger with back to back knockouts over Geoff Neal and Leon Edwards, and now he, too, is fighting to be in title contention, and he, too, would benefit deeply from the rumors of Islam’s next defense being against Garry, as if Garry loses, his victory over Carlos is no longer a roadblock.

It’s a great fight. It’s a great clash of styles, from Jack’s in-and-out up-close combination boxing to Carlos’ long-range nukes.

And it’s still just a little bit of an existential bummer, because it’s hard to imagine either of these guys beating Islam. If Jack wins, he’s orbiting a man who dominated him so badly a rematch would seem like a completely foregone conclusion. If Carlos wins, he has to deal with one of the best grapplers in mixed martial arts after getting outwrestled by Garry and nearly choked out by Edwards. In the vacuum of combat, this is an excellent match that could provide one of the most fascinating striking battles the UFC can currently offer. In the context of the difficulty cliff that currently looms over the Welterweight division, whoever wins, good fucking luck in your future endeavors.

I can’t help picking the underdog this time out. As much as I love Jack’s technique, he’s been using it at a perpetual advantage. Gilbert Burns isn’t going to outstrike him. Belal Muhammad isn’t going to outstrike him. Randy Brown has always been too loose to be as dangerous as his potential. The last time we saw Jack fight someone with a similar size, reach and power advantage it was Kevin Holland, and Jack won--more clearly than the split decision would lead one to believe--but he still struggled with the fire coming back his way. Prates burns a lot fucking hotter and with how unlikely Jack is to mix wrestling as effectively into his assault as Garry did, I see big left hands dancing in my head. CARLOS PRATES BY TKO.

CO-MAIN EVENT: CASHING OUT
LIGHTWEIGHT: Beneil Dariush (23-7-1, #12) vs Quillan Salkilld (11-1, NR)
LOCAL FIGHTER AGAINST A FOREIGNER COMING OFF A LOSS COUNTER: 1

Now this is just uncouth.

Let’s not beat around the bush on this one, either: This is an attempted execution. This is an attempt to jump Quillan Salkilld in line on the corpse of a former contender who appears to be on his way out. This is the theoretical end of the story of Beneil Dariush, a man who has looked 40 since 2018 and is only now closing in on it.

Until recently, that agelessness had defined him. We’re only a few years past when Beneil was supposed to fight Islam goddamn Makhachev, and we’re eleven years past Beneil’s first appearance as a top-ten ranked Lightweight. When Beneil hit #8, the top Lightweights in the UFC were Rafael dos Anjos, Anthony Pettis, Donald Cerrone, Eddie Alvarez, and Khabib Nurmagomedov. That’s how many generations of Lightweight hopefuls he’s hung on through. That’s just how long he’s been turning away prospects, from Charlie Brenneman to Mateusz Gamrot.

And sure, every once in awhile he’d get got. Michael Chiesa, Edson Barboza, Alexander Hernandez. When Beneil’s five-year undefeated streak finally ended at the hands of Charles Oliveira, no one really batted an eye, because it’s Charles fucking Oliveira. After Arman Tsarukyan knocked Beneil out in one minute, the world shrugged, because Arman’s quite possibly the best Lightweight in the world right now. Routing Renato Moicano last June made it even easier to believe the Dariush cycle was simply coming around all over again.

Belief in Beneil bottomed out in November. He got matched up with Benoît Saint Denis, the kind of big-swinging wrestleboxer he’d turned aside repeatedly in his career, but this time Beneil came in overweight, walked into the cage looking tired before the fight even began, and got knocked out in one punch. Ten years of contendership called into question in sixteen seconds.

Which means it’s open season on dying stars. Quillan wasn’t the UFC’s first choice--it was supposed to be fellow knockout artist Manuel Torres--but injuries cost Torres his shot, and by god, there’s Australian pandering to be done, and an Australian kickman to boost into the stratosphere.

I can’t say shit about Quillan Salkilld being bad. You do not destroy Nasrat Haqparast in two and a half minutes if you’re bad. You don’t outwrestle Yanal Ashmouz for three straight rounds or choke out Jamie Mullarkey if you aren’t really good at what you’re doing. Quillan’s skills are extremely legitimate and the UFC is not at all wrong to want him up the rankings sooner than later.

But, as always, it’s not the destination so much as the journey. We just discussed the joy of fighters working their way up the ranks organically; Quillan got here by dumpstering Nasrat Haqparast and then dumpstering a man who was, himself, dumpstered by Nasrat Haqparast. Like Prates, this is an attempt to jump the line on a hard-hitting knockout artist by surfing on the body of a fallen contender before his bones calcify completely.

