CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 139: FORCED ASCENSION

UFC 314: Volkanovski vs Lopes

SATURDAY, APRIL 12 FROM THE KASEYA CENTER IN MIAMI, FLORIDA
EARLY PRELIMS 3:00 PM PDT / 6:00 PM EDT | PRELIMS 5 PM / 8 PM | MAIN CARD 7 PM / 10 PM

Every once in awhile, whether intentionally or unintentionally, the UFC puts together a card with a theme. This pay-per-view's lineup is solid, so long as you ignore things like the open marketing of a guy who was spreading honest to god, no-bullshit pro-Hitler propaganda all of a month ago, but it is pretty clearly built around the ascension of prospects.

Diego Lopes, Paddy Pimblett, Jean Silva, Sean Woodson, Patrício Pitbull--even Hailey fuckin' Cowan is getting a shot at a more established, ranked fighter. And that's a spread that includes people who've been getting the marketing jetpack strapped to them since day one, people who've only managed one fight, and people who are making their company debut.

It's a broad spectrum. We've got a lot to talk about it. Some of it's gonna feel real bad, because that's what being an MMA fan means in 2025.

sigh

MAIN EVENT: THE BROKEN THRONE
FEATHERWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Alexander Volkanovski (26-4, #1) vs Diego Lopes (26-6, #3)

Featherweight is arguably the most talent-rich division in the UFC and it's in an aggressively bad spot right now.

Anyone who saw Ilia Topuria with clear eyes knew he had championship potential. His power, his wrestling, his chin and the sheer, unshakable confidence with which he tied them together made it impossible to discount the borderline arrogance with which he described his future as the greatest Featherweight on the planet. And he did the damn thing. He beat everyone in his path, he earned his way to rightful contendership, and he destroyed the two greatest 145-pound fighters of this generation--back to back--by knockout. In a career that includes fights with punchers like Conor McGregor, Dustin Poirier, José Aldo and Justin Gaethje, Max Holloway has only suffered one knockout loss, and it came against Ilia Topuria.

The man justified his hype. He successfully announced a whole new era for Featherweight as its new, unstoppable standardbearer, a man with the potential to be the greatest it had ever seen.

And then he left to go up to Lightweight.

When someone wrecks an entire division, breaks its greatest fighters in half and then tosses the belt in the garbage, it is, generally-speaking, Bad. That's how you get paper champion nightmares and spend years regaining credibility with the fanbase. If you want to quickly recover from the situation, you need a really strong contender and a really strong division.

So let's talk about the Featherweight rankings as the UFC lists them.

• #1, Alexander Volkanovski, is the best Featherweight champion we've had in a generation; he's also 1 for his last 4, coming off back-to-back knockout losses, and got murdered by Topuria in his last fight.

• #2, Max Holloway, is an absolute star of the sport, a violence elemental with an all-timer of a highlight reel and one of the most popular fighters in the entire company; he's also done with Featherweight and is joining Topuria at 155 pounds.

• #3, Diego Lopes, is a last-minute replacement who made a name for himself by putting up a great fight with Movsar Evloev that he ultimately lost, but his willingness to take any fight made him a favorite with both management and the audience; he's also only fought one man in the top ten.

• #4, Movsar Evloev, is the man who beat Lopes and, indeed, everyone the UFC has put in front of him, an undefeated grappling monster; he's also so disdained by management for his grappling style that, on a nine-fight UFC winning streak, they're trying to book him against unranked prospects like Aaron Pico.

• #5, Yair Rodríguez, is a stellar striking artist with a fan-friendly style and a great marketing push; he's also 2 for his last 5, fights almost solely once a year, and is welcoming new blood into the company instead of fighting for contendership.

• #6, Brian Ortega, is a dangerous grappler with multiple title fights under his belt and a win over Yair just a year ago; he's also trying to move to Lightweight because he's 2 for his last 6, lost to Yair one fight before that, just got beat by Lopes, and has to go back to 2017 to find another victory over anyone who isn't retired.

