CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 122: GATECRASHING
UFC Fight Night: Magny vs Prates
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9 FROM THE DUNGEON OF FEAR AND HUNGER THAT IS THE APEX
PRELIMS 1 PM PST / 4 PM EST | MAIN CARD 4 PM / 7 PM
Just so it's clear, this isn't one of those funny fake posters I make with the duct tape and all. They did that themselves. No, I don't know why.
We meet here, in these few lines, to regularly discuss if a card is Good or Bad. I think this card is better than either of those things: It is Weird.
Really weird. Neil Magny is prospect-testing a guy who just rolled off the Contender Series this year. Cody Garbrandt is fighting to get either get a big new contract or become one of the most recognizable free agents in the sport. (UPDATE: Never mind.) Reinier de Ridder, a double champion from rival promotion ONE who left under incredibly weird circumstances, is making his UFC debut against Gerald fuckin' Meerschaert. Nicolas Dalby and Elizeu Zaleski are going to struggle to have a conclusive battle. Cortavious Romious is here.
It's gonna be a weird one, and after last week, that'll be a nice change of pace. Strap in.
MAIN EVENT: KICK IN THE DOOR
WELTERWEIGHT: Neil Magny (29-12, #15) vs Carlos Prates (20-6, NR)
Neil Magny is the glory and the cruelty of combat sports.
He's an honest to god institution. When Magny steps into the cage for this event it'll mark his 34th fight in the UFC, and in the process ties him with Jeremy Stephens as the men with the fifth-most fights in company history. Everyone above him on that list is in their forties; Magny hit 37 this past August. When he started his UFC run he had seven professional fights to his name and he'd just been knocked knocked out on The Ultimate Fighter 16 (jesus christ), a show that aired alongside Sons of Anarchy, Louie, and Brand X with Russell Brand, a talk show about Russell Brand and the guitarist from the Sex Pistols asking important questions like "Should we listen to the Westboro Baptist Church?"
He's been around forever. He's done everything. That 'total fights' statistic barely scrapes the surface. Fourth-most wins of all time, fourth most strikes landed of all time, most decision wins in the history of the company. He beat four world champions. He derailed countless prospects.
In fourteen years and forty-one professional fights he has only ever suffered back-to-back losses once, and it was eleven goddamn years ago. He's done everything in the sport.
Except make it to the top.
It's an insane feat to stay ranked as long as Magny has, but across those three separate eras of Welterweight, he's never once made it into the top five. His volume is great, his cardio is legendary, and he has never, ever been able to beat the top of the heap. The first time that happens, the UFC will shrug it off. The second time, they get wary. The third? That's when you get banished to gatekeeping.
And those gates have rarely been harder to keep. Magny may have only dealt with back-to-back losses once, but it's also been years since he managed back-to-back wins, and that's a testament to the way the UFC has used him to test the men they want atop the division. Shavkat Rakhmonov, Gilbert Burns, Ian Machado Garry, Michael Morales--the pattern is not subtle. If the UFC is interested in your potential as a top Welterweight, you have to pass the Magny test.
Carlos Prates got the Magny test faster than most. Morales, Garry, Mike Malott, Phil Rowe, they all had to hang around for years to get their crack at the yardstick. Carlos Prates just got here this past February. Carlos Prates is looking for his fourth UFC win after just nine months in the company. Carlos Prates' opponents have a combined UFC record of 20-15 and he is still about to fight one of the most proven men in the history of the Welterweight division.
Carlos Prates is a -700 favorite to win.
There is a strong sense of audience bias that goes with finishing people. Knockouts and submissions resonate with crowds and nothing will get a fighter into the good graces of oddsmakers like a string of stoppages, even when those stoppages are over lesser competition. Robelis Despaigne was a massively hyped Heavyweight prospect based on his devastating knockout victories over Josh Parisian and Miles Banks. Johnny Walker was looked at as a future champion after knocking out Justin Ledet.