And like Prates, I think it’s gonna work. I would love to see another vintage prospect-destroying performance, but I think that time has passed. Quillan seems like the real deal and Beneil’s career seems to finally be catching up with him, and that makes QUILLAN SAKILLD BY TKO seem almost academic.

MAIN CARD: JESUS CHRIST, HEAVYWEIGHT
FLYWEIGHT: Tim Elliott (21-13-1, #11) vs Steve Erceg (13-4, #12)

Despite how often the greater consciousness of the fanbase tends to overlook him, Tim Elliott is on a pretty solid run. Most folks don’t really perceive it, because Tim’s career is defined as much for being a huge weirdo who moonwalks in mid-fight as for losing all of his big fights. He almost choked out Demetrious Johnson, but then he lost. He got his shots at Deiveson Figueiredo and Brandon Royval, but he got choked out by both of them. He was supposed to prospect-check Muhammad Mokaev back in 2023, and Mokaev outgrappled and submitted him, too. His tendency to fall short in fights of consequence made everyone’s eyes glaze over when it came to his many midcard wins, which made it something of a jolt when the UFC picked him to rehabilitate former Rizin champion Kai Asakura after his failed attempt to challenge Alexandre Pantoja for the Flyweight title this past August, and instead of Kai fulfilling his odds as a massive favorite Tim outgrappled him with ease and guillotined him in two rounds, at which point the world went “oh, right, Tim Elliott, I remember that guy.”

Said world has been unable not to remember Steve Erceg, because the UFC ran him into the ground in their repeated attempts to make him a main event talent. There are two sides to the Steve story. In one, he is almost inarguably Australia’s best Flyweight, an extremely solid fighter with crisp boxing, underrated (if underutilized) wrestling, and tight enough defense that running up three UFC wins in under a year came as no surprise to anyone paying attention. In the other story, he’s maybe the most overpushed 125-pounder in the company. After knocking out a Matt Schnell with one win in three years and earning the #10 ranking in the division, the UFC shot Erceg straight to a title match. When he failed, they put him in a pay-per-view co-main event title eliminator with the returning Kai Kara-France. When Kai knocked him out in four minutes flat, they threw Erceg into a main event with the even higher-ranked former champion Brandon Moreno. It was only after his third consecutive loss that the company finally relented and let Erceg go back to fighting regular competition, and having beaten Ode’ Osbourne, a man who is currently 2 for his last 8, it’s time for Erceg to get the chance to climb the ladder again with the benefit of a home field advantage.

My head and heart are at war with this one and even as I write this sentence, I’m still not sure which I’m going to side with. On paper, it seems very hard for Erceg to lose this fight. The striking game is extremely clearly in his favor, and while Tim may be a better grappler, I don’t think he’s going to have a lot of luck submitting Erceg where Alexandre Pantoja failed. Tim’s also absurdly difficult to knock out, so there’s a good chance he’ll have multiple chances to get Steve where he wants him, but taking Tim over Steve here seems like the kind of decision that will serve only to sadden me by reminding me of my tendency to cling to false hope and try too often to live in the world I want rather than the one that is.

But, like Popeye, I am what I am. TIM ELLIOTT BY DECISION.

FEATHERWEIGHT: Marwan Rahiki (8-0) vs Ollie Schmid (4-2)

Previously, in March’s locus of frustration:

What are we doing here, man? Marwan Rahiki was just on the Contender Series in October, where he got nearly knocked the fuck out twice in one round by Ananias Mulumba, who got his shot at the show by defeating a man who is 10-12 with those victories all coming over fighters with no more than one win, and after Mulumba gassed out from beating the absolute shit out of Rahiki he got stopped in the second round, because 23 year-olds are better at recovering than you are.
(...)
This is a UFC fight. This is a fight in the UFC. This isn’t even a random prelim, this is a main card UFC fight. The 0-0 guy who barely survived his DWCS appearance is fighting the 0-1 guy who had his legs smashed to bits by a man who couldn’t get past Marc Diakiese, and Charles Johnson and Chris Curtis and Brad Tavares and Bia Mesquita and even Eryk Anders are all stuck on the prelims.

Marwan Rahiki was supposed to fight Jack Jenkins on this card in one of those ‘technically both fighters are at least semi-local but one of them is ethnically White and the other isn’t and that’s definitely not going to lead to an awkward crowd reaction’ specials the UFC loves so much, but Jack got hurt and I sat there with “Marwan Rahiki vs TBA” on my template because I knew, inside, that they would not be so kind to my sanity as to simply cancel the fight. Four days before the event, they proved me right.