• #7, Arnold Allen, is an incredibly solid all-around fighter with only two losses in his entire UFC career; he also took said losses to Holloway and Evloev, which makes top contendership a difficult case, especially since he, too, barely manages to fight more than once a year.

• #8, Josh Emmett, is an all-timer of a power puncher with some great performances on his record and a fun late-career run at the top; he's also 1 for his last 4, got choked out by Yair, flattened by Topuria and just lost to Lerone Murphy last weekend, which means the rankings haven't been updated yet.

• #9, Aljamain Sterling, is a former Bantamweight champion with some exceptionally creative grappling and a permanently underrated profile in the sport; he's also 1-1 at Featherweight, just lost to Evloev, and has only beaten Calvin Kattar, who is on a slump so bad it might mean retirement.

• #10, Lerone Murphy, is an undefeated British prospect with eight straight victories in the UFC who is visibly improving in every fight he has; he's also such a fan-unfriendly style of fighter that, as an undefeated British prospect with eight straight victories in the UFC, they still have him fighting in the Apex.

It's an incredible array of talent and it's also a thoroughly compromised ladder. To some extent, that's the inevitable backlash to the riches we've enjoyed. Championships tend to move in cycles, going from dominant champions to flashes in the pan, all-time greats who age out and can't do it anymore, which allows the time and space necessary for new contenders to rise.

Featherweight had four absolute all-time greats holding its belt back-to-back. José Aldo is arguably still the greatest champion the divison's ever seen, and he gave way to Max Holloway, a generational star, and his multi-year reign was taken away by Alexander Volkanovski, the only man who can possibly give Aldo a run for his money as the best to do it, and after almost four years on top he was unseated by Ilia Topuria, one of the most undeniable forces in the sport's history.

Three straight champions that were so universally agreed to be amazing that they all sought greater fortunes at Lightweight.

And now the division has to recover from the holes those attempts left behind.

No one is stuck in that recovery more than Alexander Volkanovski. Volk's time as the Featherweight kingpin is the stuff of legend, but like so many all-time-greats before him he tried to write a storybook ending as the man who went up and won a double crown, and like almost all of those predecessors he forgot that sometimes when you go into a room too fast, the room eats you.

The first fight against Islam Makhachev in 2023 was an instant classic. Volk came desperately close to living the dream and knocking off the Lightweight champion no one can beat, and even in defeat, he seemed like a credible challenger for an eventual rematch. That rematch came eight months later as an injury replacement fight with barely a week to prepare, and it ended with a woefully undertrained Volkanovski getting knocked out in three minutes. Just shy of four months later, Volk lost his crown when Topuria dropped him in two rounds.

So, so much of this sport is about momentum. The fights, the audience, the careers. Alexander Volkanovski was the best Featherweight in the world for damn near a decade, and in the space of one single year--just three losses, 1/10 of his career--he's being looked at as an old, tired, potentially washed figure who should consider retirement. His talent hasn't gone anywhere, but his momentum has.

And momentum is the greatest fuel in Diego Lopes' fire. It's not that Lopes isn't good--he's really good. You don't beat Dan Ige if you're not in the top-ten conversation. You don't knock out Sodiq Yusuff without having a great hand on what you're doing. You don't defeat Brian Ortega without being a genuine contender.

At least, that's the theory. In practice, Diego's UFC run has been aggressively weird. His most famous moment in the company isn't a knockout or a submission, it's Ige fighting him with just several hours of notice--at Welterweight. That Ortega fight? Best win of Diego's career! But it came at a time when Ortega was openly trying to leave the weight class because he's only won one fight in the last four years and he can't make the cut anymore without feeling like he's dying.

But between the winning streak, the aggressive fighting style and the UFC's willingness to market him on the back of his willingness to take whatever the fuck fights they throw at him, he's the man for the moment. Sure, Evloev beat him and has a much clearer claim on a title shot, but fuck that, he grapples.

There's an argument that it might be better for the division if Lopes wins. If Volkanovski retakes the throne, Featherweight is essentially reset as though the whole of the last year never happened. Topuria's gone, so Volk can't rematch him, and the Holloway's gone, so there's no chance of reigniting that rivalry nor would people be interested if there was. The future of a second Volkanovski era involves a return to that depressing eventuality we talked about ten paragraphs ago: The all-time-great trying to outlast a new generation of unheralded lesser-known challengers so they can get a few more numbers into the history books before the clock runs out on their career.

