CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 127: BACK TO THE GRIND
UFC Fight Night: Dern vs Ribas 2
SATURDAY, JANUARY 11 FROM THE DREAD CLUTCHES OF THE UFC APEX
PRELIMS: 1 PM PST / 4 PM EST | MAIN CARD: 4 PM / 7 PM
Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends. There's nothing like the annual winter break to make you feel excited about combat sports again. A whole month without a UFC! A brand new year, full of promise and potential! Weeks for the UFC to put together a killer show to get everyone pumped for twelve more months of mixed martial arts!
In this case, the killer show is next week.
This week, to open the year, we have an Apex event where more than half the roster is coming off a loss, five separate Contender Series fighters are making their debuts, and only one out of fourteen fights contains ranked competitors.
It's 2025, baby. Buckle the fuck up, it's gonna be a long year.
MAIN EVENT: MAKING PEACE
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Mackenzie Dern (14-5, #6) vs Amanda Ribas (13-5, #8)
After years of effort, and thousands of words about my persistent anger at the constant marketing pushes for Mackenzie Dern, the UFC has finally, finally booked her into a fight I actually like.
The UFC first got dollar-sign eyes about Mackenzie Dern in 2019. She was a popular grappling champion and undefeated mixed martial artist who'd made the jump after a one-fight cup of coffee in Invicta one year prior, she'd just defeated two women in the UFC, she by all accounts appeared to be a legitimate contender and the company was ready to boost her up into the spotlight. She got a high-profile, main-card fight on a Joanna Jędrzejczyk-mained card, and all she had to do to pencil her way into a main event was win, as a -200 favorite, against the little-regarded Amanda Ribas.
Mackenzie Dern, as it turned out, was not quite ready for primetime. Amanda Ribas trounced her and the UFC, having learned from the experience, slowed down on the Dern train, gave Ribas her due, and rededicated themselves to divisional structure, sensible contendership, and yeah I'm just fucking with you, they spent years trying to hotshot Mackenzie into title contention while keeping Ribas caught between two weight classes and unable to crack the ceiling on either.
After their fight, both women were 7-1 fighters with only a single blemish on their records, both looked like they had real contendership potential in the future, and both, with cultivation, looked like potential stars. It's a hair over five years later: Neither woman has back-to-back wins since 2021, both of them got starched so viciously in 2023 that it put a hard stop to their title hopes, and 2024 denied each of them a winning record.
Which means this is the exceedingly rare circumstance in which a rematch actually makes perfect sense.
From a skill perspective, it's a proof-of-concept test for Mackenzie. "She's finally learned how to strike" has been a near-constant refrain surrounding Dern for years, now, and as with all change-of-state adages like Motivated BJ Penn and Chuck "He's Got That Look In His Eyes" Liddell, it's been at best half-true. Mackenzie Dern has learned how to throw more strikes. Her activity has gone up, and that's allowed her to drown fighters like Angela Hill in offense. But her striking hasn't gotten much cleaner, which is how it also got her dropped by Amanda Lemos and abjectly crushed by Jéssica Andrade. Amanda Ribas represents the first time someone was able to counter Mackenzie's grappling attack by simply repeatedly punching her in the face; if Mackenzie can turn away her assault, it's proof that she's definitively grown as a martial artist.
For Ribas, this is all about positioning. Amanda's been bouncing between Strawweight and Flyweight in search of a solid handhold to establish her contendership, but the cliffside has proven to be incredibly slippery. Her initial jump to 125 in 2022 was shut down by a close decision to Katlyn Cerminara, her campaign for a second chance in 2023 wound up getting her completely thwomped by Maycee Barber, and a third attempt in 2024 saw Amanda being used as a springboard for Rose Namajunas, who simply outfought her. Three contendership losses in as many years pretty effectively closes the door on your chances. But Strawweight is in dire need of contenders, the UFC is always eager to put marketing behind Mackenzie, and a second win over the woman she already defeated puts Ribas right back in the mix at her former home.
But, above all--and I cannot overstate how important this is to the health of a mixed martial arts organization--this is a matchup that I, personally, like.
Mackenzie is treading water and needs a solid win to justify her place in the division, and for once, the UFC is making her defend it against someone ranked beneath her because she's already been wiped out by the people above her. Amanda is struggling for contendership relevance and needs a notable win to counterbalance her notable losses, and an opponent she defeated is ranked above her and seemingly vulnerable.