I have seen people react to Ollie Schmid’s signing with excitement. With respect: Ollie Schmid has been fighting professionally for three years, he is 4-2, three of those victories were against men with zero wins, two of them were men with zero fights, and his most recent win, the only exception, was a fifteen-second knockout over the 5-6-3 Jeffrey “JRock” Mesa. Ollie isn’t here because he’s amazing, he’s here because he’s part of the Adesanya/Ulberg/Hooker City Kickboxing team and he’s conveniently Australian and he never takes anyone down. This isn’t a feelgood story about a good prospect getting his chance--it barely has anything to do with Ollie. It’s the progressively lowering bar of admission meeting the needs of regional marketing.

Splitting the difference between being happy for fighters getting what they want and being sad for the sport on the whole is uncomfortable and exhausting. OLLIE SCHMID BY TKO.

HEAVYWEIGHT: Shamil Gaziev (14-2, #15) vs Brando Peričić (6-1, NR)
LOCAL FIGHTER AGAINST A FOREIGNER COMING OFF A LOSS COUNTER: 2

One week ago.

You know, I didn’t intend for Every Week Heavyweight Strays Further From God’s Light to be an ongoing, recurring segment in these write-ups. I really didn’t! But as it turns out, there is, indeed, always more, and it is, in fact, always worse.

Not only are we doing this all over again this week, it is a two-parter told across back to back fights. In your first Heavyweight bout of the night you’ve got Shamil Gaziev, who was competing in a main event for a spot in the top fifteen after just one fight in the UFC, and Jairzinho Rozenstruik, the man that beat him so badly Shamil had to quit between rounds because he could no longer see, was deemed no longer relevant to the UFC’s interests two fights later and released. Shamil proceeded to reach incredible heights like ‘beating Don’Tale Mayes’ and ‘knocking out Thomas Petersen,’ and then the company spent half a year trying and failing to get him in the cage with Serghei Spivac, and when that failed they gave him a last-minute replacement bout with Waldo Cortes-Acosta, who dropped him in a minute and a half.

Which is how he is now defending his spot as a ranked Heavyweight against “The Balkan Beast” Brando Peričić, a man who made it into the UFC on the back of two straight victories over men with zero professional fights, but he knocked out no less than Muckleshoot Fight Night veteran Elisha Ellison and the now 0-2 Louie Sutherland, which means he’s ready for fucking primetime. We have fully regressed to the point that the Heavyweight division is now openly auditioning ranked men whose primary skillsets are Is Large and Has Enough Gas To Punch For One Round, and if there are Heavyweights better than these men out there but they do things other than knock people out and/or cost more to employ than the lowest possible professional salary, fuck ‘em, we don’t need ‘em.

It’s painful and we somehow haven’t even gotten to the actual pain yet. SHAMIL GAZIEV BY TKO.

HEAVYWEIGHT: Tai Tuivasa (14-9) vs Louie Sutherland (10-5)
LOCAL FIGHTER AGAINST A FOREIGNER COMING OFF A LOSS COUNTER: 3

Oh, yeah. This is where the pain lives. Tai Tuivasa is on a fucking six fight losing streak. The last time he scored a win was a month and a half into 2022. The last time he fought at all it was a gas-out with Tallison Teixeira so deeply tragic it made Teixeira look worse even in victory, and now a man who was one fight away from meeting Jon Jones is unranked and on possibly the worst slump in UFC Heavyweight history. Funny story: Tai Tuivasa also lost against Jairzinho Rozenstruik just two fights ago, and somehow, Tai is the one who is still here. They were going to try to get him back on track, too--he was supposed to fight Sean Sharaf, the 0-2 man who’s gotten knocked out in both of his UFC bouts thus far. But Sean broke his nose, and the UFC had to ask itself if they had any other 0-2 guys in their pocket that Tai could hopefully knock out.

If you read the last fight, you already know the answer. Louie Sutherland’s two-fight UFC career just barely exceeds three minutes. Valter Walker tore his knee up, Brando Peričić punched his face in, and now he’s fighting a man who was, a few eyeblinks ago, one of the top Heavyweight contenders in the world. And I mocked Heavyweight then, because Tai climbed the mountain on the backs of names like Greg Hardy and Harry Hunsucker, but by god, at least he climbed it. I don’t know what to call this. I don’t have words for the current state of the division, where Things just Happen and we rebuild our homes in the craters left behind by the madness. If Louie wins, is he now borderline-ranked by beating a man who’s been losing so badly it led to public calls for the division to be shut down? If Tai wins, do we have to do this all over again?

I hope not, but I do think, even now, he’s a better brawler than Louie. TAI TUIVASA BY TKO.

