CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 168: DESCENDING INTO THE FUTURE

We've made it to the end of the year, and Carl is taking us on one last jaunt through the Apex.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 13 FROM THE APEX, WHERE ALL THINGS BEGIN AND END
PRELIMS 4 PM PST / 7 PM EST | MAIN CARD 7 PM / 10 PM

Remember last week, when I had that long, emotionally complicated ode to the death of pay-per-view? Well, this is the final UFC card on ESPN. After seven years of partnership with one of (if not The) biggest sports networks on Earth, an overt sign of legitimacy for mixed martial arts that once seemed like a pipe dream, I feel like I should have something of similar weight.

Except when I think about the ESPN deal I don’t really think about the agony and the ecstasy that came with the UFC’s road over the last thirty years, I think about a steady decline in card quality, the loss of a score of top fighters, the introduction of the Apex, the failure of ESPN as a content partner to exert any pressure on the UFC, and a web player that never, ever worked right.

Bring back UFC on Versus in 2026.

yes, that is, in fact, yaroslav amosov down there

MAIN EVENT: ON VARIOUS CURSES
FLYWEIGHT: Brandon Royval (17-8, #3) vs Manel Kape (21-7, #6)

Talking about the Flyweight division got real, real weird in just one week.

On our last episode of this neverending show, we discussed the tinge of oddity that surrounded Alexandre Pantoja’s title defense against Joshua Van. Pantoja was the second-most accomplished Flyweight champion in the sport’s history and a clear favorite to continue his reign, but entering his mid-thirties had people questioning how much tread was left on his tires; Joshua Van was the promotional favorite who’d gotten some preferential treatment on his way up, but he won his fights fair and square and he did it well, so no one was really mad. Most folks thought Pantoja would win, but most folks also thought Van would put up a great fight, and everyone was looking forward to it.

It lasted twenty-six seconds. Alexandre Pantoja threw a high kick, Van tossed it aside, and Pantoja blew his elbow out after posting his arm while falling over. Four title defenses, 882 days as the champion of the world, and the reign ends on a breakfall. Joshua Van became the second-youngest UFC champ in history after landing two strikes.

When I talk about the arc of combat sports bending towards comedy, this is the kind of shit I mean. Brock Lesnar spends years as the UFC’s icon of badass masculinity and every neo-nazi’s favorite human being and then gets punched so hard by a guy with “BROWN PRIDE” tattooed on his chest he repeatedly pirouettes across the cage en route to falling over. Anderson Silva breaks his leg kicking Chris Weidman and, years later, Chris Weidman breaks his leg kicking Uriah Hall, ensuring the timeline stays balanced. Shogun Rua goes on one of the greatest runs in the sport’s history in Pride’s 2005 Grand Prix, establishes himself as one of the best fighters on the planet, then breaks his arm improperly defending a Mark Coleman takedown in under a minute. Grappling ace Shinya Aoki gets into a mixed-rules fight with kickboxer Yuichiro Nagashima, trolls him by refusing to engage during the kickboxing round, then gets his face exploded with a flying knee four seconds into the MMA round.

Alexandre Pantoja’s historic title reign ends because he fell down wrong.

It’s disappointing. It’s hilarious. And it gets the division out of a real weird spot, but at the price of putting it right into an even weirder one.

Brandon Royval and Manel Kape have both been chasing a title shot for years, and both of their campaigns have been complicated by the fact that they already fought Alexandre Pantoja and lost. Not only did he beat them, he beat them in back to back fights, and for good measure he beat Royval again in 2023. This was a source of frustration for Royval, but not nearly as much as it was for the UFC, because they absolutely did not want him getting a third shot at Pantoja, but he had this bad habit of beating everyone they threw in his way. Royval was an underdog against Brandon Moreno, and it was a competitive split decision, but Royval took it. Royval was an underdog against Tatsuro Taira, and it was also a competitive split decision, but Royval took it.

So you’ve got a #1 contender who just took out two top contenders, and he only has one loss in four years, and it came against the champion. Do you relent and give him another shot?

No! You try repeatedly to book him against Manel Kape.