It just makes sense. It is a well-timed, well-fit matchup that could answer a number of questions about where both women fit into not just the Strawweight rankings, but into the phases of their own careers.
Zero complaints. Great idea. Love to see it.
But I also don't expect the outcome to change.
I do think Mackenzie has improved since their last fight; I don't think she's improved in the necessary ways to alter the math on their meeting. Her volume has risen and hell, so has her accuracy, but her wrestling, her tactics and her speed haven't. Ribas has always thrived on her ability to stick, move, and physically outwork her opponents, and her losses have come from people like Rose who could beat her at her own game, or people like Maycee who could physically crush her.
The first two rounds are dangerous for Amanda. If a fresh Mackenzie gets her down, she's going to have a real rough time. But if three rounds in Mackenzie hasn't been able to get takedowns to stick again, there's a real good chance it means she's already been boxed up for half the fight, and the other half likely won't be much different. AMANDA RIBAS BY DECISION.
CO-MAIN EVENT: AGING OUT
WELTERWEIGHT: Santiago Ponzinibbio (29-8) vs Carlston Harris (19-6)
Yup. This is your first co-main event for the year: Santiago Ponzinibbio, 1 for his last 5, against Carlston Harris, who has fought once in the last year and a half and got violently knocked out in ninety seconds for his trouble.
I know, to some extent, that this is unfair to Ponzinibbio. Yes, he has fallen precipitously from his 2018 pre-horrifying-injuries place of honor in the Welterweight rankings, and yes, he is losing much more than he's winning these days, but "1 for his last 5" ignores that three of those losses were real close split decisions. With a little more goodwill from the judges, Ponzinibbio could be four out of five and his place in the division would look very, very different.
But that read ignores an equally valid aspect of reality: Santiago hasn't looked great in awhile. For a fighter whose boxing used to be ranked among the most dangerous in the sport, he's been getting consistently outstruck by almost everyone he's fought. His speed and volume have both started to fall off, he's been relying more on his wrestling to fill in the gaps in his fights, and his one win in almost four years came against an Alex Morono who had just taken the fight three days beforehand--and Morono dropped him in the first round and was two and a half minutes away from a decision victory when he got sparked.
If Santiago Ponzinibbio doesn't get injured, doesn't get sick and nearly fucking die and have to spend two years at his peak away from the sport, we could very realistically have seen him in title contention. Now he's barely hanging onto his contract and staring down his 39th birthday and the UFC is feeding him to young lions.
Like Carlston Harris.
Who turns 38 in July.
It's very possible I am too hard on "Moçambique," too. His record is by no means bad--that knockout over Impa Kasanganay has aged wonderfully since his PFL tournament victory, and there's no shame in getting murdered by Shavkat Rakhmonov, that's happened to almost everyone. Hell, there's no shame in getting knocked out by Khaos Williams, either; he hits like a train ramming into a truck with a tractor on it. Everyone gets punched in the face in this sport: You might as well get punched by one of the best punchers out there.
The problem isn't shameful losses; the problem is a lack of notable wins. The problem is after six UFC fights and a decade and a half in competition if you put a gun to a longtime UFC fan's head and asked them to pick Carlston Harris out of a photo lineup there's a 90% chance they'd point to Francisco Trinaldo and wait for you to either call them a racist or shoot them.
Beating Jared Gooden and Jeremiah Wells doesn't go very far. No matter how much I may personally appreciate still repping Luta Livre in 2025, when you're a half-dozen fights into your UFC tenure and the fans know you more for your losses than your wins, you need a breakout performance to establish yourself before it's too late. Blowing out a former top ten Welterweight, even one on a painful decline, is much more notable than choking out Christian Aguilera.
But he has to do it first. Harris is the betting favorite here and I fully understand why: Ponzinibbio is on a terrible slide and Harris is a bigger, stronger man with better recent performances. Those performances came against significantly less accomplished competition, though, and the constant close scrapes Ponzinibbio's had make me feel he's still got enough gas left in the tank to deal with Harris.
I'm hoping for a return to form. But I'm girding myself for depression. SANTIAGO PONZINIBBIO BY TKO.