PRELIMS: THE SHOWROOM
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Cam Rowston (14-3) vs Robert Bryczek (18-6)

There’s a certain level of casual disrespect that goes into breaking a fighter down to a single loss, but it’s important not to dodge reality just because reality feels unkind. Robert Bryczek has been around the globe, he’s won regional championships, he’s beaten some solid fighters and he was, at one point, one of the best Middleweights in Oktagon, the Czech Republic’s biggest league and one of the best Eurofight organizations there is. He also lost a UFC fight to Ihor Potieria. In eight trips to the cage, Iggy Pots beat exactly two men: The four hundred and seventeen year-old Shogun Rua, who was finally prepared to retire just ten years too late, and Robert Bryczek, who wants us to focus on his subsequent knockout over Brad Tavares instead, but Brad Tavares was also, according to my notes, at least ninety-one years into his combat sports career when Robert knocked him out, and I think that should probably be illegal.

In any case, Cam Rowston is an Australian who knocks everyone out on an Australian card against a guy who is smaller, older and slower, and the intention is not in doubt, nor the likelihood. CAM ROWSTON BY TKO.

LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Junior Tafa (6-5) vs Kevin Christian (9-3)
LOCAL FIGHTER AGAINST A FOREIGNER COMING OFF A LOSS COUNTER: 4

Words cannot properly express how hard it was not to make this paragraph even more self-quoting, but I’ve overindulged this week as it is. Four months ago I wrote about the way my desire not to root for fighters to lose their jobs was called into question by Junior Tafa’s 2-5 UFC record and love of post-fight assaults, but the company was in Australia, so he showed up and got choked out by Billy Elekana in two rounds. Three months before that, I wrote about the impending debut of Kevin Christian, a Contender Series winner with a record that looked good on paper but was questionable in practice and my belief that his predominant fighting ability might simply be He’s Very Tall, and he dutifully filed into the Apex, where he was choked out by Billy Elekana in one round. This fight is predicated on a) both men coming off the same loss to the same man, b) one man being booked every goddamn time they go to Australia, and c) how far being tall can take you in combat sports.

This place is not a place of honor. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. JUNIOR TAFA BY TKO.

MIDDLEWEIGHT: Jacob Malkoun (9-3) vs Gerald Meerschaert (37-21)
LOCAL FIGHTER AGAINST A FOREIGNER COMING OFF A LOSS COUNTER: 5

Jacob Malkoun is serving penance for his perceived sins. Malkoun was another potential Australian contender a few years back in Izzy’s heyday--the streets remember how dangerously close he came to beating the currently #4-ranked Brendan Allen--but he was, damningly, a wrestler, and for his sins he was persistently underbooked, and when Malkoun got disqualified for clocking Cody Brundage with an elbow to the brainstem, he went from a promising prospect to the UFC’s double agent, dispatched to stop other wrestlers before they, too, can become problems. They used him to beat Andre Petroski, they used him to beat Torrez Finney, and now, they want him to put Gerald Meerschaert out to pasture. GM3 has long been one of my favorite flavors of wrestleboxer, the kind of fighter who looks exhausted in a round and a half and often throws punches like he’s walking underwater but wins anyway because he’s just so dang scrappy, and we had one more hurrah when he beat persistent marketing darling Edmen Shahbazyan in mid-2024, but the subsequent two years have been cold, dark, and brutal. He got his shot at the rankings and Reinier de Ridder; he failed. He had a contest of classic veterans with Brad Tavares; he failed. He’s coming off two straight stoppage losses, a thing that hasn’t happened since 2020, but unfortunately, there’s a world of difference between being a fresh-faced 32 year-old getting knocked out by some new guy named Khamzat and a grizzled 38 year-old veteran getting blown out of the water by Kyle Daukaus.

I have loved you for years, Gerald. I have treasured every moment of our time together. I hope against hope that there are more yet to come. But the carriage is leaving and I have lost your shoe. JACOB MALKOUN BY DECISION.

BANTAMWEIGHT: Colby Thicknesse (8-1) vs Vince Morales (16-10)
LOCAL FIGHTER AGAINST A FOREIGNER COMING OFF A LOSS COUNTER: 6

See if you can figure out the algebra on this fight. In one corner: Colby Thicknesse, a young 26 year-old wrestler from Wollongong with a 1-1 record in the UFC who’s finished half of his wins and has only fallen short against Ilia Topuria’s brother, Aleksandre, who appears to be pretty solid. In the other: Vince Morales, a 35 year-old veteran who is 3-8 in the UFC after two tenures across eight years, coming off three consecutive losses, and has a career-long problem with getting regularly outwrestled to the point that, just one fight ago, the company booked him against a -480 favorite Raul Rosas Jr. to put more hype behind his marketing.