Kape is one of the sport’s most persistent almost-wases. He had the big personality, he had the explosive knockouts, and he had the all-around skills to make himself an immediate point of interest in Japan during his tenure in Rizin. Manel, unquestionably, was one of their top stars. He also kept losing. Over his first year with the company he went 3-3 and lost both of his top shots at top contendership, but year two saw three straight knockout victories, and the last of them was not only over company ace Kai Asakura, it was for Rizin’s Bantamweight title. After years of effort and self-marketing, Manel Kape had the title and the spotlight he’d coveted.

He immediately traded them both in to sign with the UFC, where he spent a year on the shelf over scheduling issues and lost his first two fights.

The primary descriptor for Manel Kape’s UFC career is fucking cursed. Every time he gets some momentum, something goes wrong. Over 2023 he had high-profile fights with Alex Perez, Deiveson Figueiredo and Kai Kara-France all fall through and had to instead fight the debuting Felipe dos Santos, and it drove him so crazy he started yelling about how everyone else had defective genes and were inferior to his warrior origins. This made it extra funny when his followup fight was scratched after he botched a weight cut for the second time in his career, and it made it downright hilarious when the undefeated Muhammad Mokaev beat him in mid-2024 only for the UFC to cut Mokaev and pretend it never happened.

Kape was supposed to fight Brandon Royval in May. Royval got injured, and in exchange Kape fought Asu Almabayev, whom he beat after poking him in the eye and, in his followup combination, poking him in the eye again. This was ruled a TKO, because our sport is silly.

Kape/Royval got rescheduled for June, and this time, Kape got injured. Royval fought Joshua Van, because the #1 contender fighting the #10 contender who had himself just fought three weeks prior is the kind of thing we have no choice but to accept as normal on account of there being no other MMA organizations that can compete with the UFC. For the second time, Royval put his top contendership on the line for a fight he’d been told would lead to another shot at the title if he won, and this time it didn’t pay off. Royval took the fight to Van, and if he hadn’t gotten knocked down in the last fifteen seconds of the third round, he might even have won.

Instead, Joshua Van got the decision, and the title fight, and, twenty-six seconds later, the belt. But Royval did the UFC a solid--another solid--so they’re going to do right by him, obviously. You could have given him another Brandon vs Brandon match with Moreno. You could hold him for when Amir Albazi is back from injury. You could give him a big fight with the recently-debuted Kyoji Horiguchi!

Or, y’know, you could just book him vs Manel Kape again, because boy, you just really want Kape up there.

Let’s be unequivocal about two things. Thing #1: I think Manel Kape is an enormous prick and I actively root for bad things to happen to him. Ask me, as a general rule, who I would rather root for between Brandon Royval, the one and only man in the UFC to say fighting in front of shithead billionaires at the White House is dystopian nonsense, and Manel Kape, the guy who’s weirdly invested in the philosophy of eugenics and uses post-fight interviews to hurl gay slurs at people he dislikes, and the answer will be exceedingly obvious.

Thing #2: I have only marginal faith that this fight will happen. Kape’s missed weight twice, gotten injured twice, tested positive for steroids and has a penchant for backstage altercations. Aside from the steroids, given that we’re in the Mark McGwire era of the sport again, any one of those things could happen again. There’s a non-negligible chance Kape manages to weigh in at 130, twist his ankle tripping over the same cable that murdered Tony Ferguson and take out his anger on the catering team because their genetic weakness makes them incapable of cooking eggs properly.

But if we do make it to fight night, I still think Royval takes it. He may not have Kape’s one-hit power and/or creative hatred of eyeballs, but he’s a cleaner striker, he’s got an iron chin, and Kape’s always had a tougher time with big size disadvantages and Royval’s the biggest dude he’s fought since Ulka Sasaki, who, coincidentally, beat Kape too.

BRANDON ROYVAL BY DECISION. And then we start sorting out that weird spot I mentioned earlier, where there are multiple people with claims on contendership and a former champion who deserves an instant rematch as soon as he’s healthy.

CO-MAIN EVENT: MISSED CONNECTIONS
FEATHERWEIGHT: Giga Chikadze (15-5, #15) vs Kevin Vallejos (16-1, NR)

Let’s go back to April.