The violence is the appeal, and as devastating as Carlos Prates and his striking looked, knocking out Trevin Giles and Chuck Buffalo didn't do a lot to start his hype train.
But destroying Li Jingliang this past August sure did.
Li Jingliang is one of the UFC's unsung road warriors. He's been around for ten years, he's punched out a whole bunch of folks, he's the only person to ever knock out Elizeu Zaleski, and despite sharing the cage with a bunch of incredibly dangerous men across dozens of fights, he had never been stopped on strikes.
Prates dropped him four times in eight minutes, and it would have been five if the cage hadn't caught Li on his way down.
A big patch on the Contender Series is its tendency to turn out fighters who are underprepared for the UFC; fighters who've never lost, never faced stiff competition. Prates has been around the world. He went to Singapore to fight in ONE, he went to China to face the WLF, he came to America to kick people to death in the LFA. He's done his losing. He got it out of his system half a decade ago.
For all my typical complaining about the contract mill and the marketing pushes and the cynical way UFC events come together, I don't have a bad thing to say about the process that brought us Carlos Prates. He proved himself on the world stage, he was a quality pick for talent scouts, he's been brought up quickly but not unfairly, and at this point in Neil Magny's career, Prates is exactly the kind of fighter he should be testing.
And I want to doomsay Prates. Magny outlasting and breaking front-running prospects is one of my favorite recurring things in mixed martial arts, and he is, by far, the most versatile fighter Prates has dealt with in his entire career. Magny is Maat weighing the hearts of the dead to determine their worthiness, and if Prates can't get him out of the cage in the first half of the fight, he'll spend the second half suffering for his sins.
But I don't think we're getting there. Prates is too fast, too fluid, and too good at getting out of the clinches where Magny likes to start grinding people out, and as eternal as Magny's cardio may be, his speed has started to flag and his tendency to get fucked up by leg kicks plays completely into Prates and his style. I fear he will give Prates the openings he needs, and all it takes is one. CARLOS PRATES BY TKO.
CO-MAIN EVENT: FAREWELL, CODY
So, funny story: In the middle of editing for publishing, this fight got cancelled. Cody Garbrandt is out, there's no replacement yet announced and there's only two days until the card happens, so as of now, we're sans a co-main event. If I had to guess, Meerschaert vs de Ridder is probably getting promoted. If a particularly interesting fight materializes in the next 48 hours out of this, I'll do a supplemental. In the meantime I'm just gonna leave the co-main writeup here as a loving tribute to one of my favorite Codies, but feel free to skip it.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Cody Garbrandt (14-6) vs Miles Johns (15-2 (1))
Elephant in the room up front: This very publicly is former champ Cody Garbrandt's final fight under contract with the UFC. They may still come to terms on a new deal, but they're clearly waiting to see what happens with this fight, and if Cody loses--or wins, but doesn't do so dramatically and then dares to ask for more money--it may be the end of the road. If so: Christ, what a hilly road it was.
It's hard to emphasize just how big a deal Cody Garbrandt was poised to be. In 2016 there was a definitive Bantamweight hierarchy: Renan Barao, the man who'd reigned over the division while its champion was absent, TJ Dillashaw, the man who beat him, and Dominick Cruz, the aforementioned champion in absentia who'd returned to reclaim his throne and, with it, his status as the greatest Bantamweight of all time. Cruz had one loss in his entire career, had a style no one could figure out, and had come off multiple years on the shelf to prove he hadn't missed a step. At the start of 2016--hell, by May of 2016, just a couple weeks before Cruz's first title defense--Garbrandt wasn't even ranked.
And in the space of ten months he went from an unranked, unheralded undercard fighter to the man who slew Dominick Cruz.