MAIN CARD: THE CONTENDER SERIES RUNS RAMPANT
MIDDLEWIEGHT: Abdul Razak Alhassan (12-6 (1)) vs César Almeida (6-1)
Abdul Razak Alhassan is having a tough time again. This is, believe it or not, the seventh year in the UFC for "Judo Thunder," and after lasting most of a decade in the biggest fighting organization on Earth, Alhassan has managed an almost perfectly even 6-6 (1). The majority of those wins, unfortunately, came in the previous decade. He's only recorded two victories since 2020, and aside from a well-aged split decision loss to Joaquin Buckley, it's been mostly bad news for him. He tapped out for the first time in his career against Joe Pyfer in 2023, he screwed up what was about to be a clear TKO victory against Cody Brundage in 2024 by elbowing him in the brainstem and earning a No Contest, and his comeback fight in October was scrapped after Josh Fremd botched his weight cut and wound up in the hospital. Now it's 2025, Abdul Razak Alhassan is stuck with a 50/50 UFC record, he hasn't won a fight in two years, and his fortieth birthday is in August. It's now or never.
The UFC is personally rooting for Never. This is a rehabilitative fight for César Almeida, who came into the company on the Alex Pereira path--be a kickboxer, transition to MMA, beat a guy who's 5-28-1 in the sport (in December of 2021, anyway; just three years later he's improved to a sterling 6-34-1), don't ever shoot takedowns, get a shot at the Contender Series. In an odd case of overconfidence, management booked Almeida into a squash match against fellow Contender Dylan Budka and followed it with a shot at the nearly-ranked Roman Kopylov, and after Almeida suffered the indignity of getting outgrappled by a fellow kickboxer, he was bumped back down to beating on poor Ihor Potieria, the company's permanent enhancement talent. Except Almeida couldn't finish him. He is, in fact, the only UFC fighter to beat Potieria who didn't finish him. The confidence in César's striking capabilities is waning, and now he has to prove himself against a more realistic, if more dangerous, opponent.
I'm not confident in his chances. His striking technique is clean, but Alhassan's strong as hell and a brutal clinch grappler, and after seeing Almeida fail to navigate the grappling techniques of Roman Kopylov, I can see Alhassan managing to smother him. ABDUL RAZAK ALHASSAN BY TKO after some uncomfortable ground and pound.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Chris Curtis (31-11 (1)) vs Roman Kopylov (13-3)
Boy, there sure is an 'aging fighters in trouble getting fed to cheaper prospects' theme on this card. Chris Curtis has finally fallen out of the top fifteen after a hail-mary contendership attempt that almost worked. The No Good, Very Bad Year that saw him get headbutted two fights in a row and barely squeak a split decision past Marc-André Barriault ended with a last-minute injury-replacement rematch with Brendan Allen, who had rebounded from a 2021 knockout loss to Curtis by rattling off a six-fight winning streak and cementing himself as a Middleweight contender. It was close--Curtis even outstruck him--but the grappling made the difference and this time, the split didn't go his way. Now he's got one win in his last two years of competition and he is--say it with me--about to turn 38, and the UFC is looking for some helpful contendership churn.
Roman Kopylov is a potential contender in need of rebuilding. Kopylov joined the UFC back in 2019 as an undefeated kickboxer, and, as is the natural order of things, he promptly got the shit wrestled out of him in two consecutive fights and the world forgot about him. Kopylov spent the next two and a half years rebuilding himself with a killer streak of knockouts, including the beautiful destruction of Josh Fremd's liver, before finally testing the rankings again in 2024 and, uh, getting the shit wrestled out of him again by Anthony Hernandez. That aforementioned César Almeida fight--which, boy, it's weird that he beat him and is now booked under him--saw Kopylov finally trying to join the wave by shooting takedowns instead of strikes, and may god bless his efforts on becoming a more perfect human by embracing the true arts.