Giga Chikadze feels like a point of divergence in the timeline of mixed martial arts. The sheer force of hype behind him at the turn of 2022 was seemingly unstoppable, and watching him destroy Cub Swanson in barely a minute and dissect Edson Barboza in three rounds made even cold-hearted wrestling-lovers like me root for him. The UFC’s first event of 2022 was also the first episode of Carl’s Fight Breakdowns, and I set the tone for the series by being absurdly wrong. I, as with the rest of the world, thought Giga would punt Calvin Kattar in safety and good health, and Kattar took him apart, and that was, somehow, the end of the Giga Chikadze story. He’s only made it to the cage twice in the ensuing three years, he split a win against Alex Caceres and a loss to Arnold Allen, and he’s a bit lost in the shuffle. He’s too inconsistent to bet on, he hasn’t had a great win in almost four years, and he’s too high-profile to waste.

That was Giga’s first fight in almost a year. He was facing David Onama, a rising if unproven star, and it didn’t even register as a co-main anymore. Giga came in over the weight limit, couldn’t land enough of consequence, got outwrestled and narrowly outstruck, and lost a unanimous decision.

It’s the end of 2025. Giga Chikadze has one win in the last four years, and he hasn’t made his division’s weight limit since mid-2024, and the last time he looked impressive was the same night Bryan Battle and Ricky Turcios won their contracts four full seasons of The Ultimate Fighter ago.

Jesus Christ.

Giga was supposed to fight for the title. Giga was supposed to be the sport’s Featherweight phenom. There were folks who genuinely thought Giga Chikadze was the man who would finally stop Alexander Volkanovski.

And now he’s an underdog against Kevin Vallejos.

If anything damns this as the potential end of the Giga Chikadze story, it’s having Vallejos as an opponent. David Onama may not have been an enormous deal, but he was a deal. He was a little bit of a name, he had a 5-2 record and he was main-eventing in the Apex one fight later (and getting obliterated, but still). Kevin Vallejos just got here. His welcome-to-the-company voucher for 20% off a pair of The Rock’s shitty shoes probably hasn’t even expired yet.

But they wanted him earlier. Back in 2023 Vallejos was one of the stars of a company we’ve talked about an awful lot, Samurai Fight House, Argentina’s premier UFC feeder league and the only company brave enough to ask questions like ‘how many times can we promote fights where undefeated prospects fight guys with records like 7-24 before people start thinking we might not be fully on the level?’ Vallejos was their Featherweight king, to the extent that when he went to the Contender Series in September of 2023 only to get sent right back down by Jean Silva, they didn’t even make Vallejos surrender his belt, he was right back in the fight house as the standing champion, an 11-1 warrior defending his title against a man who is, just two years later, 13-14.

It didn’t take long for the UFC to give him another shot. He was back in DWCS almost exactly one year later, he knocked out the severely overmatched what-are-you-even-doing-here Cam Teague, and this past March he finally rolled into the company proper.

And lo, he has dined on the finest of fighters. Choi Seung-Woo was a prospect, once, but as of this past March he was 1 for his last 5 and had been knocked out in his last two losses; Kevin made it three. Danny Silva was a Contender Series winner who struggled with weight cuts and split decisions alike; Vallejos took a clear nod and ended his winning streak.

That’s it. That’s the whole story. Four fights ago Giga Chikadze was up against a top contender broadly considered one of the best strikers in the company, three fights ago Giga Chikadze was up against a twelve-year UFC veteran on a late career renaissance, two fights ago Giga Chikadze was up against a divisional bastion whose only UFC losses came against the best of the best, one fight ago Giga Chikadze was up against a rising prospect with a solid career who needed a test to determine if he belonged in the rankings.

Now, Giga Chikadze is up against a guy who beat up Cam Teague a year ago and everyone’s pretty sure he’s still gonna lose.

So I’m gonna be the big dumbass: GIGA CHIKADZE BY TKO. Is he aging? Absolutely. But Giga didn’t look awful against Onama, he just couldn’t handle the wrestling, which Vallejos has never exhibited as a big part of his gameplan. Kevin’s a big puncher, but he fashions himself as a technical striker who likes taking controlled approaches to his offense, and not only is that Giga’s comfort zone, his version of said zone is half a foot taller and rangier. If anyone has a chance to get Giga to land a goddamn liver kick again, it’s Vallejos, and I will be hoping we get that rather than yet another aging veteran eating haymakers until he falls over.