Cruz's feud with Team Alpha Male had run through multiple decades and multiple companies, and Garbrandt was their tool of revenge, a big-punching Bantamweight genetically reprogrammed in the only laboratory in Sacramento with a No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problem sign hanging over its surgical bay. Garbrandt didn't just beat Cruz, he styled on him. He danced at him. His humiliation of Cruz was so absolute that no one even remembers Cruz winning almost half the fight. They remember Cody dodging, doing the robot, and dropping him repeatedly.
Cody Garbrandt walked into the cage as a huge underdog and walked out as one of the most-heralded fighters in the sport. He was an absolute star, and the UFC knew it. They strapped the marketing rocket pack to him on the spot and waited for their amazing new champion to settle into a long, successful run on top.
Cody wouldn't win another fight for almost four years. He lost five of his next six fights and got knocked out in four of them. He eventually went all the way down to Flyweight in an attempt to salvage his career, and upon arriving, he took the fastest loss of his entire career.
Something in the man simply broke, and try as he might, it never quite repaired itself. A new weight class, years on the shelf, secondary fight camps--he tried everything. For a brief moment just this past December he managed to string together back-to-back wins for the first time in seven years, but Deiveson Figueiredo stopped him flat again with the first submission loss of his life. Cody Garbrandt's title victory was only nine fights ago, and here he is, at the precipice of leaving the UFC and possibly the sport.
It's hard not to feel Miles Johns and his placement in this fight are inherently anticlimactic by comparison. It's a bit unfair, too. Miles Johns is a good fighter! He was an LFA champion, he's won most of his UFC fights, he's got a hell of a chin, he's all-around solid at everything he does. There is nothing wrong with Miles Johns.
But he's been unable to distinguish himself as more than A Guy. His winning streaks keep getting interrupted, whether it's Mario Bautista's knees or John "Sexi Mexi" Castañeda's chokes or Johns himself spiking for turinabol and getting wins thrown out. He doesn't have a plethora of devastating finishes, he doesn't have a signature style, he hasn't threatened the rankings after five years of trying. I could tell you about the time he knocked out Anderson dos Santos, but most of you would think I was making a funny name joke.
Johns is by no means undeserving of this fight. Cody should be testing prospects at this stage of his career, whether it's to rebuild himself as a contender or fuel another one with his blood. But after the meteoric way he rose and fell, and with the strong possibility this is his last dance in the spotlight, there's this prevailing sense that we could've had something more memorable--more attached to the heights he reached and the point at which he reached them.
Unfortunately, this is where we are, and unfortunately, I don't have a lot of faith in Garbrandt's ability to win this fight. The knockout power is still there, as Brian Kelleher can attest, but Johns is good at avoiding damage, good at neutralizing offense, and good at swinging in the pocket himself. Cody's shown a more measured style in his last few fights, but that's not going to play as well against someone like Johns who can push him and keep him from settling into his rhythm, let alone finding his counterpunches.
In my heart, I'll be rooting for one more Cody knockout so he can ride off to a big money contract with the PFL. In my head, it's MILES JOHNS BY DECISION.
MAIN CARD: ONE CHAMPIONSHIP INVADES
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Karolina Kowalkiewicz (16-8, #15) vs Denise Gomes (9-3, NR)
The Karolina Kowalkiewicz comeback story was one of my personal favorites in the last few years. KK went from title contention to a four-year, five-fight losing streak, and most folks had written her off so completely they were shocked when she resurfaced at all, having simply assumed she was done. The four consecutive wins she subsequently scored were heartwarming, and seeing Karolina Kowalkiewicz ranked in the top fifteen again was downright endearing. And then she fought Iasmin Lucindo this past May and got completely dominated. Outstruck, outwrestled, never even remotely in danger of victory. It was humbling and depressing, and now, facing down 40, she has to try to make her way back all over again.
