CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 179: THRONE OF ASH
The hot potato that is the Light Heavyweight title is up for grabs and Cub Swanson is going off into the night.
SATURDAY, APRIL 11 FROM THE KASEYA CENTER IN MIAMI, FLORIDA
EARLY PRELIMS 2:30 PM PDT / 5:30 PM EDT | PRELIMS 4 PM / 7 PM | MAIN CARD 6 PM / 9 PM
As of Saturday morning I had planned to write a blurb about the draw of multiple title matches on a single card and the inherent weirdness of size inequality, as despite Joshua Van being an undisputed champion fighting one of the best fighters from Japan, his Flyweight title defense against Tatsuro Taira was scheduled to play second fiddle to a match for a vacant belt featuring no less than Carlos Ulberg himself. Then, in the middle of the star-studded extravaganza that was Renato Moicano vs Chris Duncan, the UFC announced Van was out and the fight was being delayed to May, where it will now play second fiddle to Sean Strickland.
So, instead, let me say:
What the fuck do you mean Tatiana Suarez and Loopy Godinez are curtain-jerking the prelims.
MAIN EVENT: THE RICE-PAPER TITLE
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Jiří Procházka (32-5-1, #2) vs Carlos Ulberg (13-1, #3)
When the UFC finally broke into the mainstream back in 2005, it did so on the strength and majesty of the Light Heavyweight division. The first season of The Ultimate Fighter (jesus christ) was half-Light Heavyweight, it featured Light Heavyweight coaches in Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture, and it chose its Light Heavyweight final between Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar for its conclusion. Even the mostly-forgotten actual main event of that very first finale was Rich Franklin, who typically fought at Middleweight, and Ken Shamrock, a career Heavyweight, meeting in the middle at 205 pounds.
Light Heavyweight used to mean something. Pride’s Middleweight tournaments inspired thousands. Chuck Liddell embodied an entire era of mixed martial arts. We are still stuck with Jon Jones thanks to the things he accomplished in the Light Heavyweight division.
And the division is still cursed by the memory of his presence.
Two and a half years ago I wrote a longform, worldwide history of the division named The Sins of the Snowball King, but being as it’s been a minute and no one wants to go read 21,000 words about it again, let’s just recap the current era of Light Heavyweight in the UFC:
Daniel Cormier chucked the 205-pound belt to go be a Heavyweight instead
Jon Jones, having previously been stripped of the belt three times over conduct and drug offenses, relinquished it voluntarily midway through 2020 because he didn’t want to fight Dominick Reyes again and also intended to move to Heavyweight
Jan Błachowicz won the vacant belt, but the UFC chose to use his reign to try to make Israel Adesanya a double champion instead, which failed when Jan beat him, much to their displeasure
Glover Teixeira won the belt despite being in his mid-forties and close to retirement, then lost the belt in his first defense against Jiří Procházka in what was one of the best championship fights of all time and set both men up for the UFC’s most anticipated rematch in years
Jiří promptly destroyed his shoulder in training and had to vacate the title instead
Glover offered to rematch Jan on short notice, the UFC demanded it be Magomed Ankalaev instead, so Glover walked
Jan and Ankalaev fought, Ankalaev was almost unanimously agreed to have won on media scorecards; the judges instead rendered a draw, leaving the title vacant
Rather than a rematch or reusing either man, the UFC booked Glover Teixeira vs the #7-ranked Contender Series veteran Jamahal Hill, in what was also Glover’s retirement fight; Hill won and the UFC celebrated the DWCS era of champions and Hill’s long reign to come
Hill promptly destroyed his ankle playing basketball and had to vacate the title instead
Middleweight marketing darling Alex Pereira, who had just lost the 185-pound title, got pushed to the championship after one close split decision victory over Jan
Pereira won and proceeded to have the first successful Light Heavyweight title defenses against actual Light Heavyweights in more than four years
...except Magomed Ankalaev, the #1 contender, was continually pushed down the card while Pereira fought Jamahal Hill, rematched Jiří Procházka, and was matched up against the barely-ranked Khalil Rountree Jr. instead
After making him wait a year and a half, Magomed Ankalaev got his title shot and beat Pereira
Instead of booking him against any of his top contenders, the UFC iced Ankalaev until Pereira was ready for a rematch, whereupon he knocked Ankalaev out
Alex Pereira, like Daniel Cormier and Jon Jones before him, promptly threw the belt in the garbage to go up to Heavyweight
There have been six title vacations across its last eight reigns. If you count the draw between Ankalaev and Jan, we’ve made it all the way to 7 for 8. We’ve almost reached numerical parity between meaning and the void, and in 2026, that feels entirely appropriate. Combat sports likes to throw terms like “paper champion” around whenever the gold goes on someone they don’t like, but what do you do when all the gold gets melted out of the belt itself? At what point does a championship absorb the essence of the trash can it’s been chucked into a half-dozen times?