MAIN CARD: HEAVYWEIGHT LEFTOVERS
MIDDLEWEIGHT: César Almeida (7-1) vs Cezary Oleksiejczuk (16-3)

You know, Amanda Lemos and Gillian Robertson are in a top five Women’s fight on the prelims. Really, you can go look. I’ll be right here. We’ll all be right here. We are all stuck here, forever.

I started to drive myself crazy by going back through every single writeup of 2025 to see how many times I complained about ranked women getting booked on the prelims and I gave up halfway through the year because it was just bumming me the fuck out. (There weren’t any in March! That was nice!) It’s been a long goddamn year with a lot of repetitive junk in it, and repeating the same gags over and over (jesus christ) makes me feel like a hack, so I cannot possibly tell you how tired I am of repeatedly referencing a) the endless deluge of DWCS fighters flooding the cards and b) the constant shortchanging suffered by the women’s roster.

But here we are, at the last card of the year, and there’s a top five women’s fight on the prelims, and here, just below the co-main event, is a fight between two DWCS winners, and one of them is named César and the other is named Cezary, and that places us at a point so far beyond the horizon of the gods themselves laughing at us that we are essentially floating in space.

So I refuse. I dissent. I am turning this one over to my co-host. Take it away, Sister Miriam.

And so we return again to the holy void. Some say this is simply our destiny, but I would have you remember always that the void EXISTS, just as surely as you or I. Is nothingness any less a miracle than substance?

CEZARY OLEKSIEJCZUK BY DECISION.

FEATHERWEIGHT: Morgan Charrière (21-11-1) vs Melquizael Costa (24-7)

I’m being torn apart a little, here. Morgan Charrière has emerged as one of the UFC’s midcard wonders: Too good to ignore, not quite up to the task of tackling the rankings. Every fight he has is a flip from the last. Knock out Manolo Zecchini, fail to outlast Chepe Mariscal. Plant Gabriel Miranda in the ground in two rounds, get dominated by Nathaniel Wood. He managed to stop Nate Landwehr when last we saw him in July, and the perceptive among you may have noticed a tendency for Morgan to perform swimmingly when he can stomp his opponents and struggle when someone can take him to the judges.

Which is a tough ask against Melquizael Costa, who’s only been finished twice in the last seven and a half years, and the only person to ever stop him on strikes was Steve Garcia, who has quietly become one of the best knockout artists in the company. Melk was a last-minute, late-replacement signing back in 2023 and now he’s four fights deep on a Featherweight winning streak, he’s the only man in the last decade to submit Andre Fili, and with one more good win, he could be fighting to get his name on the ladder. He’s proven himself to be well-rounded, well-conditioned, and extremely durable.

And I’m really hoping he wins so I can make him the next fighter I get parasocially attached to. MELQUIZAEL COSTA BY DECISION.

HEAVYWEIGHT: Kennedy Nzechukwu (14-6) vs Marcus Buchecha (5-2)

Honestly, instead of the Cesar-scissoring we had earlier, this is probably where my you-booked-this-over-the-women ire should’ve taken root. Let’s really, really look at this one. Hell, let’s take an in-depth look at Kennedy Nzechukwu’s last few years. He, in order,

• Got knocked out by Da Woon Jung, who is no longer in the UFC

• Lost to Nicolae Negumereanu, who hasn’t fought in almost 4 years so I assume he’s no longer in the UFC

• Pounded out Karl Roberson, who is no longer in the UFC

• Knocked out Ion Cuțelaba, who actually is still here!