COLBY THICKNESSE BY DECISION.

MIDDLEWEIGHT: Ben Johnston (5-1) vs Wes Schultz (8-3)
LOCAL FIGHTER AGAINST A FOREIGNER COMING OFF A LOSS COUNTER: 7

Welcome to your other UFC debut of the evening. Ben Johnston is, and this may shock you, Australian, he’s been fighting for 16 years but he took twelve of those off so he’s only got six bouts, and this may shock you, but most of them were against people with rookie, losing, or 50/50 records, and now despite having a middling fight career and already being in his mid-thirties he’s made it to the big show because, and this may shock you, he trains part-time with City Kickboxing. Wes Schultz is smaller and American and just got repeatedly dropped and ultimately knocked out in one round in his first and only UFC fight, and that was just 63 days ago, so, and this may shock you, this fight should be illegal as hell and everyone involved should be brought up on charges and god dammit I miss fighter safety mattering so much.

But Schultz did a Suloev stretch on the Contender Series, so I am honorbound to root for him. WES SCHULTZ BY SUBMISSION.

WELTERWEIGHT: Jonathan Micallef (9-1) vs Themba Gorimbo (14-6)
LOCAL FIGHTER AGAINST A FOREIGNER COMING OFF A LOSS COUNTER: 8

It’s an opportune time to trade one prospect for another. The UFC had some real hopes for Themba Gorimbo--we’re only two fights and a year and a half away from the attempt to get him ranked at Welterweight over Vicente Luque’s aging bones--but after he got stomped in less than a minute the shine wore off, and after losing to the on-the-bubble Jeremiah Wells in what was supposed to be a rehabilitation fight, the clock has officially run all the way down. Now Themba’s on local job duty, and Jonathan Micallef is the Australian here to look good in front of his countrymen. He beat Kevin Jousset and he choked Oban Elliott unconscious, and that’s already a better pair of wins in just two shots in the UFC than Themba’s managed in seven. Drawing one of France’s best fighters for your debut is a touch tougher than Pete “Dead Game” Rodriguez.

I think the chips are getting cashed in. JONATHAN MICALLEF BY SUBMISSION.

LIGHTWEIGHT: Dom Mar Fan (9-2) vs Kody Steele (7-1)
LOCAL FIGHTER AGAINST A FOREIGNER COMING OFF A LOSS COUNTER: 9

I have beef with Kody Steele. I have Steele beef. When Kody made his debut all the way back in February of 2025 I cited him as one of those rare Contender Series prospects I was actually a fan of: Young in the sport but already well-rounded and well-proven and ready for a shot at the big show. He proceeded to lose his debut to Rongzhu. Rongzhu’s a good fighter! Hell, Rongzhu was supposed to fight Quillan Salkilld this past January. But a loss is a loss, and every loss hurts, and dropping your debut is how you go from a marginally hyped prospect with a spot as a big favorite on the pay-per-view prelims to fighting Road to UFC 4 winner Dom Mar Fan as, uh, still a slight favorite. Man, how much must it suck to be the Australian on the Australian card who just won a big Australian fighting tournament in Australia and you’re still an underdog against the random Contender Series guy who lost his only UFC fight more than a year ago?

Make it count, Kody. KODY STEELE BY DECISION.

SATURDAY, APRIL 25 FROM THE LIVING ERROR OF THE META APEX
PRELIMS 2 PM PDT / 5 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 5 PM / 8 PM

I’ll say this: The UFC has at least realized having back-to-back Apex events is a death curse, because thus far, there’s at least one buffer event of some kind between all of this year’s trips to the fight warehouse. We went to Florida and we got to see Trump get booed by a bloodthirsty MMA crowd in a portent of the future, we went to Winnipeg and we got to see Mike Malott win a super-patriotic victory for Canada only for the UFC’s event staff to keep him from carrying their flag lest it cover up their far more important sponsors, and now, we get to see two extremely interesting fights with serious implications for title contention in their divisions.

In the Apex.

MAIN EVENT: A HIDING PLACE WHERE NO ONE EVER GOES
FEATHERWEIGHT: Aljamain Sterling (25-5, #5) vs Youssef Zalal (18-5-1, #7)

Honestly, if Aljamain Sterling was ever going to have another path to a UFC title in him, it was inevitably going to run through this dark, terrible place. There are two corporate narratives for Aljo. In one, he’s the best Bantamweight champion of an entire generation, an incredibly creative, technically sound grappler who beat prospects and legends alike, had the second-longest title reign in the division’s history, and became the first man since Renan Barao almost a decade earlier to notch three title defenses. In the other, he’s the boring wrestler and marketing pariah who committed the ultimate sin of winning his title by disqualification, and his reign was one giant setup for the rise of Sean O’Malley.