When you lose credibility, how hard and how long do you have to work to get it back?
And does it matter when the promoter doesn’t care?
Because, boy, they really don’t care. Jiří Procházka got knocked out by Alex Pereira--twice--easily--and he’s still here, right at the doorstep of the title. Carlos Ulberg earned this shot by squeezing just the barest sliver of a decision out against Jan Błachowicz. Magomed Ankalaev? The only Light Heavyweight to beat Alex Pereira?
He is not in this fight. He is not currently booked for any fight. For almost two years, now, his only bookings have been centered around what was convenient for Alex Pereira, and with Pereira gone, they have no need for him. Jiří has striking wars and kills people with spinning elbows. Carlos knocks people out and only rarely tries to wrestle.
All Magomed Ankalaev does is continue to be the best Light Heavyweight in the UFC.
And what kind of company would care about something like that?
No one can hate Jiří Procházka. It is impossible. He’s a Czech kickboxer whose passion for combat marches to a tune that’s 50% The Book of Five Rings and 50% button-mashing in Tekken. Just to be clear: That’s not me making a silly culture joke. Jiří has multiple interviews about being inspired by Tekken and Mortal Kombat. He runs around in the woods with a katana and he spent years of his career sporting one of its weirdest hairstyles as part of his attempt to pay tribute to the chonmage topknots samurai would wear. There are hundreds of fighters across the annals of combat sports that proudly declare mixed martial arts saved them from a lifestyle of following their passions that would have landed them in jail: Jiří is the only man in the UFC* who can say it probably saved him from just being a cosplayer.
*Outside the UFC, Yuichiro Nagashima still has this wrapped up.
But Jiří was boxed out of contendership with Alex on top. Hell, he only barely survived Glover Teixeira. Jiří’s entire style is predicated on ignoring his strengths and engaging in brawls, to the point that his best knockouts have tended to come not from technical mastery or careful planning, but from outlasting his opponents and using all of that carefully-honed martial knowledge to capitalize on chaos. Glover was beating him until he wasn’t. Aleksandar Rakić was lighting Jiří up before getting slugged out in the second round. Jamahal Hill was battering Jiří’s body before he caught a left upside the head. Khalil Rountree Jr. was two minutes away from winning a unanimous decision when Jiří walked him down and stopped him in the third. As much as he may not deserve top contendership the way Magomed does, Jiří’s heart, grit and madness made him inarguably the biggest fan favorite in the division, and he richly deserves it.
Despite several half-hearted attempts at marketing by the UFC, Carlos Ulberg just hasn’t caught on the same way. It’s not for lack of success or insufficient highlights--he’s punched his way across the division, he hasn’t lost a fight since his UFC debut back in 2021, and he’s stopped most of his opponents along the way. He gets the knockouts. He looks like one of those really expensive G.I. Joe Hall of Famer dolls from the early 90s with the overly detailed abs was brought to life and forced to fight people to maintain its grasp on sentience. By all rights, he should be a star.