• Choked out Devin Clark, who is no longer in the UFC

• Got knocked stupid by Dustin Jacoby in a minute and a half, and we can never be without the Hanyak

• Lost a decision to Ovince St. Preux, who is no longer in the UFC

• Knocked out Chris Barnett, who is no longer in the UFC

• Knocked out Łukasz Brzeski, who is no longer in the UFC which is actually very funny because despite being 1-6 they kept offering him fights given his use as a punching bag and he had to turn them down

• Celebrated his first winning streak in two years by letting Valter Walker heel hook him in one minute

An even 50/50 in wins and losses, and a genuinely impressive 70% rate of people who have all fallen off the UFC’s radar. Promising stuff! How about you, Marcus Buchecha? You’re a world-renowned BJJ champion, you were a #1 contender in ONE Championship’s Heavyweight division, how’d your UFC debut go?

• Got taken to a grinding decision loss by Martin Buday, which brought Buday’s UFC record to 7-1 with three straight victories

• The UFC promptly cut Martin Buday because he wrestled too uneventfully

• Marcus Buchecha is still here

This is the last Heavyweight fight of the UFC’s year, and it’s what the division deserves. And you know what? While the UFC should feel terrible about how it’s mismanaged its big boy division, in all honesty, this problem isn’t solely their fault. Heavyweight just sucks shit right now. Everywhere! The Professional Fighters League is about to crown their first official Heavyweight champion, and Francis Ngannou isn’t there, and neither of their last two tournament winners are there, but Vadim Nemkov, who was a Light Heavyweight until two fights ago, and Renan Ferreira, who was last seen getting destroyed by Ngannou a year ago, will be there. ONE Championship has managed a single Heavyweight title fight in the last 13 months, and they were going to shoot for a second a few weeks ago, but it was just a rematch of the first one and it’s been indefinitely postponed due to injury.

Japan’s Heavyweight Grand Prix tournaments are the stuff of legend and Rizin tried to capitalize on that legend by running their first one in nine years, and the results were so awful they wound up banishing even the tournament finals to their undercard, and when the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow--an inaugural Rizin Heavyweight Championship bout with no less than Ryan fucking Bader--got tipped over on account of a Bader injury, Rizin took stock of their potential replacements and just said, nah, it’s not worth it.

Every year, Japanese MMA brings down the curtain with a New Year’s Eve blowout. Every year, that blowout includes some kind of aggressively silly Heavyweight matchup. It is so deeply ingrained in the tradition the two are all but inseparable.

For what I am pretty sure is the first time in the quarter-century lineage of the New Year’s Eve explosion, there will not be a Heavyweight fight anywhere on the card. That’s how dire the Heavyweight world is. That is how dark the soul has become. We can’t even get Tsuyoshi Sudario out of bed. Bob Sapp doesn’t need gambling money anymore.

And the UFC cut Martin Buday for winning too much.

KENNEDY NZECHUKWU BY TKO.

CATCHWEIGHT, 160 LBS: King Green (32-17-1 (1)) vs Lance Gibson Jr. (9-1)

This fight got added to the card at about 5 PM on Tuesday night (hence the catchweight), and that’s about where King Green is at these days, unfortunately. At one point, Green was one of the most defensively skilled fighters in mixed martial arts, a lock for the top fifteen with a wild strength of schedule who would, if you paid attention, do shit with his boxing defense that no one else in the sport was managing. Unfortunately, a lot of that revolved around making gutsy use of backing up to the cage for evasive footwork, and his mid-thirties hit his evasive tendencies like a truck and he was no longer capable of getting out of its way. Aside from a between-rounds retirement, Green has only been knocked out five times in 51 fights, which is an incredible ratio--until you realize four of those five knockouts happened in his last five losses, and the only outlier was the legendarily canny Green deciding to dive headfirst into a Paddy Pimblett triangle. The clock is no longer ticking so much as actively rusting at the bottom of a ravine.

Time has a slightly different meaning when you grew up in the sport. Lance Gibson Sr. was one of MMA’s pioneers, a standout in Hawaii’s 1990s Superbrawl series--for the truly ancient among us, if you remember those informercials that used to run for JAY R. PALMER LOOKS FOR REVENGE ON DANNY “BOY” BENNETT, Gibson was right there on that card, fighting one-night tournaments back in the days where people got disqualified for throwing their opponents out of the ring. He called it quits in 2002, but his son, Lance Jr., turned pro 15 years later and burst onto Bellator to bolster their growing collection of second-generation fighters. It’s one of those ‘oh, right, this is part of why Bellator didn’t make it’ moments to look back on Gibson’s run with them and see that despite being well-rounded, despite having multiple stoppages, and despite a five-fight winning streak, they never actually let him off the prelims. Vladimir Tokov punched him out in a minute in 2023, the PFL bought Bellator a few months later, Gibson was not invited along for the ride, and he’s been fighting in the Muckleshoot Fight Night series ever since, which is a sentence I just deeply appreciate.