Both are true! It’s also true that his title reign was over whether the UFC got what it wanted or not. Sterling was very open about the way cutting weight to 135 pounds was killing him, and win or lose, he was giving up the belt so his buddy Merab Dvalishvili could run the division while he went up to Featherweight. The UFC has rewarded their Greatest Bantamweight Champion Of A Generation by ensuring that his first two Featherweight fights were preliminary broadcasts and the only one to make it to a main card aired live from Xuhui, China, meaning 90% of the UFC’s audience could not/would not be watching.

As someone who is sufficiently into this sport to be reading these: Did YOU know Aljamain Sterling was 2-1 at Featherweight? Did you know he’s basically one win away from top contendership? If not: That was their plan and it worked extremely well.

That’s a step up from Youssef Zalal, though. The UFC barely had a plan for him at all. Hell, a year and a half ago he didn’t even work here.

But he used to! Youssef was actually in the UFC back in 2020, but by mid-2022 he got cut after dropping three in a row--including going to a decision with some UFC debutant no one had ever heard of named Ilia Topuria--and going to a draw with Da’Mon Blackshear. Zalal was clearly very skilled and very tough, but he hadn’t quite put it all together yet, and the UFC cut him so he could go get more experience on the regional circuit and/or because they got bored and wanted to spend more time building golden idols to men with bad tattoos and terrible opinions.

And Youssef rounded out his game in the most literal way possible: A one-night, eight-man, cross-sport tournament named THE KING OF SPARTA, in which the quarterfinals were contested in boxing matches, the semifinals in kickboxing, and the final in mixed martial arts. Is that conceptually fascinating? Absolutely! But, in the cold light of reality, Youssef Zalal was a UFC veteran with 20+ bouts under his belt who’d gone the distance with one of the greatest in combat sports history, and his opponents were an 0-2 boxer who eventually retired having never won a fight, a 4-1 mixed martial artist that had never fought anyone with a winning record, and his fellow finalist, Vadim Zadnipryanyi, who’d only competed in one professional bout of any kind before that night, and it was a kickboxing match, and it was five years prior, and he lost.

Silly? Yes. Pointless? Pretty close! The exact kind of paean to preposterousness that combat sports truly deserves? You could not ask for better. Youssef won, and became The Spartiest, and a few months later in March of 2024 the UFC needed a last-minute fill-in for Billy Quarantillo and Youssef was right back in the mix, and he’s done a great job wrecking everyone in his way. Five fights in a year and a half, four submissions and victories over guys like Jack Shore, a really solid prospect that had unfortunately lost two of his last three fights, and Calvin Kattar, the one-time top contender on a five-fight losing streak, and Josh Emmett, who was 1 for his last 4 and on the verge of retirement, and, boy, it’s hard not to notice the pattern once you see it, huh?

I mean, it’s a great deal for Youssef. And it’s not like tapping Josh Emmett is easy. He’s putting in fantastic work. But there’s an unmistakable process wherein he’s being gradually pushed up the rungs of a ladder built out of the bones of people the UFC would be pretty happy to get out of the way, and while he’s the most successful of the fighters Youssef’s faced in his second lease on life, there’s no one the UFC would be happier to get rid of than Aljamain Sterling.

Fortunately: It’s also a great fucking fight.

Genuinely! It makes a ton of sense. Aljo’s a former champion boxed out of title contention by his loss to Movsar Evloev, Youssef’s a rising star in need of a breakout victory, and both are two of the best grapplers in the entire division. Positionally, technically, theoretically, this is an enormously interesting contest that will answer multiple questions about the pecking order at Featherweight.

Which makes it all the more grating that it’s in the fucking Apex.

Youssef probably wants to keep this one standing, as he’s faster and more fluid on the feet than Aljo’s historically labored striking tends to be, but after watching Jack Shore outwrestle Zalal I think there’s a real good chance we still wind up on the floor, and it’s very, very hard for me to pick anyone short of Movsar against Aljo in a grappling battle. ALJAMAIN STERLING BY DECISION, but if Youssef somehow snatches an armbar on Aljo and no one sees it because the UFC decided it wasn’t good enough for a road card, I will be angry for months.

CO-MAIN EVENT: “KATHY, I’M LOST,” I SAID
WOMEN’S BANTAMWEIGHT: Norma Dumont (13-2, #3) vs Joselyne Edwards (17-6, #11)

Oh, right! I’m already angry all of the time.

Let’s go back to November for a second.

At a certain point, what do you even fuckin’ say?