But the new generation of challengers are people like Evloev and Murphy whom the UFC is at best lukewarm on. Maybe, if we're lucky, Patrício Pitbull will beat Yair three fights down from here and we'll have new blood! New blood that's turning 38 in a few months.

That sanguine urge for new blood makes Lopes tempting. He's younger, he's fun, he's less blemished--sure, he lost to Movsar, but that was on short notice so it doesn't count, and sure, he lost to Joanderson Brito, but that was on the Contender Series and lord knows those fights aren't real, and sure, he beat an Ige who was on the couch thirty minutes before they fought, but that's one of the dying embers of the unpredictable primality we don't get in MMA anymore so even though it's dumb as hell, it's fine, because it's dumb as hell.

He's the new guy. He's big and strong and aggressive and he punches people in the face really good and when he wins the title we can close the book on the greatest era of Featherweight competition we've ever seen and step forward into a new stage of history with smiles on our faces and the wind at our backs.

Anyway, ALEXANDER VOLKANOVSKI BY DECISION.

Volk got smoked by two of the best fighters to ever do it, but he almost beat one of them the first time around and he took the first round off Ilia before said smoking. He's slowed down a bit, but the skills are still very clearly there, and I'm hoping a full year off instead of a not-even-four-month-knockout-turnaround will have him better prepared. Ige took a round off Lopes; I think Volk can take at least four.

CO-MAIN EVENT: ERSATZ EVERYTHING
LIGHTWEIGHT: Michael Chandler (23-9, #7) vs Paddy Pimblett (22-3, #12)

Do you have any idea how hard it is to get me to sympathize with Michael Chandler?

Michael Chandler is, to be clear, kind of a toolbox. He fishhooks people to get submissions, he pounds brainstems like he's playing Donkey Konga, he's treated with absurd matchmaking favoritism by the UFC and he's righteously offended when you point any of this out. He's in the top ten despite having one victory in more than four years, and it was against the withered ghost of Tony Ferguson, and that was still enough to book him into two consecutive title eliminators. He is a portrait of irritation.

And I still feel bad for him, because the UFC has been playing him for years.

Chandler is not a young man. He's turning 39 in a few weeks, in fact. At a class like Lightweight where primes are fleeting, his time is very likely short. And he wasted two full years of it chasing Conor McGregor. The UFC promised Chandler a piece of that McGregor money and Chandler debased himself for a solid chunk of his mid-thirties in increasingly desperate attempts to make Conor come back to the sport.

Not only did he not get his match, he's now fighting Conor's non-union stunt double. What's worse: He's being set up to lose, because that's the story of Paddy Pimblett's entire UFC tenure.

Paddy's not a bad fighter, man. He's got a good, opportunistic grappling style and he's confident enough in said grappling that he's willing to take big swings on his feet. Whatever else I may say about him, he knows his gameplans and he executes them well.

But the 'whatever else' is a big fucking deal. He fought Jared Gordon, a man who couldn't handle Grant Dawson, and lost, only to be bailed out by the judges in the fan-voted biggest robbery of 2022. So the UFC gave him an entire year off and booked him against Tony Ferguson, a man on a six-fight losing streak, and Paddy won, with the incredible distinction of being the only man in the last three years and five fights of Tony's UFC career to not finish him. They promptly gave Pimblett another half-year off, and then booked him into the first ranked fight of his life--against King Green, who was pushing forty and on his second unretirement.

Still: It was the best win of Paddy's career. He finally had some sort of justification for being in the rankings and there were plenty of challenging fighters for him to face that were appropriate for his place in the company.

And now he's had another eight months off and he's jumping the line so he can fight the only guy in the top ten who has historical problems being outgrappled, is 1 for his last 5, and only holds that ranking because he, too, beat Tony Ferguson.