Denise Gomes does not want to let her, and that's fitting, as her entire identity in the UFC is that of the spoiler. Every single fight Gomes has won in the UFC saw her come in as a betting underdog. She wasn't supposed to beat Bruna Brasil, but she walked her down and took her out in two rounds. She really wasn't supposed to beat Yazmin Jauregui, hand-picked by the UFC as an undefeated marvel, and Gomes marched straight through her in twenty seconds. She was considerably disfavored against another undefeated prospect in Eduarda Moura just this past June, and--well, it wasn't pretty and no one really enjoyed it, but hey: Gomes won. And yet, when the UFC gave her a shot at a ranking in a match where she was an honest to god favorite, Gomes couldn't get past Angela Hill.
There is a pattern here. Against people she can walk down, Gomes looks like a star. Against people who don't let her control the pace, Gomes has serious trouble. There's a real good chance she can muscle Karolina around and this will not be a particularly close fight, but I am choosing to have faith in KK's grappling one last time. KAROLINA KOWALKIEWICZ BY DECISION.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Ricky Turcios (12-4) vs Bernardo Sopaj (11-3)
Winning The Ultimate Fighter just doesn't go as far as it used to, man. TUF was turning out champions as recently as 2017, and now it's 2024 and Ricky Turcios won the damn show three years ago and he still doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. He got his trophy and immediately lost it to Aiemann Zahabi, and then only barely scraped by an 0-3 Kevin Natividad in a decision that really could've gone either way, and then he did nothing for almost two years and got choked out by Raul Rosas Jr. This is what TUF is for now. This is where it has brought us. It teases us with Ricky Turcios and then forces upon us a cruel reality in which teenaged Contender Series winners mop the floor with him.
Bernardo Sopaj is not a Contender Series winner. Bernardo Sopaj isn't really a big winner period. He hadn't achieved much international note and his biggest claim to fame was winning the Allstars Fight Night Bantamweight Championship after nobly defeating Geovane Vargas, a man who somehow made it to 11-4 while almost never beating anyone with a winning record, and like so many, he made it into the UFC not through talent scouting or professional negotiations, but rather, because Vinicius Oliveira needed a last-minute replacement. And he looked good! For one round. By the second he was gassed as hell and in the third he got knocked cold by a flying knee.
Sopaj is not without talent. He's tough and he's got heart and I certainly hope a full training camp will see him doing a lot better on cardio. I objectively have no reason to think of Turcios much more favorably. And yet: RICKY TURCIOS BY DECISION.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Gerald Meerschaert (37-17) vs Reinier de Ridder (17-2)
You cannot stop Gerald Meerschaert anymore. You cannot kill an idea. It doesn't matter that he loses almost as often as he wins, it does not matter that even when he wins he tends to get the shit kicked out of him. By strangling Edmen Shahbazyan in his last fight, "GM3" broke Anderson Silva's record and became the all-time finishing leader in the UFC's Middleweight division. Not Israel Adesanya, not Robert Whittaker, not Dricus du Plessis: Gerald Fucking Meerschaert. Is guillotining Bartosz Fabiński as impressive as kicking Vitor Belfort in the face? Who fucking cares. Embrace the beautiful cruelty of numbers. Math loves Meerschaert and so should you.
Besides, this fight is more about former ONE double-champion Reinier de Ridder. We're going to quote from, oddly, a monthly report.
There's a long tradition of B-league hype in mixed martial arts. The hardcore fanbase chafes under both the total ubiquity of the UFC as a product and the way they set themselves up as the end-all be-all of the sport. As the B-leagues create dominant champions of their own, the fanbase inevitably rallies behind them as equal to, if not greater than, the UFC's equivalent titleholder, and further, as evidence of other companies having even better talent. And once or twice a generation, they're right! But most of the time, they're not. Fighters who destroy their B-league equivalents will commonly take a step outside their comfort zone and get immediately rolled by reality. Reinier de Ridder, more than any other competitor, was the popular argument for ONE's supremacy over the UFC: An undefeated ultra-grappler with belts at two divisions, one of which happened to be the UFC's permanently embattled light-heavyweight class.