The main event of this card is Steve Garcia vs David Onama. The main event of this card is Steve Garcia vs David Onama. We are in the Apex in the dead of November on a card main evented by Steve Garcia and David Onama, and we’re having a top contendership match for a women’s division all the way down here on the prelims under Sedriques fucking Dumas. Ketlen Vieira was fighting Kayla Harrison on pay-per-view one bout ago. Norma Dumont’s last appearance was an incredible scrap that saw her breaking Irene Aldana’s entire goddamn face open. Vieira’s a top contender with wins over multiple world champions and Dumont’s on a five-fight, three-year winning streak. One of these women is going to win this fight and be in a position to either challenge for the title or determine who will, and they will have done so in an empty warehouse on the part of the broadcast half the audience skips and then we’ll get to have yet another conversation about how the women don’t get promoted because no one wants to watch them while Bo Nickal gets his fifth pay-per-view spot in six UFC fights at the end of this month.

Actually, we’re not done with that write-up. I try not to be overindulgent when it comes to self-quoting because it feels masturbatory and lazy, but there’s another bit to that angry rant that is irritatingly important.

This shit sucks. It sucks even on a good card, but it sucks so much more when you can’t bring yourself to say “yes, this fight between two of the best Women’s Bantamweights on the planet should probably have a higher place of esteem on this card than Isaac Dulgarian.” Yeah, it’s probably going to a fucking decision. That’s fine. You will survive if you have to promote fighters who do things other than swing haymakers until they die. Stop nihilistically sabotaging your own goddamn product every time women are involved. NORMA DUMONT BY DECISION.

Norma Dumont did, in fact, win a decision. This was not a particularly lofty or dangerous assumption to make. Norma’s 9-2 in the UFC and all nine of those victories came by decision. She’s not a finisher, she’s not a killer, she’s not flashy. She’s a tank that marches people down, grinds them into the fence and punches them until they regret their life choices. That aforementioned Irene Aldana fight ended with Norma hitting her 159 goddamn times. She’s beaten world champions at multiple weight classes, she hasn’t lost in damn near four years, she’s tied with Ailín Pérez for the longest winning streak in the division, and she just recorded a win over the #4-ranked woman in the division, which should easily have justified her getting a shot at her division’s championship, or, at least, #1 contendership.

You may have noticed that Joselyne Edwards is not #1. There are two ones there. That’s #11. Joselyne Edwards does not have an eon since her last loss--she dropped two in a row a couple years ago. She doesn’t have an amazing winning streak, either. I mean, she IS on a streak, four straight victories is nothing to sneeze at, but it’s over folks like Tamires Vidal, who went 1-3, and Chelsea Chandler, at 2-3, and Priscila Cachoeira, who’s an inspiring 5-8. Numerically, Joselyne’s best win is her most recent one this past February, where she beat the 3-3 Nora Cornolle, and that’s a hell of an achievement, because Nora Cornolle’s best UFC win was a victory over Joselyne Edwards.

It’s not exactly a stellar set of wins. She wasn’t supposed to be here, either. Norma was planned to match up with Yana Santos, which would still have been fighting a couple slots down in the division but at least not as dramatically so as all the way to #11, but Yana pulled out a month ago and Joselyne got the call. And why, you might wonder, would the UFC want Joselyne in there so badly?

Because each of those four aforementioned victories was a finish. She choked Tamires out, she punched Chandler flat, she mauled Priscila, and she broke Nora’a collarbone with a slam so violent the bone snapping was actually audible on the broadcast and still choked her out too, just for good measure. Norma and Joselyne both fought Chelsea Chandler, and one of them got a decision and the other a knockout, and that’s all the reason the UFC needs to want to replace one with the other on the great ladder.

Just. Y’know.

In the Apex.

We’ve spent so many words here on the smoking crater that is Women’s Bantamweight over the years, and I thought shoving a women’s top contendership fight into the ass-end of Apex prelims was the nadir of that conversation, but somehow, this feels worse. That top contendership fight didn’t actually get its winner into contendership, even under ideal circumstances they had her spinning her wheels here in the Apex fighting down in the rankings, and they’re rolling the dice on one of their highest-momentum prospects by chucking her into a short-notice fight with one of the toughest women in the division and even in an ideal circumstance it still won’t do enough to help raise a contender, because for one, it’s the fucking Apex, and for two, nothing at the top of the division matters right now.

Kayla Harrison is still out recovering from neck surgery, by the time she comes back a full year will have passed since the last title fight and she’s going to be defending against Amanda Nunes, who is, of course, retired. Kayla is already talking about needing a change if she wins because cutting to 135 is killing her. Nunes doesn’t know if she’ll stay or retire again if she wins. Julianna Peña is MIA and has already had multiple career-threatening surgeries. Raquel Pennington is injured and by the time she fights again--IF she fights again--she’ll have been out of action for two years. Ketlen Vieira hasn’t had back to back wins in almost five.