I don't know how to call this one. Kopylov's a cleaner, more multifaceted striker, and his kicks alone should give Curtis trouble, but Curtis is also real good at walking through fire to land sledgehammers--or, at least, he used to be. At some point in the past two years Curtis stopped pulling the trigger the way he used to, and despite his repeated promises to rediscover his angry side, the power punching just hasn't been there. If Curtis forces Roman to fight up close, or simply commits to a wrestling assault, he's got a great chance, but his recent performances don't inspire much confidence. ROMAN KOPYLOV BY DECISION.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Christian Rodriguez (11-2) vs Austin Bashi (13-0)
Sometimes, the UFC does not forgive your sins. Despite a 1-1 record with the company, Christian Rodriguez was a +200 underdog when he walked into the cage with ultra-hyped, undefeated child soldier Raul Rosas Jr. in 2023. He proceeded to stuff 82% of his takedowns and ultimately outstruck Rosas 83 to 2. For his troubles, Rodriguez got to spend the next full year of his life only fighting undefeated prospects. Rodriguez came out the other side of his gauntlet on a four-fight winning streak, but he'd also been exiled to Featherweight after missing the 135-pound weight limit twice, and unfortunately, the size disadvantage become problematic. The much bigger Julian Erosa guillotined his winning streak away, and now Rodriguez is back down the ladder.
Which means he's right the fuck back to undefeated Contender Series fighters. Austin Bashi is the latest model to roll off the factory floor: Barely 23 years old, never lost a fight, finishes almost everyone, regional champion, great hair, and willing, as ever, to fight for the smallest, least-leveraged contract the UFC hands out. He's fast as hell, he's got some real solid wrestling, and like so many of his peers, he also tends to catch punches with his face because he's been fighting in the tiers of competition where offense matters a lot more than defense. It's real good offense, though! He gets his left hooks and headkicks on target very, very quickly, and he has yet to look all that bothered by the damage he takes.
He's also tied as the shortest Featherweight in the UFC. The company, and the odds, are both banking on Bashi being too damn fast and too good at wrestling for Rodriguez. These claims have been made before, but unlike a Raul Rosas, Bashi does actually know how to throw solid punches. AUSTIN BASHI BY DECISION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Punahele Soriano (10-4) vs Uroš Medić (10-2)
Here, at least, we will have no-frills fisticuffs. Punahele Soriano's UFC career has, on the whole, been a pretty direct referendum on his opponent's wrestling ability. The only person to beat Soriano in a stand-up fight was, oddly enough, Brendan Allen. Everyone else has chain-wrestled him into dust, to the point that Soriano embraced the dark arts and won his last fight by taking down Miguel Baeza over and over rather than risk Baeza doing it to him first. Has Puna lost the fistic faith? Are we embroiled in a new age of Hawaiian wrestleboxing?
I fuckin' hope not, because that would rob us of a real fun mirror match. Uroš Medić is here to hit people. That is the sum total of his desires in life. He has not submitted anyone since his days in the Alaskan regionals in the 2010s, and his only two ground-and-pound victories came after he battered people so badly their bodies refused to stay upright. He, too, has been victimized by grappling, but he has refused to change his ways and has instead been chucking spinning backfists and home run uppercuts and hoping the world will acknowledge his efforts.
My friend: This is your acknowledgment. With luck, this will be a big, silly brawl, and with luck, it'll end with UROŠ MEDIĆ BY TKO.
PRELIMS: THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW
FLYWEIGHT: Jose Johnson (16-9) vs Felipe Bunes (13-7)
There is no better way to headline prelims than with Flyweights, and there are no better Flyweights than these two, with their collective 1-3 UFC record. Jose Johnson's actually going on his second year with the UFC, but the underlying bedrock of mixed martial arts is being remembered for the coolest thing that happened in one of your fights and praying to god it's something you did as opposed to something that was done to you, and Jose Johnson is a victim of this curse. He went the distance with potential contender Asu Almabayev last year, and he choked out Chad Anheliger before that, but no one remembers that--they remember Da'Mon Blackshear hitting just the third Twister in UFC history on Johnson's tormented spine. Felipe Bunes doesn't even have that: In 2023 he was the newly-crowned Flyweight champion of the Legacy Fighting Alliance, twelve months later he made his UFC debut and got pounded into dust in two rounds by Joshua Van, and another full twelve months later he's back for a second chance.