But I can’t do it. I don’t have the heart. Green looks progressively more unfortunate every time we see him, he is in prime position to get eaten alive by a younger, hungrier fighter who’s never gotten his shot at the spotlight, Gibson is exactly the kind of athletic mucklefucker who could probably plow him to the ground and bypass his defensive tricks, and I just cannot make myself do it. I must hold the spark of hope. KING GREEN BY TKO.

PRELIMS: I REALLY HOPE THEY CHANGE THE BOUT ORDER BEFORE FIGHT TIME BECAUSE OTHERWISE FUCK YOU
WOMEN’S STRAWWEIGHT: Amanda Lemos (15-5-1, #5) vs Gillian Robertson (16-8, #10)

I had someone tell me once that my persistent bitching about ranked women being stuck on the prelims was silly, because that could be a position of prominence. People need reasons to watch the prelims, and if you’re headlining the prelims, why, that means the UFC sees more in you than the people in random spots on the main card! Respectfully: This is backward as fuck. What this actually means is the UFC sees utility in you for them as an attraction just important enough to help the company fill out the part of the card the audience doesn’t want to watch, but not important enough to receive the benefit of actual promotion. As a case in point: Two fights ago, Amanda Lemos was on the main card of an Alex Pereira pay-per-view. And she won! As payment for her efforts, she and Tatiana Suarez got to fight midway through the prelims at this year’s Noche UFC. It was a fight between the #2 and #4-ranked women in the division. The prelim headliner was Duško Todorović vs José Medina. Amanda lost. For losing, she now gets to headline the prelims against Gillian Robertson. Gillian Robertson is on a four-fight winning streak that includes retiring Marina Rodriguez and Michelle fucking Waterson-Gomez, one of the best-known Strawweights in the world. It’s almost all been on the prelims, too. The UFC has been desperate for Canadian stars, and they held a show at Bell Centre in Montreal this past May, and instead of booking Gillian, maybe the most accomplished Canadian currently on the roster, to compete in her home country and get the promotional push that could make her a thing, they set her up on the previous week so she could fight on the prelims in Des Moines. But don’t worry: The preliminary headliner was a women’s fight!

It was Miesha Tate vs Yana Santos.

This shit is so tiresome. I’m aware I am ranting a lot more than I typically do, but goddammit, it’s the end of the year and there is so much that could have been done better. A couple months ago I would’ve been rabid for Gillian to win this fight just to see her get her shot at the top after Lemos failed to get it done against the top five, but now we’re in the bizarre position where the champion is someone Lemos very recently beat the stuffing out of. We’ve seen her repeatedly troubled by strong grapplers, so I’m still hoping for GILLIAN ROBERTSON BY DECISION, but at least there’s life at the top for Lemos now.

FEATHERWEIGHT: Joanderson Brito (17-5-1) vs Melsik Baghdasaryan (8-3)Isaac Thomson (9-2)

If you have read any of my writing, you know the rest of this passage already. Joanderson Brito will win. Joanderson Brito must always win. Joanderson Brito needs to be louder, angrier, and have access to the judges who scored the William Gomis fight against him. Whenever Joanderson Brito is not fighting, all of the commentators should be asking, “Where’s Joanderson Brito?” He busted Jack Shore’s shin, he choked out Jonathan Pearce, he flattened Andre Fili and he beat Diego Lopes before Movsar Evloev and Alexander Volkanovski made it cool. Melsik is a neat kickman who does neat kicks and no force on Earth could make me pick him. We are ride or die on the Brito train no matter how unreasonable it becomes. BREAKING NEWS: As I was editing this for publishing, Melsik pulled out and got replaced by LFA veteran Isaac Thomson, and I will tell you right now, directly, that I did not do a single second of research on this man because I cannot be shaken from my path.