There are fascinating matchups for Paddy in the top fifteen. A wrestling match with Grant Dawson. A chance to prove he's improved from the Gordon fight against the ferocity of a Benoît Saint Denis. A veteran's exam with Beneil Dariush. A high-class grappling contest with Renato Moicano. But every match has to be evaluated by risk and reward, and while any one of those men could feasibly beat Paddy, Paddy beating them just doesn't catapult him high enough.

But if Paddy beats the heavily-marketed guy the UFC's been trying to cram sideways into title fights for the last half-decade?

That's how you get Paddy vs Islam in London, which is all they care about in the first place.

I picked Green to beat Paddy because I believed in his striking, and Green promptly dove headfirst into a submission instead of using it. However irritating I may find Michael Chandler, he's not a choke artist. He's reckless, but that recklessness comes in the form of swinging away, and aside from a touch of Dana White privilege, that's how he's kept himself a fixture in the top picture at Lightweight: He is always one punch from winning. He hurt Justin Gaethje, he hurt Dustin Poirier, he hurt Charles Oliveira--twice. He clears distance extremely quickly and he throws punches with the whole of his ass, and he is very, very hard to submit.

Which means Paddy will find a way to do it, because Hell is real. I will say this: It would bother me if Paddy beat anyone else in the top fifteen, because I hate seeing the UFC get what they want; if Paddy beats Chandler, I will instead think that's just really, really funny.

But I still think the striking defense is going to cost him. MICHAEL CHANDLER BY TKO.

MAIN CARD: FUCK YOU
FEATHERWEIGHT: Bryce Mitchell (17-2, #13) vs Jean Silva (15-2, NR)

There's this growing current of conversation online about how irresponsible and reprehensible it is to watch the UFC in 2025.

Mixed martial arts has never been a good place. Combat sports as a whole have always been at best exploitative and at worst openly murderous, bigoted and authoritarian, but MMA, as one of the more modern media inventions in the field, has been pretty rank since its inception. The modern era isn't even the first time the sport's been successfully used as fascist propaganda for a right-wing political machine. We've been knee-deep in the muck since Vale Tudo could crawl.

But it's never been so blatant. Fedor Emelianenko doing gladhanding judo demonstrations and pretending Vladimir Putin could beat him is one thing; the UFC spotlighting the Trump cabinet on pay-per-view and doing professional wrestling entrance walkouts for him is quite another.

Bryce Mitchell has been an asshole for a very long time. The history of his anti-queer bigotry is just a video record consisting of more or less any time he's had a microphone in front of his face. But anti-queer bigotry is pretty cool with combat sports and its deep-seated love of social perceptions of masculinity, so the sport, on the whole, did not care.

And then, at the end of January, he started a podcast.

Coming in right on the last day of the month like the buzzer-beater of bigotry he is, Bryce Mitchell, ranked Featherweight, started a podcast and couldn't even get through the first episode without talking about how Adolf Hitler was actually a good, honest man who loved his country and, and I'm quoting, here, "He wanted to purify it by kicking the greedy Jews out that were destroying his country and turning them all into gays." Co-host Roli Delgado quietly attempted to note the whole 'holocaust' thing, which Mitchell noted was a lie indoctrinated into us by public education and, again, the Jews.

Once upon a time the UFC would cite their code of conduct in punishing fighters for bad behavior. Miguel Torres got fired for tweeting a rape joke. Frank Mir was removed from his WEC commentary duties after saying he wanted to kill Brock Lesnar in a fight. Matt Mitrione was forced to publicly apologize for being violently transphobic about Fallon Fox. In 2024, unprofessional conduct was their justification for cutting Muhammad Mokaev.

In 2025, the UFC responded to Bryce Mitchell's anti-gay holocaust denialism by pulling him from a grappling match for another promotion and booking him onto a pay-per-view to make sure if anyone made money from the controversy it would be them. Joe Rogan, UFC commentator and podcast magnate with a net worth in the hundreds of millions, will be calling Bryce Mitchell's fight but will not be presiding over Belal Muhammad vs Jack Della Maddalena for the Welterweight Championship of the World next month because it's happening in Canada, which is simply personally unacceptable to him.

