SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1 FROM THE ANB ARENA IN RIYADH
EARLY START TIME WARNING | PRELIMS 6 AM PST / 9 AM EST | MAIN CARD 9 AM / 12 PM | EARLY START TIME WARNING
It's a testament to how stacked UFC 311 was that the main event and a major contendership match both went up in flames 24 hours before the event and it still wound up being fantastic. It is, if anything, nice to be reminded that the UFC can put on those stacked barnburner cards when they really want to.
And you're gonna have to hold onto that memory for awhile, 'cause we're about to start twelve uninterrupted weeks of UFC events and this one's a Saudi Arabia card with a cross-class Shara Magomedov co-main event, and next week the main card goes from two championship fights straight to Tallison Teixeira, and the week after that Dylan Budka is third from the top, and to end the month, Dominick Cruz is having a retirement fight against Rob Font and Curtis Blaydes is fighting a guy making his UFC debut after getting drummed out of the PFL for being on steroids.
Hold onto the good times, my friends. They never last.
MAIN EVENT: BACK OF THE LINE
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Israel Adesanya (24-4, #2) vs Nassourdine Imavov (15-4 (1), #5)
If this fight were taking place just one week later, it would mark six years since the last time Israel Adesanya had a non-title fight.
The UFC has made such a business out of astroturfing hype trains that it's sometimes necessary to remember they can be justified. I was a skeptic--I am, as a rule, always skeptical when striking stylists get the marketing jetpack strapped to them--and Izzy shut me, and the rest of his doubters, the fuck up when he joined the UFC back in 2018. It is absurdly difficult to stay afloat in this sport, it is even harder to make it to the top, and it is left to a percent of a percent of a percent of the athletes who will ever compete in mixed martial arts to successfully stay on top. More than half of the fifteen undisputed Middleweight champions in UFC history have failed to accrue a single title defense, and most of them had a long career in mixed martial arts to draw on in their championship reigns.
Izzy had been in the UFC for just barely fourteen months when he got his interim title shot. Aside from his ill-fated trip to 205 pounds against Jan BÅ‚achowicz, Izzy racked up twelve straight Middleweight victories across four years of competition. That isn't just an impressive achievement, it's a blistering pace for a top-level fighter to maintain. With all the words spilled on Israel Adesanya's ascent to greatness as one of the top stars in the sport's history, it may still be an underappreciated achievement.
And now he's 1 for his last 4 and fighting mid-rankings challengers because he's been categorically eliminated from title contention.
The fall isn't even that precipitous. He lost his title to Alex Pereira, he knocked him out in a rematch--a victory that has aged astonishingly well in a very short amount of time--and then he lost his title to Sean Strickland and got choked out by Dricus du Plessis, the man who made Strickland one of those aforementioned no-defenses champions.
That's deeply respectable. The mixed martial arts fanbase tends to have a knee-jerk reaction to back-to-back losses and preemptively declare fighters washed and worthless, but this is not washed. BJ Penn losing a decision to Dennis Siver is washed. Tony Ferguson going on the longest losing streak in UFC history is washed. Beating Alex Pereira and then getting unseated by two world champions? That's just finally adjusting to the reality of years spent right at the top of the sport. No one holds the throne forever. You either retire on top or you wind up having to cling to your position with every last nanometer of your fingernails lest the next up-and-coming generation take it away from you.
Nassourdine Imavov hasn't had a meteoric rise. He was never a world-renowned prospect nor a highly-anticipated title challenger, just a solid, promising fighter. When he dropped his second UFC fight to Phil Hawes, the world's response was neither mockery nor disdain, but a shrug.
You don't want a shrug. Laughter may be more painful as a public response, but it's far, far preferable to a shrug. A shrug means no one expected enough from you to be invested in your loss. A shrug means no one buys your prospects enough to feel you're underachieving them. Imavov was clearly not a fan of his loss or his appraisal, because he beat the stuffing out of his next two preliminary opponents and earned his way back to main-card status, where he unseated Joaquin Buckley to once again be accepted as a potential contender.
Then he spent the entirety of 2023 getting controlled by Sean Strickland and going to an extremely wonky headbutt-centric No Contest with Chris Curtis, and all that momentum dissipated all over again.