And maybe he is--for the definition of how the UFC makes stars now. Light Heavyweight has never been a bounty of talents, but his road up the rankings was carefully curated. He avoided the gatekeeping Dustin Jacobies of the world, he was carefully maneuvered away from the Nikita Krylovs, but they found space for him to fight Alonzo Menifield. 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. Even in his run-up to the belt, after Carlos notched that aforementioned win over Jan, the UFC followed it up not with a Rountree or a Murzakanov, but with Dominick Reyes--a man ranked halfway down the division who’d only just gotten back on the winning track after a four-year-long losing streak.
It’s the top-competition comparison that really makes the difference clear. If there’s a martial aspect to why people love Jiří, it’s his unwillingness to change his style in the face of danger. Whether he’s fighting C.B. Dollaway or Alex Pereira, he is essentially the same man and he performs the same way. Carlos is a dangerous knockout artist--when he’s fighting the outmatched. He’ll happily knock out a Reyes or a Menifield, but he couldn’t get Volkan Oezdemir out of there, and he beat Jan by the barest of calls.
I would love to tell you that I am picking Jiří because I think he’s the better fighter. I think he’s the gutsier fighter. I think history has proven if you do not have enough gun to put him flat on his back he will rise from whatever grave you temporarily lower him into and viciously murder you with a series of elbows. He responds to adversity by kicking that adversity in the abdomen. Ulberg’s approach towards adversity has been to double down on trying to stay smart and defensively sound, even if that means halving his offensive output and hoping in vain that his enemy will wander into one of his (very good!) counterpunches. That approach working on Jiří is extremely feasible. Jiří has never met a punch he would not march willingly into if he thought it would give him an opening to spin several times while throwing two to four consecutive backfists.
There’s a very good chance Carlos and his focus on minimalism work as a hard counter to Jiří’s tendency to throw caution to the wind. It’s hard not to picture him getting clocked charging in.
But Light Heavyweight needs Jiří. If we’re not going to have a credible division, then by god, we can at least have one that people give a shit about. Do it for the children. JIŘÍ PROCHÁZKA BY KO.
CO-MAIN EVENT: THE POINTS ARE MADE UP AND THE RANKINGS DON’T MATTER
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Azamat Murzakanov (16-0, #6) vs Paulo Costa (15-4, #14 at Middleweight)
It’s actually really appropriate that this is the co-main event now instead of Van/Taira, because this fight is essentially the second verse of the funeral dirge for the Light Heavyweight division.
When you ask yourself how hard it is for the UFC to cultivate prospects, I want you to consider Azamat Murzakanov. 16-0. Undefeated. Has battered damn near everyone put in front of him. Knockouts in five of his six UFC fights. The only man other than Jiří to ever knock out Aleksandar Rakić, and Murzakanov did it in half the time and only needed three punches. He is doing this while being the shortest fighter in the entire division. He is shorter than most of the Welterweights in the UFC, and yet, he is atomizing men with flying knees and right hooks and, apparently, the scariest jab in the weight class. His Contender Series win was a violent, three-minute knockout over Matheus Scheffel, who would go on to be a championship finalist at Heavyweight in the Professional Fighters League.
They’ve had him for almost five years. He’s a half-dozen fights into his time with the company. His prospects have been clear since the moment he set foot in the cage, and now he’s right at the precipice of title contendership. Azamat Murzakanov has been mulching men for half a decade and he now just needs that last promotional push to justify his place at the top of the division. A title contender, a top five prospect, a former champion--the UFC has them. They have them all. They could have booked any of them.
Azamat Murzakanov is fighting Paulo Costa.
Paulo Costa is not ranked at Light Heavyweight. Paulo Costa has not fought at Light Heavyweight. Paulo Costa had one fight that was technically contested at Light Heavyweight, but that was because he was so drastically unprepared for his cut to Middleweight for a bout with Marvin Vettori that Costa decided he would only accept it if the weight limit was pushed up twenty whole pounds, and he still lost.