All of my complaints about Norma fighting down in the rankings are betrayed by the awareness that there’s no one above her that she can fight. This is all the division has. Women’s Bantamweight lives in the void. The void is its home. NORMA DUMONT BY DECISION.

MAIN CARD: ALL LIES AND JEST
LIGHTWEIGHT: Rafa García (18-4) vs Alexander Hernandez (18-8)

Thinking about this fight made me realize just how much of a toll the current trajectory of things has taken on my appreciation for mixed martial arts. In the infinite world of reasons people like the silly shit they do, you can still minimize the appreciation of combat sports down to three basic forms of joy: The simple joy of combat, the subjective joy of bias, and the abstract joy of meaning. Bias is, oddly enough, the easiest, because it’s the least dependent on the others. Picking favorites is elemental. Everyone’s got their own Matt Serra or Joanderson Brito that they just need to see succeed at all costs, and if the day ever arrives that you realize you don’t have any of those people left, it’s probably time to take a break.

It’s the relationship between combat and consequences that’s eating at me. When this fight was announced, I was, for a moment, genuinely excited. Rafa and Alexander are both big-punching, chin-forward fighters with just enough grappling offense to back up their assaults, and they match up extremely well. Alexander’s more adept at hunting for knockouts; Rafa’s better at fighting mean. They’ve both been on the precipice of breaking the rankings on several occasions; they’ve both been shut down each time. Putting them across from each other makes perfect, logical sense, and they’re the kind of stylistic match that’s nearly guaranteed to be a good time.

And a moment later I was reminding myself that victory here carries no importance. If Rafa punches Alexander’s ribs into dust or Alexander knocks Rafa cold with a right cross and it gives the UFC a neat viral knockout clip then maybe, maybe, they’ll get a preliminary slot on a show that isn’t happening in a warehouse that used to store digital slot machines. But there’s no guarantee of that, and even less so should one of them simply Win. It took this fight--the exact kind of prospect vs prospect clash that used to excite me as the real lifeblood of the sport--to make me realize how much harder it is for me to appreciate the simpler joy of people hitting each other when the reasons they’re doing it can no longer be taken for granted.

We are in dark times and fisticuffs are as much plague as panacea. RAFA GARCÍA BY TKO.

BANTAMWEIGHT: Davey Grant (15-8) vs Adrian Luna Martinetti (17-1)

Sometimes I feel like the death of meaning goes both ways. We’re at thirteen years of Davey Grant in the UFC, and at this point he’s about as known a quantity as you can possibly get. He’s tough, he’s scrappy, the danger he poses is perpetually underrated, and he also turned 40 in December and, at 8-7, is just one loss away from falling to a 50/50 success rate at the big show. Everyone was hoping his late-career move from England to Nevada last year would give him a new lease on life, but it mostly saw him getting guillotined by Charles Jourdain in a single round. But hey, Jourdain’s almost ranked now, and Grant had just gone 4 for 5 and that loss was one of 2023’s worst judging decisions, so he’s still in the “canny veteran” camp rather than the “everyone is uncomfortably waiting for them to retire” camp, and at this stage in his career, that’s a statement.

By contrast, Adrian Luna Martinetti is 17-1, and the vast majority of those victories came against people with losing records, to the point that--you guessed it--the fight that got him picked up for the Contender Series last year was a win over a man with a grand total of zero professional fights. That gave him the chance to fight Mark Vologdin, the 5’3” Bantamweight you just saw repeatedly getting nearly killed by John “Sexi Mexi” Castañeda last week who still managed to scrape a draw thanks to a point deduction, and despite having half a foot of height and reach on him, Adrian had to fight for his life to make it to the bell.

In the modern estimation of mixed martial arts, these things are even. That logic isn’t completely without merit--the point of keeping veterans who are never going to make it to title contention is to serve as a yardstick for your up-and-coming prospects--but there’s a certain kind of wild extreme in saying Davey’s loss to Jourdain means he’s now stuck on DWCS debut duty, just as it’s really dangerous to take Martinetti, a promising brawler who only barely survived his contract fight, and stick him in there with one of the most experienced fighters in the company. But then, Adrian’s not a fresh-faced rookie, he’s eleven years and eighteen fights into his career--he’s only new by the standards of the UFC and his style is, at this point, just his style.

But DAVEY GRANT BY DECISION still feels both very probable and like an excellent way to fuck up a new guy.