I'm rooting for the underdog, here. Johnson's solid, but he hasn't wowed me, and Bunes was doing decently against Van up until he, y'know, wasn't. 5'7" against 6' is a hell of a size discrepancy, especially at Flyweight, but Johnson also gets taken down constantly, and a ground operator like Bunes is a bad fight if you can't stay on your feet. FELIPE BUNES BY SUBMISSION.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Marco Tulio (12-1) vs Ihor Potieria (21-7)
I love Ihor Potieria because I love tragic comedies. Imagine, if you will, that you are one of the most successful mixed martial artists in Ukraine. A fifteen-fight winning streak is an exceptional accomplishment--entire careers have been made of less!--and when people ask about who you beat, you laugh and shrug and quietly pretend you weren't strangling the 0-0, one-and-done Vitali Podtolok four years and sixteen fights into your professional career. Getting good competition is hard on the regionals, and no one needs to know. The UFC comes calling, and you go to the Contender Series, and you win! You've made it! You're on the biggest stage in the sport and you're a glorious, golden god and nothing can stop you. And then you got knocked out for the first time in half a decade, and immediately, the company realizes you're a warm body they can throw at fighters they want to boost, so they give you Maurício "Shogun" Rua, one of the greatest fighters of all time, in his long, long-belated retirement bout on his home turf in Rio. You destroy him. You absorb his punches with nary a flinch, you drop him twice, and you end his legend facedown and beaten in front of thirteen thousand depressed Brazilians. And for your crime, you are condemned, forever, to marketing duty. Every fight is a guy the UFC wants to push, be he an older fighter in need of momentum or a Contender Series graduate in need of a reliable victory. Even when you do manage a win, you miss weight and no one appreciates it. You are stricken from the heart of the mixed martial arts fan. You are forsaken by love.
The world is not kind to you, Ihor. It gave you one moment and it will make you pay forever. I'm sorry to you, and your children, and your children's children. MARCO TULIO BY TKO.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Thiago Moisés (18-8) vs Trey Ogden (18-6)
Trey Ogden debuted in the UFC with a split decision that could easily have gone his way, but, of course, it didn't. Trey Ogden was supposed to lose to Daniel Zellhuber, the UFC's new Contender Series golden boy--as in his nickname is literally "Golden Boy"--and Ogden beat him. Zellhuber was rewarded with the high-profile Lando Vannata; Trey Ogden got another Contender Series rookie in Manuel Torres, and when Torres couldn't make the fight, it was a short-notice match against another Contender Series push in Ignacio Bahamondes. Trey Ogden's next match was, unsurprisingly, another early prelims fight against another Contender Series leftover in Nikolas Motta, whom he dominated from pillar to post, but 90 seconds before what would have been a lopsided decision for Ogden, the referee fucked up and incorrectly called for a submission stoppage for Ogden--and because it was a referee's error rather than a foul, the fight had to be ruled a No Contest. Once again, Trey Ogden comes back, once again, Trey Ogden is given a prelim fight, and once again it's a promotional curveball against our friend from earlier on the card and newly-crowned TUF winner, Kurt Holobaugh. And Ogden wins! again!
And now he's even lower on the prelims against an even less visible fighter with an even worse promotional record, and honestly, what do you want from the man?
Guess what: Ogden won again. The good news is Thiago Moisés is a genuine step up in competition and name value--he's been in there with Islam Makhachev and Benoît Saint Denis--and while he did still come from the Contender Series, it was seven years ago and the statute of limitations must eventually run out. The bad news is he's still on the fucking prelims. César Almeida rates a main card fight and Jose Johnson gets to headline the undercard, and Trey Ogden is down here again, toiling away against a dangerous opponent, slightly more important than Preston Parsons, not nearly as worthy as Ihor Potieria.
Thiago is probably a better fighter than Ogden. He's faster, he's got a better ground game, he'll probably win. I do not care. My blood cries out for justice. TREY OGDEN BY DECISION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Preston Parsons (11-5) vs Jacobe Smith (9-0)
Let's just jump to the punchline: It's a UFC journeyman who hasn't had much luck in the company fighting a Contender Series guy who mostly fought guys who lose a lot. That's it. That's the sentence. That's this fight, that's this card, that's probably the future of the UFC for the next several years, at which point it will gradually devolve into something even worse: Contender Series people fighting Contender Series people because there's no one else left. This is the sixth UFC fight of Preston Parsons' life, and half of them will have been against Contender Series veterans. And that's after he lost his original opponent, Andreas Gustafsson--who, of course, came from the Contender Series. The UFC walked us into the ocean of man years ago and now we are all swimming in waters shaped like wiry, muscular men who got here by beating up 12-12 dudes who mysteriously lose almost all of their fights in the first round.