For years--years!--ONE cited Reinier de Ridder as the best fighter on the planet, a man who could easily defeat then-champions at 185 and 205 Israel Adesanya and Błachowicz alike. He was tall! He was a terrifying grappler! He'd never lost a fight in his life! He was, unquestionably, one of their biggest international stars. And then ONE squashed him. Instead of having him defend either of his 205 or 225-pound titles against fighters in his weight class, they had him face Anatoly Malykhin, the real-ass Heavyweight champion. Twice. They let Reinier get trounced by a Heavyweight in a single round, and then told him to do it again, only this time 20 pounds lighter. RDR went from an undefeated sensation to a passed-over laughingstock burnt on the comedy pyre that is ONE's mixed martial arts divisions. When de Ridder left the company to go fight for UAE Warriors ONE made noise about suing him and stopping him, but clearly, they didn't have the case they thought they did. It's two and a half years later than the last time Reinier de Ridder was thought of as a top fighter in the world--and a big weight drop lower, as he's chosen 185 rather than 205 for his UFC debut--but this is, still, his chance to prove his hype was worthwhile.
Meerschaert is the perfect pick for the UFC. Grappling is his big strength, which makes him an actual danger for de Ridder, and if he can't get through Meerschaert's defense it lets the UFC crow about a competitor's champion getting crushed by one of their journeymen. If de Ridder wins? It's just credible enough to make clear he's a prospect but not so huge that they have to push him immediately. Great corporate matchmaking. Hats off. I rarely pick against comedy and I refuse to pick against Gerald. GERALD MEERSCHAERT BY SUBMISSION.
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Luana Pinheiro (11-3, #13) vs Gillian Robertson (14-8, #14)
The sport moves fast, and Luana Pinheiro is in danger of being left behind. Just one year ago Pinheiro was on a nine-fight winning streak that stretched all the way to 2017, she'd notched three straight victories in the UFC (even if one of them was by disqualification) and she had forced her way into the top ten at Strawweight. And then Amanda Ribas Jean Claude Van Damme spinning kicked her face off, and then Angela Hill choked her out, which wasn't just Angie's first finish in four years but her first submission victory, uh, ever, and now Luana is in danger of falling out of the company. She hits hard and she throws everything into her punches, but she also has real trouble maintaining position. Or a gas tank.
Gillian Robertson has long since established herself as the dark horse grappling threat of the division. She struggled at Women's Flyweight, but here at 115 pounds her wrestling and grappling advantages have served her well: She's 3-1 in the division, and her sole loss came against Tabatha Ricci, whom she could not successfully grapple or control and was consequently boxed up by for three straight rounds. Everyone else, she has grounded, grinded, and eventually gotten the win, because as awkward as her standup can sometimes be, when she gets her opponent on the mat she is absurdly dangerous and incredibly difficulty to buck off.
Pinheiro's a challenge, though. She's got solid throws and she's real fuckin' strong, and the first round will probably be very rough for Gillian. If she makes it past that mark--and she almost always does--she's going to start wearing her down. GILLIAN ROBERTSON BY SUBMISSION.
PRELIMS: MY YEAR OF CORTAVIOUS ROMIOUS JOKES FINALLY PAYS OFF
WELTERWEIGHT: Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos (24-8-1) vs Zach Scroggin (7-0)
Zach Scroggin. This fucking sport, man. Until Tuesday morning, this fight was Elizeu Zaleski, one of the toughest, most battle-tested men in the company, fighting Nicolas Dalby, the never-finished perpetual spoiler of the Welterweight division. It was easily my most-anticipated fight on this card. Then word came out that Dalby was injured, and rather than anyone on the roster, or anyone from the Contender Series, your three-days-notice replacement is Zach Scroggin. Elizeu Zaleski, the man who knocked out Sean Strickland and damn near beat Benoît Saint Denis to death, is fighting Zach Scroggin, who was last seen struggling his way to a decision over the 19-15 Zak Bucia in front of several hundred people. And before that? A first-round submission over the all-star Josh Weston, who's now a sterling 9-20 and has won 1 of his last 12 fights. I have this tendency to focus on records because comparative analysis makes the most sense to my brain. It's the easiest way to quickly determine how experienced a fighter is, not just in mileage but caliber of competition. Sometimes regional fighters have bad records and turn out to be extremely solid contenders; sometimes you find a guy who's 18-0 and half his opponents had no idea what they were doing and it shows in his inability to deal with adversity.