And, boy, I'd love to tell you Nassourdine Imavov went on another amazing tear, blazed his way across the Middleweight division and wrote his name in the top five in the blood of his enemies. To hear the UFC tell it, that's exactly how we got here. He defeated the best of the best, he made himself an unmissable part of the 185-pound title picture and now he's here to claim his long-deserved shot at the top!
It's a lot better then the reality of the situation. He beat Roman Dolidze, who was coming off a loss, and managed to get a point deducted for cheating in the process. He knocked out Jared Cannonier--which should be very impressive--but he was on his way to losing a split decision and the TKO was marred by a stoppage so wonky that referee Jason Herzog, who is one of the absolute best to ever do it, ultimately apologized for it. So Imavov beat Brendan Allen! In a three-round fight. And he lost one of the rounds. And Allen's highest-ranked victory was the #11-ranked André Muniz, and that fight was already almost two years old.
But none of this means Imavov doesn't deserve his shot. He's won his fights, he's earned his spot. It's just very, very difficult to figure out where everyone fits into the title picture at Middleweight right now. Dricus du Plessis is about to rematch Sean Strickland, who earned said rematch by beating Paulo Costa, who hasn't beaten a ranked Middleweight since 2019 and does not hold a victory over anyone still in the UFC. Khamzat Chimaev's historic trucking of Robert Whittaker makes him a clear top contender, but for whatever reason, booking him into fights requires moving mountains. Caio Borralho has a ton of momentum as a streaking, UFC-undefeated contender, but his best accomplishment is beating the same Jared Cannonier who'd just lost to Imavov two months prior.
The Middleweight division is suffering simultaneously from a glut of contenders and no easy path to sorting them all out.
Which is exactly why you bust out an Israel Adesanya to take the measure of an uncertain fighter. Imavov may have some credibility, but he has very little cache with the fans. The most memorable moment of his last three years was either a fight-ending headbutt or a universally-derided referee stoppage. He needs a victory over an Adesanya to justify himself as someone the fans should care about. He needs some of the remaining light in his torch.
And Adesanya needs that aforementioned credibility. I may disagree with how quick fans are to condemn veteran fighters to the cemetery, but they still very gleefully do it, and if Izzy wants to hold onto his spot as a vital contender, he needs a victory over someone reasonable. He's boxed out of the title picture, he can't fight Whittaker again and Khamzat is an all-or-nothing gambit, but Nassourdine Imavov is a reasonable challenge. Beating him puts floor under Izzy's feet.
I feel pretty confident he'll do it, too. Imavov, on paper, is at a bit of a disadvantage in this fight. He likes to fight long and use his range to ding his opponents: Izzy is longer and a much more accomplished range-fighter. Imavov likes to mix in wrestling and clinch takedowns to keep opponents from settling into rhythm, but his best wrestling successes come later in fights after they've gassed; Izzy's been in more than a dozen five-round fights and his cardio has never been a problem.
If Imavov can get in on Izzy, force him to fight in the clinch, fight the counter-hooks and fight the takedowns, he's got a chance. I'm not convinced Izzy isn't going to pick him apart at range instead. ISRAEL ADESANYA BY TKO.
CO-MAIN EVENT: SOME TEKKEN BULLSHIT
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Shara Magomedov (15-0, #14) vs Michael Page (22-3, #15 at Welterweight)
This fight is the quiet resolution of one of my existential crises.
There's a lot to be mad about in mixed martial arts. There is so much that even as someone who has inexplicably chosen to spend valuable hours of his life writing long-form essays about Paddy Pimblett's thoughts on immigrants, I cannot keep all of it straight. Entropy pulls most passionately on your bandwidth for caring about things, especially when the real world suddenly needs so much more of it.
I have had this on my mind with both of these men, because I disliked both, strenuously, and as 2025 dawned, I thought about the possibility that both men had earned a reappraisal.