I shot an arrow into the air and it landed in my own eye. PRESTON PARSONS BY DECISION.
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Ernesta Kareckaite (5-1-1) vs Nicolle Caliari (8-2)
Don't worry, this isn't yet another match where a veteran fights a Contender Series winner: This is two Contender Series winners. Ernesta Kareckaite is the career striker who won her contract all the way back in the Summer of 2023, took most of a year to make her promotional debut, promptly lost to Dione Barbosa, and hasn't been seen in eight months. This makes her a perfectly logical pickup for Nicolle Caliari, who went from getting neck cranked by Kay Hansen back in 2019 to a four-fight winning streak over the, uh, following five and a half years, waged largely through Brazil's FIGHT MUSIC SHOW, the exhibitions-and-rookies promotion that pairs exhibition boxing with rookie mixed martial arts, silk dancers, and, inexplicably, Robocop.
I hope you understand how much I love you, that I do this for you. Over the years I have now brought you not one, but two separate Brazilian Robocops. All of this, this maddened quest for martial arts, is simply a Robocop talent search. Because she brought another Robocop to my attention, NICOLLE CALIARI BY DECISION.
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Magomed Gadzhiyasulov (9-0) vs Bruno Lopes (13-1)
It's the comparative analysis that really makes this all hurt. If ranking and evaluating fighters is only truly possible by comparing their competition, here, we have the direct story of how the self-consuming serpent of the UFC is reducing every integer to zero. Brendson Ribeiro is, statistically, an unsuccessful UFC fighter. He's 1-2 in the organization and his one win was a split decision that could easily have gone the other way, and it, too, was over a man who's 0-3 in the company. Magomed Gadzhiyasulov has one UFC fight, and it's a majority decision over Brendson Ribeiro, making him one of the only men to ever beat Ribeiro without being able to finish him. Bruno Lopes, who is making his debut, got knocked out by Brendson Ribeiro on the Contender Series. All of these fights happened within the last sixteen months. All of this emanates from the same collapsing singularity and none of us can escape.
MAGOMED GADZHIYASULOV BY DECISION.
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Victoria Dudakova (8-1) vs Fatima Kline (6-1)
Victoria Dudakova's time in the UFC has been real, real weird. She cruised through the Contender Series (can you feel the flesh of my throat beginning to flake off) as an undefeated grappling champion, then won her first fight through an abrupt elbow injury, followed by a botched weight cut and an underwhelming decision victory, followed by a year of silent and a split decision loss to Sam Hughes, who was 3-5 in the company and a sizable underdog. But it's a step up from Fatima Kline, who joined the company as a last-minute injury replacement and promptly got completely shut out by Jasmine Jasudavicius. Kline, who is 0-1 in the company, is the single biggest betting favorite on this card at -900. Dudakova, at 2-1, is +615. Betting odds are an aggressively silly measurement of fighting skill, but they sure are a painfully accurate measurement of public disregard.
But I also don't think a ton of Dudakova either, so who am I to disagree. FATIMA KLINE BY DECISION.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Joe Solecki (13-5) vs Nurullo Aliev (9-0)
The UFC is officially tired of Joe Solecki. Up until the very end of 2023, his run was by no means bad: He was a real impressive 13-3 and 5-1 in the UFC itself, he'd been kicking around for four years already, he'd taken decisions off aging but respected veterans like Matt Wiman and Jim Miller. Nothing to be ashamed of whatsoever. Then, right at the end of the year, he shot an armbar on Drakkar Klose and got deadlifted and slammed on his fucking head. If the UFC likes you, they give you a pretty gentle comeback fight after a finish that rough. Solecki got former top fifteen Lightweight Grant Dawson. He was outwrestled for 13:46 of a fifteen-minute fight and outstruck 146 to 27. And now, on the back of two devastatingly one-sided losses? He's being served up as a last-minute injury replacement so Nurullo Aliev, the undefeated "Tajik Eagle" who kicked Rafael Alves out of the UFC and into Karate Combat back in 2023, can stay on the card. Aliev just happens to be a grinding wrestler and, thus, a hard counter to the one thing at which Solecki excels.
I'm sorry, Joe. It's been a good run. NURULLO ALIEV BY DECISION.