Zach might be a good fighter. But his tape also shows him throwing winging wrist punches and getting taken down by men he has half a foot on. I am not high on his future prospects. ELIZEU ZALESKI BY TKO.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Mansur Abdul-Malik (6-0) vs Duško Todorović (12-4)
And this is why I have the aforementioned fatigue around this kind of thing. Mansur Abdul-Malik is undefeated at 6-0 and he's finished everyone he's fought: The combined record of his first five opponents was 5-16. The guy he beat on the Contender Series is a much more reasonable 6-1, but the guy he lost to? Dylan "The Mindless Hulk" Budka, who you may remember from looking completely outclassed in his two UFC fights this year. This is the endless circle in which the entire feeder league operates now. Once upon a time you proved yourself outside of the UFC and making it to the big show positioned you as one of the best, and now we are using the UFC to actively vet inexperienced prospects because it costs a lot less money, and this is how rosters degrade. That said: Duško Todorović once knocked out Michel Pereira and now he's an almost +300 underdog against the random Contender Series prospect. He, too, was an undefeated knockout artist prospect when he joined the UFC in 2020, and now he's 2 for his last 6, he's been knocked out twice and the last time we saw him his knee exploded in two minutes while trying to escape the dangerous clinch of Christian Leroy Duncan.
It's not a great look, and the memory of the sport is short. Mansur hits hard and he does it with the confidence that comes from never having gotten your jaw broken, and ordinarily I would side with Duško, but after his recent history I'm low on confidence. MANSUR ABDUL-MALIK BY TKO.
WELTERWEIGHT: Charles Radtke (9-4) vs Matthew Semelsberger (11-7)
I always wonder what it's like to lose to someone in your last fight, and the next time you're booked, they're main eventing the card and you're down on the prelims. Charles Radtke, who is still a pound for pound top nickname contender with "Chuck Buffalo," lost a six-fight winning streak his last time out after getting his ribcage rearranged thanks to a Carlos Prates knee, and that's all it took for people to forget that he knocked out Gilbert Urbina and looked pretty good doing it. Matthew Semelsberger--a pound for pound worst nickname contender because "Semi the Jedi" gives me hives--is trying to avert the end of his UFC run. He looked like a solid new Welterweight prospect after his rookie year in the UFC, but it's all been downhill since then, and now he's on a three-fight losing streak despite having been the odds favorite in every one of those matchups.
I used to cite my love for Semelsberger with reference to how he would knock his opponents down repeatedly and somehow still lose a decision. This pattern has, unsurprisingly, proven problematic for him. CHARLES RADTKE BY TKO.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Cody Stamann (21-7-1) vs Da'Mon Blackshear (14-7-1)
There's something inherently depressing about fights between folks who were supposed to be something. Cody Stamann went from a 17-1 top ten prospect to currently being on the second losing streak of his UFC career, and once again he is trying to fend off losing the dreaded three in a row. Da'Mon Blackshear had a ton of hype as a big grappling prospect, and when he hit a twister on Jose Johnson in 2023 the world immediately paid attention, particularly after he took a fill-in fight against Mario Bautista just one week later. Big gamble! Unfortunately, he lost. And then he spent almost an entire year on the shelf. And then he got knocked out in eighteen seconds. These are the things that gradually gouge away your credibility, and another loss atop one that crushing leaves you in a hole it's very hard to dig out of.