In his entire UFC tenure, which dates all the way back to 2017, Paulo has seven victories. Those victories are, in order,
Garreth McLellan, who was cut immediately after for being 1-4 and retired one fight later
Oluwale Bamgbose, who was cut one fight later for also being 1-4
Johny Hendricks, a former Welterweight champion turned 5’9” Middleweight who retired from MMA after losing to Costa because he was 1 for his last 6
Uriah Hall, who after the Costa fight was 1 for his last 5 and who left the sport in 2022 for the greener pastures of Karate Combat
Yoel Romero, by far Costa’s best career victory and a genuine feather in the cap, who is also an absurdly frustrating fighter who competes to answer questions like ‘can I win without ever throwing a punch’
Let’s pause for a second. That last win was in the Summer of 2019. That is damn near seven years ago and we’re already at 5 out of 7. Who the hell did Paulo beat in the last seven years to justify being here?
Luke Rockhold, who had been retired for three years after getting knocked out three times in four fights, returned to retirement after the fight, and then un-retired again to do bareknuckle boxing, where he immediately got his teeth knocked out
Roman Kopylov, a frustratingly inconsistent, borderline-ranked kickboxer who is 6-5 in the UFC and fighting to avert getting cut
That’s it. Luke Rockhold and Roman Kopylov paved Paulo’s way to a battle for top contendership at the Light Heavyweight division.
If the UFC’s attempt to numb you hasn’t completely worked, you may remember Gregory Rodrigues knocking out Brunno Ferreira last month. That was supposed to be Paulo in there against Brunno. Up until the end of the year, Paulo Costa was scheduled to fight the lowest-ranked Middleweight in the company, a man who’d been repeatedly knocked out and pushed out of contendership and was slowly rebuilding himself on the back of stars of the sport like Jackson “The Moose” McVey.
Instead, Paulo’s fighting the most successful Light Heavyweight prospect in the world for the chance to be one win away from a shot at a world championship. That’s how important contendership is in this division. That’s how much matchmaking matters.
I dunno, man. I don’t know anymore, and I’m convinced they don’t either. We’re just chucking darts, here. AZAMAT MURZAKANOV BY TKO because I want the world to make a semblance of sense again.
MAIN CARD: BLAYDES MUST DIE
HEAVYWEIGHT: Curtis Blaydes (19-5 (1), #5) vs Josh Hokit (8-0, NR)
Oh, I’m sorry, did you think we were done talking about the extent to which nothing matters?
Curtis Blaydes is one of the greatest Heavyweights of this generation. The only people to ever beat him are huge-punching knockout monsters, every single one of whom either won or challenged for the title, and across twenty UFC fights he’s notched wins over five champions. He knocked out Jailton Almeida, he broke Alistair Overeem’s face open with one elbow, and he made Tom Aspinall’s knee explode in fifteen seconds using his secret telekinetic abilities. Given his unfortunate tendency to run facefirst into haymakers every time he gets a shot at the top, he is destined to become one of the canonical answers to the equally generational “Who is the best fighter not to win the title” question right alongside Liz Carmouche, Dan Henderson and Joseph Benavidez. He’s been a staple of the class for ten goddamn years.
The UFC spent all of 2025 trying, across three separate occasions, to book him against the debuting, unranked Rizvan Kuniev. I wrote about the conflict I felt over making one of your best, highest-ranked Heavyweights risk it all against a guy with no cache, but I still understood: Kuniev was one of the best Heavyweights outside of the UFC and the division is so perpetually unfortunate that it’s hard to blame them for not wanting to waste time with someone we already objectively know to be a contender. It was close, Blaydes scraped a decision, and for putting his top ranking up against an unranked guy who posed essentially no benefit to him, the UFC has repaid Blaydes by taking him back off the shelf after nearly a year of inactivity so he can fight another unranked guy, only this time instead of one of the most proven Heavyweights in the world it’s Josh Hokit, a man who’s almost exclusively fought the bottom of the barrel to the point that his two UFC fights thus far came against one Heavyweight that’d never even fought a man with a winning record and one Heavyweight who lost a mixed martial arts bout to Johnny Eblen, who fights at 185 pounds.