I think Shara Magomedov's presence in the sport is vaguely ridiculous. There are many other instances of this rant, to the point that by now it's more like soundbites than arguments. Probably can't legally fight anywhere with a real athletic commission, got into the rankings on a steady diet of easier competition, likes suckerpunching people in malls, seems like a real jerk. But he fought and beat a genuinely decent fighter in Armen Petrosyan the last time we saw him, and I cannot take that away from him. What's more, he finished him with a double spinning backfist, which is one of the coolest knockouts we've had in years. Whether I like the man or not, he's done some good work.
Michael "Venom" Page has annoyed me for far longer. MVP was the talk of the MMA internet back in 2014--a flashy, undefeated striker who knocked people out with Jean-Claude Van Damme spinning kicks and danced over their unconscious bodies--and he, too, coasted up into Bellator's rankings through a lot of less-than-stellar competition. But he won, and he made it to a title eliminator! And got knocked the fuck out for his troubles. The pattern repeated itself, this time he got wrestled to death and Scott Coker proved he, too, could be Dana White when he was mad about one of his favorite guys losing, and finally, in 2024, at the tender age of 36, Page joined the UFC. And he did fine! He beat Kevin Holland and he lost a pretty close decision with Ian Machado Garry, and once again, however annoying I have found him in the past, that's damned impressive.
So, congratulations, guys! However personally nonsensical I may find your careers, you proved me wrong. You belong here, you can compete at this level, and however screwy the path to establishing your credibility may have been, you've earned it. Shara, you're at the periphery of the Middleweight rankings and have earned a fight with whatever top fifteen guy doesn't mind fighting somewhere that doesn't do vision tests; Michael, you can hang with Welterweight title contenders and could have some real interesting fights in the rankings. You won me over! What're we gonna do now?
You're going to fight each other?
Fuck it. Whatever. Sure. Fine. Why not? Why not do that? Thank you for reminding me that my gut feelings about none of this mattering were correct and I should never have abandoned them. I can't even really be mad. It is, if anything, maximally appropriate that having finally achieved some actual form of structure in the sport you are returning to embracing nonsense. Why not have a cross-class fight between two guys who are barely in the top fifteen? Why not hype up a wild, crazy kickboxing match between the guy who can barely leave the country and the guy who averaged seven significant strikes per round in his last fight?
Will it be fun? Maybe, but it's equally likely it'll just be slow. Will it be important? Not even remotely. Will it be silly?
It's a one-eyed mall bully kickboxing a guy who broke someone's skull and rolled a pokeball at his prone body while he was receiving medical attention.
MICHAEL PAGE BY DECISION.
MAIN CARD: DO YOU NOTICE A THEME
HEAVYWEIGHT: Sergei Pavlovich (18-3, #4) vs Jairzinho Rozenstruik (15-5, #9)
Remember that bit in the main event about how just a couple top-tier losses can completely alter the perception of one's career? Right up until November of 2023, Sergei Pavlovich was an unstoppable knockout machine with a wild array of first-round finishes and endless championship potential and the world was incredibly eager to see him get his shot at the top. And then he did. Tom Aspinall dropped him in a minute and Alexander Volkov cruised to a decision against him, and just like that, Pavlovich's time around the title was done. With the Jon Jones-shaped logjam already stopping the 265-pound division in its tracks and Aspinall destroying everyone in his path, there's no room left at the top. Hell, Curtis Blaydes is one rank below Pavlovich and in a few weeks he's fighting someone who hasn't even appeared in the UFC. Everyone's moving, and for Sergei, there is nowhere to move but down.
And with all possible respect to a very scary fighter, Jairzinho Rozenstruik is a fairly wide step down. His lanky, powerful kickboxing has kept him afloat in the division for years and he should be duly proud, but he's also spent the last five years perpetually rejected from the top of the heap. As it stands, counting people who are still in the UFC--which unfortunately excludes when Francis Ngannou destroyed him--Jairzinho's record against fighters in the top ten is 0-4. But, hey: He's on a two-fight winning streak right now and that hasn't been true since 2019. That counts for momentum! Those two wins were against Shamil Gaziev, who was inexplicably getting a ranked main event after a single UFC win, and Tai Tuivasa. There's nothing wrong with beating Tai Tuivasa! But given that it was Tai's fifth loss in a row, it's a little less impressive, and given Rozenstruik is the only man in that streak to not finish him, it's much, much less impressive.