JOANDERSON BRITO BY TKO.

WELTERWEIGHT: Neil Magny (31-13) vs Yaroslav Amosov (28-1)

I have so many conflicting feelings, here. For those who were not present for his rise to glory, Yaroslav Amosov was one of the final stars of Bellator’s waning days, an undefeated grappler with a crushing wrestling game and a score of great submission victories under his belt. He unseated Douglas Lima for Bellator’s Welterweight Championship in the Summer of 2021, and at a time when the company was struggling to stay above water, Amosov vs Michael “Venom” Page was the biggest fight they could promote, and a central part of their plans for mid-2022. Unfortunately, three months before it could happen, Russia re-invaded Ukraine, and Amosov was one of many Ukrainian combat sports athletes that went back home to fight in the war. Amosov famously brought the Bellator belt with him, and after liberating his hometown of Irpin, he posted a video of himself getting it out of its hiding place in his mother’s house to indicate he was finding his way back to competition. He returned in 2023 and he reunified the belt immediately, but Bellator was not long for this world, and neither was his undefeated streak. The same month the PFL officially acquired Bellator, Jason “The Ass-Kicking Machine” Jackson knocked Amosov out, and he became an afterthought in the greater chaos of the acquisition--until an interview where he mentioned he’d spoken with the UFC, and they’d told the 27-1 former world champion that he needed to go prove himself and have some exciting and preferably striking-focused fights if he wanted in.

Amosov was one of the best fighters outside the UFC. He has fought once in the last two years thanks to the state of the sport, and it was a submission over Curtis Millender, of all people. And now Amosov’s finally in the UFC, and he’s making his grand debut here, midway through the prelims of an Apex card with a Kevin Vallejos co-main event, and he’s fighting Neil Magny, the measuring stick for all prospects, and I cannot possibly choose anything other than YAROSLAV AMOSOV BY SUBMISSION, but coming into the UFC against a guy as tough as Magny, who is also a whole lot bigger than him and a really annoying guy to wrestle, is rough. As much as the card placement sucks, the fight’s fair. Everyone who’s beaten Magny in the last five years was worthy of the top fifteen, and everyone he’s beaten has wound up stuck on the outside. If Amosov’s still one of the best, he’ll beat him, too. If he’s not, I will get incredibly sad, which will suck because this is five fights into a thirteen-fight card and I do not want to weep through a Joanderson Brito fight.

HEAVYWEIGHT: Sean Sharaf (4-1) vs Steven Asplund (6-1)

Remember that giant rant I went on about the complete and total heat death of the Heavyweight division? Let me run this hot prospect showcase by you. In one corner, Sean Sharaf, a man whose greatest-ever victory was against the 3-3-1 LJ “El Furioso” Torres. Sharaf fought in the UFC just once, and it was more than a year ago, and it was against Junior Tafa, who is a) 2-4 in the UFC, b) once slapped Valter Walker after a fight to protest Valter submitting him, and and c) punched Sharaf out when both men gassed after just the first round. In the other corner, Steven Asplund, a 6’5” Minneapolean who lost his scouting shot after getting choked out by Denzel Freeman, the guy who just made it to the UFC last month against Marek Bujło, the Polish grappler who was cut after his single UFC fight and loss, and Asplund earned his way here with an incredible three-fight winning streak over:

• Hammer Morton, a 4-2 regional who once lost a fight to Zac Pauga

• Raiden Kovacs, the 3-4 man who, somehow, also got stopped by Denzel Freeman

• Anthony “The Daywalker” Guarascio, the 3-2 former Cage Fury Fighting Championships champion

We used to make fun of Chase Sherman. We used to complain about Jared Vanderaa. We didn’t know how good we fucking had it. STEVEN ASPLUND BY TKO.