But he got a couple knockouts and he cuts reheated 1980s pro-wrestling promos with the cadence and vigor of a first-generation Youtuber that have a tendency to drift into weird bigot fantasies about hurting trans people, and, coincidentally, Curtis Blaydes is on a classically structured contract that has been seeing steady negotiations for years while Josh Hokit is only two fights into a Contender Series deal and offers them the chance to get yet another person into title contention who costs 1/10 as much to book.
Nothing matters anywhere, at this point, but good god, does it matter the least at Heavyweight. Between Kuniev, Teixeira, Fortune and Hokit we’re seeing a full assault on the rankings in the hopes of changing the guard and importing as many cheap competitors as possible, but it’s the big boy division and Blaydes is going on 36, so who knows. CURTIS BLAYDES BY TKO because I want to stand before the flow of entropy and deny it.
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Dominick Reyes (15-5, #10) vs Johnny Walker (22-9 (1), #12)
With as much respect as possible for what is an inherently disrespectful statement: This is the battle to crown the jester king of the Light Heavyweight, the true People’s Champion, and I am here for it.
Six years ago, Dominick Reyes was the man who did the impossible, beat Jon Jones, and was denied his rightful victory by the judges. He protested this injustice through a radical act of civil disobedience: Forgetting how to fight and getting knocked out over and over for four straight years. The Dominick Reyes Career Revival Act of 2024 was one of our nation’s last positive achievements, even if, like so much civil infrastructure, it was built on the undue, untreated suffering of others--the streets will not forget Anthony Smith fighting through grief over losing his coach, visibly weeping during his entrance and egging on his own knockout loss by begging Reyes to hit him--and it ended in Dom getting utterly destroyed by a New Zealander, which kills my the-fall-of-America metaphor because lord knows Kiwi politics aren’t doing much better these days.
Johnny Walker has been a 205-pound chaos elemental for so long that his initial wave of hype came from the certitude people felt that as a 6’6” knockout machine he was the man to finally unseat Jon. Then it turned out beating Justin Ledet wasn’t an enormously helpful measuring stick and Johnny spent most of his time up among the division’s elite getting repeatedly knocked into an approximation of the ragdoll physics deaths from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Then, in a twist of fortune, he snapped off a three-fight winning streak that put him right up against Magomed Ankalaev for top contendership! Except his streak, hilariously, was also built on a victory over Anthony goddamn Smith, and it didn’t work for him, either. Our malevolent management matchmakers just tried to dispose of Walker as a big underdog to the streaking Zhang Mingyang, their desired Chinese star, in the UFC’s first event in Shanghai since 2017, and Walker promptly ruined their night by hobbling Zhang with leg kicks and punching him out in two rounds.
You know what the real funny thing about this is, though? I can’t in good conscience say “so, obviously, neither of these men will be a champion,” because look at my fucking division, man. Are you going to tell me Johnny Walker couldn’t knock out Khalil Rountree Jr. again? Do you think Dominick Reyes incapable of beating a Jamahal Hill coming off his seventh ankle/knee surgery?
Anything can happen. We live in a world of wonder and torment. JOHNNY WALKER BY TKO.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Cub Swanson (30-14) vs Nate Landwehr (18-7)
I’m not sure what to make of how little I feel about Cub Swanson’s retirement.
As an obnoxiously online fan I was aware of the existence of World Extreme Cagefighting, but like the near-entirety of the audience I didn’t actually watch a WEC event until the company was bought out by Zuffa in 2006 and turned into the UFC’s kid brother. Those Versus network cards were lousy with future stars of the sport, with Dominick Cruz, Urijah Faber, Carlos Condit and even Demetrious Johnson getting his start in their waning days, but Cub Swanson was one of the guys the crowd got invested in. His constant attempts at jumping on chokes, his oddly loose punching style, the unorthodox footwork that made him look perpetually at risk of losing his balance; all of them were indicative of a fighter who was just too noticeably different to ignore.