We have seen two longer, more accurate fighters stymie Sergei in a row, and Rozenstruik does have the potential tools for it. He hits hard, he's solid at maintaining range with his kicks; he could, in theory, keep Sergei at bay for fifteen minutes. But I don't think he'll get that far. SERGEI PAVLOVICH BY KO.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Said Nurmagomedov (18-3) vs Vinicius Oliveira (21-3)
When last we saw Said Nurmagomedov, we were discussing the ramifications of his second streak-derailing loss in the UFC, his struggle to get back in the cage, and his need to beat Muin Gafurov to reclaim his momentum. And it worked! He choked Gafurov out in just barely over a minute and looked like a star again. And that was already almost a year and a half ago. Said spent the entirety of 2024 once again struggling unsuccessfully to make it three separate fights. In the time since Said's last appearance his weight division saw Sean O'Malley defend his belt and lose it to Merab Dvalishvili, who has now also defended it against Umar Nurmagomedov, who, unlike Said, is, in fact, related to Khabib and the rest of his clan. Said's got a lot of time to make up for, and that's unfortunate when he had to do the same damn thing last time.
The UFC isn't doing him any favors here, either. Vinicius "Lok Dog" Oliveira came off the Contender Series in 2023, rolled straight into the Bantamweight division and is already brushing the periphery of the rankings. I was high on Oliveira's striking chops in his debut against Bernardo Sopaj, but that was an easy one; Sopaj's style was built to be crushed by Oliveira's and, y'know, Sopaj was taking the fight with a barely a week to prepare. I was less convinced Oliveira would beat Ricky Simón, who I have always had a particular level of faith in; Oliveira, naturally, took him apart. We've seen him struggle with struggle with solid wrestling, but no one's been able to deal with the speed and fluidity of his striking combinations.
Which leaves me at a bit of an impasse. Said represents the biggest grappling threat of Oliveira's career, but he's also been inactive for awhile and he's coming back against an aggressive motherfucker. I instinctually doubt Oliveira given his wrestling troubles, but the last time I doubted Oliveira he beat one of my favorite fighters. I'm still ultimately going with SAID NURMAGOMEDOV BY SUBMISSION but Oliveira lighting him up would still make my day.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Fares Ziam (16-4) vs Mike Davis (11-2)
This is unintended justice for both of these men. Ikram Aliskerov and André Muniz were scheduled for this slot, but Muniz couldn't get his passported cleared and now, instead of yet another Middleweight bout between guys struggling with skids, we have a main-card matchup between Lightweight prospects on winning streaks. Truly, how will we cope. Fares Ziam spent the first three years of his UFC tenure struggling with grapplers and faltering under difficult competition, but the lessons of his defeats molded him into a better fighter. A defensive fighter. A fighter who sometimes wins rounds by landing four punches and dodging for the other four and a half minutes. This has worked out gangbusters for his record: It has not endeared the UFC to him. But he knocked the shit out of Matt Frevola last September, so they've gotta give him something.
That something is Mike Davis. On one hand, Davis is in a real promising position. Four-fight winning streak, hasn't lost a fight in almost six years, just became the first man to finish Natan Levy--it's good shit. On the inevitable other, this will be just his fifth fight in those six years. Davis has spent more time injured or unavailable than he has in the cage, and that means every time he beats someone he has to start all over again with the audience. Which is a shame, because his wrestling is solid as hell and his ability to stay aggressive and make opponents wilt under pressure is really goddamn impressive. He's proven himself too good to be an easy night for anyone in the Lightweight division. But knocking out Thomas Gifford all the way back in 2019 does not a prospect make.
I'm real high on Fares Ziam right now, and I may regret it here. Davis has the wrestling chops to give him hell the same way Claudio Puelles just did, and if Ziam can't maintain his range, he's going to spend the fight on his back. But I cannot avoid my own gut. FARES ZIAM BY DECISION.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Muhammad Naimov (11-3) vs Kaan Ofli (11-3-1)
My favorite Muhammad Naimov moment was still when they booked him as Muhammadjon during his debut, and at this point, I'd wager that was his favorite, too. Naimov got a bunch of hype for hopping into the UFC on short notice as a career Featherweight abruptly fighting up a class and immolating the very tough Jamie Mullarkey. Folks were real, real interested to see him back at 145 pounds after how he excelled under exceedingly subpar circumstances. And it just hasn't quite gone the way they hoped. He won his next two fights, but they were a less impressive decision over Nathaniel Wood and an abrupt leg injury TKO against Erik Silva during a rough landing on a takedown, and then it was Naimov's turn to fight a late replacement in Felipe Lima, who handed him the first stoppage loss of his career after choking him out.