WOMEN’S BANTMAWEIGHT: Luana Santos (9-2) vs Melissa Croden (7-2)

My two favorite kinds of matchups are genuine prospect tests and silly human comedy, and here, we are blessed with both. Luana Santos and her heavy-punching, heavy-grappling approach have worked out well for her in the UFC except for the time Casey O’Neill just dominated her. Outpunched her, outgrappled her, hurt her several times, left her completely outmatched. Melissa Croden is a new addition to the roster, a Canadian prospect with a great volume and clinch game whose own UFC scouting was set back after Jacqueline Cavalcanti, now the #10 Women’s Bantamweight in the world, dropped her repeatedly and got signed instead. Here’s the unifying factor, though. Croden’s UFC debut last month? A three-round battering and eventual TKO of former prospect Tainara Lisboa. Luana’s last fight? A second-round submission victory over Tainara Lisboa.

This isn’t just a battle of prospects, this is a battle to determine the new Tainara Lisboa speedrunning champion. My gut says MELISSA CRODEN BY TKO.

HEAVYWEIGHT: Allen Frye (6-0) vs Guilherme Pat (5-0)

So many of my Heavyweight kvetching comes down to constantly referencing the insanely bad records everyone has in our brave new world of sheer desperation. Allen Frye, at first, appears no different: 5 of his 6 fights all came against men with losing records. “But Carl,” I hear you say, “The fight that got him here was a knockout victory over the 12-3 Justin Frazier! Those are great numbers!” And it’s true, the you who is really me, twelve is at least three times larger than three and, possibly, even more. Justin Frazier had also been retired for six years, and before that, his greatest achievement in MMA was getting submitted in a round by Juan Espino in the finals of The Ultimate Fighter 28 (jesus christ). He is also 6’ flat and the UFC has multiple Flyweights who outreach him. Allen Frye made it to the UFC by beating a Heavyweight who hadn’t fought since the pre-pandemic days and who would, categorically, lose a slap-boxing match to Sumudaerji. Guilherme Pat is yet another in the endless parade of rookie smashers who were fighting 0-0 guys one bout ago. He’s 6’5”, he can kind of throw combinations, and his entire defensive ethos is ‘what if I move directly backwards’ and it works as well as you’d expect. He hasn’t fought in more than a year, and that fight was a prelim bout for the Legacy Fighting Alliance, and he got repeatedly wrestled and almost knocked out and won because his opponent was so exhausted he simply walked away from him, and Pat was supposed to be on the DWCS in September but he pulled out, and the UFC looked at this guy who’s been inactive for fifteen months and barely survived his last fight and couldn’t even be arsed to make it to the Contender Series and went “Yeah, this is fine” and signed him anyway.

I wonder how much worse it’ll be by the end of 2026. ALLEN FRYE BY TKO.

WOMEN’S FLYWEIGHT: Tereza Bledá (7-1) vs Jamey-Lyn Horth (8-2)

I had kind of forgotten about Tereza Bledá, I’ll be honest. When she first showed up in the UFC, I was wholly on the hype train. She had some decent wins under her belt, she had some very solid grappling performances and I, with my avowed bias towards grapplers, was all about her chances. Her debut, funnily enough, was against a then-new Flyweight prospect named Natália Silva. Natália is now the #2-ranked Women’s Flyweight in the world. Tereza is not. She looked great for a round! Then she got real tired and was summarily destroyed. She came back, beat Gabriella Fernandes, and hasn’t been seen for two and a half years. What she’s been up to, how she’s worked on her conditioning, how much better or worse her time off has made her, we have no way of knowing. Jamey-Lyn Horth has just sort of bopped back and forth in the meantime. She came into the UFC by spoiling the debut of the much-hyped Hailey Cowan, then dropped a decision to the recently-returned Veronica Hardy. Squeak by the short-lived Ivana Petrović, get beat up by Miranda Maverick. She was actually supposed to fight Tereza this past June, but yet another withdrawal meant Jamey-Lyn got to Horth all over Vanessa Demopoulos instead, which, as someone who’s still mad about her bullshit decision win against Jinh Yu Frey, was very pleasant.

But not pleasant enough that I’m gonna give up my fandom. This call is 100% based on the hope that Tereza has been really working on rounding out her gameplan and her cardio over her long break from competition. If she has, she’s still got all the tools to be a force of nature. If she hasn’t, and she’s still hoping she’ll be able to get a quick, violent win, Horth is absurdly tough and she’ll very likely outlast her. So, with hope: TEREZA BLEDÁ BY DECISION.