That style carried him through twenty goddamn years of combat sports. It was an exceedingly weird twenty years, too. On his best nights, Cub was one of the most creative strikers in the sport. He outpunched Dustin Poirier. He knocked out Charles goddamn Oliveira. Even right on the verge of retirement in 2024 he could take on legendarily durable guys like Darren Elkins and Billy Quarantillo and spin their heads around. He’s also the only man Jens Pulver beat during the legendary 1-for-9 run that ended his time in the spotlight. José Aldo made his name in the American mainstream by crushing Cub with a flying knee in eight seconds. The same looseness and creatively that made Cub memorable also kept him vulnerable. He never made it to a title shot. He didn’t last in the top ten.
Which makes this appropriate, right? Cub’s retirement has been on the books for months, and of all the dance partners he could have gotten--a whole lot of folks were hoping for a rematch with Choi Doo-ho, in the hopes of getting another crack at one of the most celebrated brawls in UFC history--he’s got Nate Landwehr, a Good But Not Great fighter on a losing streak. He’s exciting, he’s an aggressive kind of striker and it should be a fun fight, but it’s hard not to see it as an anticlimax. Landwehr isn’t a legend, a star or even a contender, he’s just a guy the UFC tried and failed to push over the last few years. It’s tempting to think of this as a cynical attempt to get the new guy over, but not only has Landwehr’s ship already sailed, dude’s turning 38 in June.
There’s no last verse. This is one of those songs that just repeats until it fades out. Thank you for your twenty years of service: Here is your random match-up and an emotional video package about how much more memorable things used to be. CUB SWANSON BY TKO one last time.
PRELIMS: ARE THERE EVEN EARLY PRELIMS ANYMORE
FEATHERWEIGHT: Patrício Pitbull (37-8, #13) vs Aaron Pico (13-5, NR)
I just don’t get it. You spend decades establishing your global hegemony over mixed martial arts and denigrating every part of your competition as second-rate and undeserving of attention and now it’s 2026 and you are putting on a fight that could have headlined a Bellator card seven years ago. The UFC’s use of both of these men has been baffling. Patrício Pitbull walked into the company as both inarguably one of the best fighters who’d never been in the UFC and a man entering his late 30s and operating on a timeframe a huge part of the fanbase thought might already be up, which was not aided by a debut against Yair Rodríguez in which Pitbull looked slow, tired, and outright confused. He rescued himself from the Patchy Mix pits by beating Dan Ige and securing a hold on the outer reaches of the rankings, but now he has to defend it against Aaron Pico, the sport’s least successful and yet most recurring gold rush. Bellator signed him as a teenaged amateur wrestling superprospect a decade ago; he lost his professional debut in twenty-four seconds. They immediately set about rebuilding him in an attempt to take him from an 0-1 rookie to a title contender in the space of two years; the second he fought top competition he got knocked out twice in a row. The third time around he busted his own shoulder; Bellator didn’t live long enough for a fourth. And the UFC looked at this talented but perpetually uneven prospect now going on 30 and declared, “This is preferable to Movsar Evloev or Lerone Murphy,” and when the inexplicable attempt to shove him right into top contendership ended with Pico unconscious on the mat, they decided to match him against the other Bellator Featherweight standout they have on the roster so he had another shot at a ranking.
Daniel Santos is on a four-fight Featherwieght winning streak and they’re matching him up with his fifth straight unranked competitor (and his third straight South Korean, which is getting kind of uncomfortable). William Gomis is 5-1 and has yet to even sniff a ranked fight. Aaron Pico was anointed and he must be allowed chances until either he finally wins a championship or the universe reaches heat death. PATRÍCIO PITBULL BY TKO.