In this case, that's particularly appropriate. Kaan Ofli was one of the odds-on favorites to win The Ultimate Fighter 32 (I cannot believe I watched and reviewed that entire thing, god help me). He hadn't lost a fight since 2016, he'd grounded and submitted the majority of his opponents thanks to a powerful wrestling advantage, and he got into the show's finals after he took on the similarly well-regarded Roedie Roets--a wrestling and grappling champion who'd never been submitted in his life--and guillotined him in thirty seconds. So Ofli was, of course, destroyed in six and a half minutes in the final. Fun fact: Kaan Ofli, the TUF 32 runner-up? Booked into a main-card fight against a relevant prospect. Mairon Santos, the TUF 32 champion who knocked him out? Currently scheduled for the early prelims of UFC 313 against Francis Marshall.
Who knows what matchmaking is anymore. KAAN OFLI BY DECISION because I think it would be funnier.
PRELIMS: ABRUPT DROPOFFS
HEAVYWEIGHT: Shamil Gaziev (13-1, #14) vs Thomas Petersen (9-2, NR)
Hey, what do you know, it's Shamil Gaziev. We were just talking about you, buddy! Remember that long-lost time of less than one year ago when you were fighting for mid-rankings contendership? And now you're up against Thomas "The Train" Petersen on the prelims of a Fight Night! Boy, this sport's just crazy. In their defense, though, you did go from 'undefeated monster' to 'so exhausted he couldn't see' in the space of one fight. I don't side with the UFC's marketing department very often, but I gotta admit, I get their point on this one. I'll be honest, Thomas: You're here because they think you're gonna lose. You're a 6'1" Heavyweight from Minnesota with a 50/50 record in the company and they have you fighting a guy whose name ends in a V in the middle of Riyadh. This fight is not here for you.
I hope you prove them wrong! It's always funnier when that happens. That said, SHAMIL GAZIEV BY TKO.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Terrance McKinney (15-7) vs Damir Hadžović (14-7)
How many times have we done this dance, Terrance McKinney? When I started writing these previews in 2022 you were a massively-loved wrecking machine who came into fights with ridiculous -900 favorite numbers. People wanted to see you in the top five! Now you are 2 for your last 5 and for the third time in as many years you are trying to rebuild after a horrifying knockout loss. You can't keep doing that forever, man. You are, eventually, going to run out of rehabilitative opponents. But that day is not today. You may be 2 for your last 5; Damir Hadžović is 1 for his last 6 years. When he was mixing it up with Polo Reyes and Christos Giagos in 2019 Damir was a young, theoretically promising striker with years left in the tank. He spent most of those years unable to fight and now it's 2025 and he's turning 39 this Summer and the last person he beat was future Bellator journeyman Yancy Medeiros.
Congratulations on your massive favorite listing again. Please don't screw it up. TERRANCE MCKINNEY BY TKO.
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Jasmine Jasudavicius (12-3, #12) vs Mayra Bueno Silva (10-4-1 (1), #7 at Women's Bantamweight)
I know my 'of course the ranked women are on the prelims' thing is old hat by this point, but to be fair, so are having the ranked women fight on the fucking prelims. This, however, is stretching it. Jasmine Jasudavicius is a top fifteen Women's Flyweight on a hot streak who just got a performance-of-the-night bonus in her last fight for submitting Ariane da Silva, who'd never tapped before in her career. Mayra Bueno Silva, who is competing at 125 pounds for the first time since 2021, was co-main eventing a pay-per-view for the Bantamweight championship at the start of 2024. The last time we saw her she took a round from Macy Chiasson before getting stopped on cuts after having her eyebrow elbowed open. Not only is she here on the prelims--when I started writing up this card at the beginning of the weekend, the UFC's event page didn't even have her listed as ranked. Jasmine's been putting on some fantastic grappling performances and Silva's one fight removed from gold and we're still here.