Stamann's always hard to read. He's a legitimately good wrestler and grappler, but he's also fighting almost a foot of reach and dealing with a much better scrambler. Sticking with DA'MON BLACKSHEAR BY SUBMISSION.
WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT: Melissa Mullins (6-1) vs Klaudia Syguła (6-1)
For beating a 1-0 woman who didn't even make the Bantamweight division, Melissa Mullins is now the #15 Women's Bantamweight in the world.
That was the preamble to Mullins' fight with Nora Cornolle, and Mullins proceeded to make things even funnier by a) also missing the Bantamweight limit and b) coming in as a huge odds favorite and getting destroyed in two rounds. The great British grappling hope to save Women's Bantamweight did not come through, and that means banishment out of the rankings and back to the prospect mines. Mullins was supposed to face Montserrat Rendon here, another undefeated 135-pound prospect who got her contract after beating a 4-4 lady and promptly lost, but Rendon couldn't make it so we've moved all the way up to Poland's Klaudia Syguła, who is getting her contract after a vastly more impressive victory over a lady who is, uh, 6-10. They let Sara McMann go and they let Jennifer Maia go and they didn't pick up Taneisha Tennant and they couldn't be arsed to find another fight for former world champion Germaine de Randamie, but that's okay, because we picked up Klaudia Syguła.
MELISSA MULLINS BY DECISION.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Cortavious Romious (9-2) vs Gaston Bolaños (7-4)
Every once in awhile, I am weak. My will fails. My walls fall. And I laugh, and feel bad about it. I had to write the phrase 'Cortavious "Are You Not Entertained?" Romious' for the first time this past January while writing about Ramon Taveras, and that specific arrangement of letters and words has been in my mind ever since. It is perfect. It is a crucial, necessary thing that mixed martial arts remains goofy as shit, and the phrase 'Cortavious "Are You Not Entertained?" Romious enters the UFC after defeating the man who once choked out Matt Skibicki' fills the same void in my head that was once occupied in childhood by Jim Carrey movies and early morning reruns of Samurai Pizza Cats. It is a reminder that good things are possible. And it's only funnier that Romious lost his first shot at the Contender Series but got his second based on his ability to tap out a guy who is 15-33 and mysteriously loses almost all of his fights in the first round. I have written about Gaston Bolaños twice before, and with all respect to the man: This is not your show. This is the Cortavious Romious show. Are you a better fighter? Probably! But heaven and Earth have moved to bring us this moment, and I will not let it go.
CORTAVIOUS ROMIOUS BY SUBMISSION. Make me feel alive again.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Tresean Gore (4-2) vs Antonio Trócoli (12-4 (1))
This is a battle of destinies denied. Tresean Gore was the odds-on favorite to win The Ultimate Fighter 29 (gotta be honest, writing this on election night while watching what appears to be the birth of a thousand years of darkness does not have me feeling the catchphrase jokes), but injuries scratched him from his berth in the final and led to Bryan Battle winning in his stead. The UFC set Gore vs Battle up as an ersatz championship match after he healed up, and Gore was the favorite, and he still lost. He fought Cody Brundage, and he was the favorite, and he lost even worse. But he beat Josh Fremd! And then he spent two entire years on the shelf with arm injuries. Antonio Trócoli was supposed to skate into the UFC thanks to a 2019 Contender Series victory, but a failed steroid test scratched the victory and sent him back to suspension and the regional circuit for two years. The UFC signed him as soon as his stint was up, and he was slated to debut against Ovince St. Preux in 2022. And then he didn't! He stayed on the shelf until 2024, when he was rebooked against Oumar Sy, except that didn't happen either, and then he was going to fight Ikram Aliskerov, but they pulled him to face Robert Whittaker. So, just weeks shy of five years after his Contender Series victory, Antonio Trócoli finally made his debut this past June, where he promptly got the crap beaten out of him by Shara Magomedov.
TRESEAN GORE BY DECISION. Let the legacy die.