WELTERWEIGHT: Kevin Holland (28-15 (1)) vs Randy Brown (20-7)
There’s an alternate reality where both of these guys have been world champions, and we live here, in the timeline where they’re fighting each other as a preliminary footnote. They both have absurd reach advantages over virtually everyone in their division, they both hit like a truck when they land cleanly, and they’re both capable of just enough self-marketing to set themselves aside from the pack. They both also have this problem with losing every time they get a big fight. We’re now so many years and so many cycles deep into the Holland-Brown Alliance faltering at their greatest moments of opportunity that describing it again feels redundant. However: Brown, at least, got beaten fair and square this last time after Gabriel Bonfim knocked him out. Holland got fed to Mike Malott, got punted in the groin repeatedly and would’ve had a draw if referee Dan Miragliotta had correctly taken a point, but then the Canadian marketing darling wouldn’t have won in Canada and we wouldn’t be having Mike Malott vs Gilbert Burns as a main event in Winnipeg next week. Yes, really. Yes, Canada, that is how little they think of you.
At this point I have learned to anticipate both men fighting against their own strengths rather than competing with any kind of sense, so I’m flipping a damn coin, and the coin says RANDY BROWN BY DECISION.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Mateusz Gamrot (25-4 (1), #8) vs Esteban Ribovics (15-2, NR)
Fights like this are why we have the ‘who gets opportunities and why’ conversation. Mateusz Gamrot is an extremely good Lightweight who also happens to be a wrestler, and that means the world hates him. When he has close split decisions that probably should have gone his way, they will tip towards the non-wrestler. When he makes himself a fixture of the top ten, he will be repeatedly called upon to fight unranked men rather than given a chance at ascension. And when one of those opportunities does miraculously, serendipitously come up, as when Rafael Fiziev had to abruptly pull out of a main event with Charles Oliveira this past October, he will be given one chance, and if he gets, say, choked out? It’s all the way back down the ladder. Esteban Ribovics has won primarily by close, difficult decisions, and he couldn’t get past the Nasrat Haqparasts of the world, and one fight ago he was having a close-as-hell war with Elves Brener, who in loss hit a three-fight losing streak. But unlike Mateusz, Esteban is a striker. That means he gets to fight to be in the top ten now. Haqparast beat Esteban and his next fight was against the unranked, 2-0 Quillan Salkilld; Esteban got the guy on a skid and now he’s gunning for a spot near the top.
These are the rules and we will defeat them one single-leg takedown at a time. MATEUSZ GAMROT BY DECISION.
WOMEN’S STRAWWEIGHT: Tatiana Suarez (11-1, #2) vs Loopy Godinez (14-5, #6)
Here is a short selection of fights the UFC has deemed main card-worthy in 2026.
Curtis Blaydes vs Josh Hokit
Luke Riley vs Michael Aswell Jr.
Tommy McMillen vs Manolo Zecchini
Lerryan Douglas vs Julian Erosa
Marwan Rahiki vs Harry Hardwick
I do not get a lot a feedback on these columns, so when it happens, I tend to fixate. One piece I think about most often related to how I over-focus on card placement and the predicament of women being stuck on the prelims. Their point, in short, was that fight placement now operates on an economy of action, and if women are being pushed down the card, it’s not because of sexism or promotional failure, it’s because their fights are bad.
I said it then, I will say it now: How quickly people have forgotten Colby Covington.
Here’s my real hot take, though: The UFC should push fighters who have bad fights.
It isn’t hard to find brawls in combat sports. They’re actually pretty common. The reason good brawls were such a coveted part of UFC broadcasts wasn’t scarcity, it was placement. When you pride yourself on having the best fighters in the world, the most skilled martial artists, you will, on average, get boring fights, because strong technical skills lead to strategic performances. We’re not seeing more brawls on UFC broadcasts because the sport is getting better, we’re seeing them because we’ve arrived at a point where we’re firing Muhammad Mokaev and Jailton Almeida and replacing them with Tommy McMillen, and that is, ultimately, incredibly unhealthy for the long-term future of the sport. You have always been able to tune into the Legacy Fighting Alliance or Combate to see 5-0 prospects whose martial output is primarily Bart Simpson windmilling. You can find brawls anywhere.