And complaining about it makes me feel so tired, but god, it is always worth complaining about. I don't like Mayra cutting down to 125 again after she was already so much more successful at Bantamweight, but after getting knocked out of contention, I can't say I don't get it, especially with the title picture up there as fucked as it is. Jasmine's an exceptionally dangerous opponent for her, though, and her recent lapses in confidence and focus will get her on the wrong side of the eight-ball here if she lets them happen again. Still: MAYRA BUENO SILVA BY DECISION.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Bogdan Grad (14-2) vs Lucas Alexander (8-4)
I mean no disrespect to these men, who are very good and talented and whose lives have been dedicated to one of the most thankless sports on the planet, but trying to do my usual tape research for this fight made me feel like I was sinking into quicksand. You know Tom Nolan? "Big Train," the Contender Series guy who came into the UFC as a massive hype beast and immediately got got by Nikolas Motta, whose most famous moment in the UFC was getting crushed by Jim Miller? Bogdan Grad lost his first shot at the contract mill because Nolan knocked him dead in ninety seconds. What does Bogdan do? He beats a guy who's 13-10-2 and a guy who's spent almost his entire career beating up underqualified rookies and that gets him right back in the driver's seat. And Lucas Alexander? He's a last-minute injury replacement who's already 1-2 in the company, and that one win was against Steven Peterson, who retired before he even left the cage. The last time we saw Lucas? He missed weight by three pounds (in what was, in fairness, a last-minute rescheduling) and then got knocked silly by Jeka Saragih, the Road to UFC runner-up who was last seen getting submitted by Westin Wilson, who is, himself, most famous for coming into the UFC and exhibiting the famous Gilles Arsene 'defend strikes by bending over and not moving' tactic en route to getting brutally knocked out in one round.
The meat of how I understand fights is comparative analysis. It's awful hard to compare fighters when everything is a single, motionless flatline on the oscilloscope of life. LUCAS ALEXANDER BY DECISION, I guess.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Hamdy Abdelwahab (3-0 (1)) vs Jamal Pogues (11-4)
...his last-minute replacement is UFC debutant Hamdy "The Hammer" Abdelwahab, an Egyptian wrestler who made it to the Olympics in 2016 and lasted exactly one match. Hamdy only turned pro this year, and he's 3-0 after just seven months, but that's also a 3-0 that includes victories over 3 3-3 career middleweight and 0-0 dude Hamdy had, in fact, already knocked out in a bareknuckle fight the previous year. He is, unsurprisingly, a wrestler. He wrestles.
So it's a rookie wrestler fighting a much larger, much more experienced grappler who also has an 8-inch reach advantage and he's doing it with about ten days to prepare.
First off, I need to use the word 'debutant' more often. Second off, I picked Mayes and I was exceedingly wrong, as despite his inexperience and his late-notice appearance, Hamdy was able to wrestle Mayes to a decision victory. Except he didn't. He became one of USADA's last victims, pissed hot for metenolone, and got a two-year suspension. But hey, during that suspension the UFC dumped USADA over their refusal to let Conor McGregor fight with needles sticking out of his shoulders, so at least Hamdy got to come back to a much looser, much gentler world of drug testing! And then three days before his suspension was up he failed another test and got kicked out for six more months. So now we get to do this again! Welcome back, Hamdy Abdelwahab! Shit's way worse than the last time we saw you, and that includes your competition here, who the UFC thinks so little of that despite Jamal Pogues beating Thomas Peterson the last time we saw him, Petersen is up there, headlining the prelims against a ranked opponent, and Pogues is down here, facing a big wrestler who hasn't fought in two and a half years.
Let me be fully clear: I don't think either of these men are particularly great. Pogues looked exhausted six minutes into that Petersen fight and Hamdy's entire MMA career to date has taken place over seven months, which is 1/5 as long as he's been suspended from the sport. In a pinch, I'm going with HAMDY ABDELWAHAB BY DECISION, but know that nothing of honor is buried here.