You cannot find Tatiana Suarez anywhere else. You cannot watch Loopy Godinez test herself against the top of the mountain anywhere else. The main feature of the UFC is, and has always been, having the best mixed martial arts stars in the world. Even the astroturfed superstars needed to climb that ladder of credibility for the audience to buy into them. Alex Pereira needed Sean Strickland, Conor McGregor needed Chad Mendes, and Mackenzie Dern needs contenders, and she won’t get any that matter if no one knows they’re here because they’re fighting their top contendership matches on the fucking prelims just above Chris “Taco” Padilla.
You are not improving the product, you are just making it cheaper, and one day it will be indistinguishable from everything else and your brand identity will be dead. TATIANA SUAREZ BY DECISION.
EARLY PRELIMS: THEY DIDN’T DEFINE THIS SECTION UNTIL TUESDAY
LIGHTWEIGHT: MarQuel Mederos (11-1) vs Chris Padilla (17-6)
We here at the Punchsport Report would like to tender our apologies to Chris “Taco” Padilla for using him as a punchline in the previous section, because he, too, is kind of getting boned. They didn’t want Taco. They had no desire to put on the Ritz. They brought Padilla into the fold as a replacement for a replacement, a warm body at +400 odds against the debuting James Llontop, who was widely seen as a star prospect. Chris choked him out in a round. Llontop is no longer in the UFC, but Chris is 4-0, and not only has he won, he has stopped everyone save Jai Herbert. Hell, in his last fight Padilla became the first person to stop Ismael Bonfim on strikes, a thing wildmen like Terrance McKinney and Benoît Saint Denis failed to do and Nazim Sadykhov came legally close to thanks to a doctor’s stoppage. For his efforts in building a winning streak in the UFC’s biggest, most competitive division, Chris Padilla gets to fight MarQuel Mederos. MarQuel Mederos has only fought three times in the last two and a half years, every fight went to a (victorious) decision, and the last time we saw him, he was up against Mark “The Shark” Choinski, who got to the UFC by beating a 9-10 man in the Anthony Pettis Fighting Championship, America’s answer to the Samurai Fight House.
These things are equal now. Every statement about rewarding action is a lie. CHRIS PADILLA BY DECISION.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Kelvin Gastelum (20-10 (1)) vs Vicente Luque (23-12-1)
Honestly? Refreshing. This is refreshing. We spend so much time here discussing how the sport is depressing because of politics and matchmaking and corruption and malfeasance and it’s so terribly refreshing to be reminded that sometimes the sport can just be depressing on its own terms. Kelvin Gastelum could and should have been a world champion at Welterweight, but discipline problems led to him coming in off-weight so often that he got kicked out of the division and forced to fight as a 5’9” Middleweight, and now he can’t even reliably make 185. Vicente Luque was one of the UFC’s most reliable best bout machines, an all-action fighter with an incredible style who is, still, the only man to ever stop Belal Muhammad, and now he’s put so much mileage on his bones that he’s old and broken down at just 34. There was a window of time where both of these men could have held gold, and now it’s just too damn late, and there’s nothing left to do but fight until they can’t anymore. These were main-event fighters and now they get 203 words at the bottom of the write-up.
That’s legitimate depression. That’s home-grown, sourdough-starter depression. KELVIN GASTELUM BY DECISION.
WELTWERWEIGHT: Charles Radtke (11-5) vs Francisco Prado (12-4)
Sometimes you just get stuck in the loop. Both Francisco Prado and ol’ Chuck Buffalo are acceptably solid guys who just can’t get anywhere, and they’d both be gone already if there weren’t even more troubled, forgotten fighters in their way. Do you remember Daniel Frunza or Matthew Semelsberger? Radtke’s win record does. If you’ve been watching the UFC steadily, you’ve seen Francisco Prado fight five times. Do you remember any of them? If you do, it was probably just for knocking out Ottman Azaitar, the only thing that has kept Prado employed. And if you do remember Ottman Azaitar, let me ask you: Why?
FRANCISCO PRADO BY TKO.