By and large, I do not care what entertainment you like nearly as much as I care about what you do. Some of the best political demonstrators I know are fans of the WWE. One of the most tireless advocates for trans rights I've had the pleasure of knowing is a Harry Potter fan. Even in the right-wing cesspit of the mixed martial arts fandom I've made friends with a number of queer activists, leftists, and simply good people.

What you do and what you are matters more than what you watch. If something sparks joy in a cold world, I think that's worth keeping.

But I cannot help understanding why anyone outside of the WWE, or MMA, or the NFL, or the World Cup, would be horrified by the idea that people still enjoy them.

And as someone who dreamed of mixed martial arts before they knew it existed, as someone who has passionately loved it for most of their life, I cannot help wondering how many pieces of that joy will be tarnished by what it has become, or how permanent some of those stains will ultimately be.

JEAN SILVA BY TKO.

FEATHERWEIGHT: Yair Rodríguez (19-5 (1), #5) vs Patrício Pitbull (36-7, NR)

Anyway, fights! I sure do like those.

Yair Rodríguez is in an exceptionally weird spot. He's an incredible striker with an unusual style and sentences like "he knocked out Chan Sung Jung with an upside-down elbow without looking at him with one second left in the fight" are the kind that give this sport a reason to exist. He's great. He's also in the top five by what almost feels like a technicality. He has two victories in the top ten, and they came from beating Josh Emmett, who is about to be on the periphery of the rankings, and Brian Ortega's shoulder separating while they were grappling, which Ortega just avenged by choking Yair out this past February. He's talented enough to hang there, but he's also barely justifying his placement.

Which makes him an excellent entry test for Patrício Pitbull. Pitbull--real surname Freire, but no one calls him that--is almost inarguably the best fighter produced by the now-departed once-competing Bellator MMA. He was winning world championships a decade ago, he held gold at 145 and 155 pounds, and he tried to cut to 135 for a third title but it turned out to just take too much out of him. He's beaten top aces from multiple companies, he knocked Michael Chandler stupid in sixty seconds and how he'd do in the UFC has been a question on the tongues of MMA fans for years. And because it's been years, we're only now finding out as he's three months away from turning 38. He's a stellar fighter with unimpeachable skills and he's also finally slowing down enough that he got knocked out for the first time in his career just two fights ago.

He's getting on in years. He's got an incredible amount of mileage. He's tied as the shortest Featherweight in the company. And I believe in him just as much as I always have. PATRÍCIO PITBULL BY TKO.

LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Nikita Krylov (30-9, #8) vs Dominick Reyes (14-4, #11)

The trajectories of Light Heavyweight are chaotic and unpredictable. Nikita Krylov's always been an underrated mixed martial artist, and he has finally reached the top ten after years of trying, and he did it by beating an Alexander Gustafsson coming out of his second retirement, a Volkan Oezdemir who was 1 for 3, and Ryan Spann, who is now losing fights in the Heavyweight division. Funny thing, though: Ryan Spann may be 1 for his last 5 now, but he was the #9 Light Heavyweight on the planet at the time. And who did he beat to get that lofty ranking?

Why, it was Dominick Reyes! Reyes was, in fact, on one of the most tragic losing streaks in the sport. In 2020 Reyes was the previously undefeated superprospect who'd been screwed out of a decision victory over Jon Jones; by the end of 2022 he was on a four-fight losing streak and had been knocked out three times in a row. Spann's was particularly awful, as Reyes simply looked like a deer in headlights. When he returned to competition in mid-2024 the entire world winced with anticipation of another loss--and then he became the first man in MMA to knock Dustin Jacoby out standing. And now he's on a two-fight winning streak! Except that last win was an incredibly uncomfortable TKO over a visibly depressed Anthony Smith who was grieving the loss of his friend and coach Scott Morton just three weeks prior to the point that he was sticking his face in front of Reyes and asking to be hit, which, unfortunately, he was.

It's one of the most bizarre comeback roads I've seen. And I'm not ready for it to be over. DOMINICK REYES BY TKO.

PRELIMS: THIS PRELIMINARY TITLE ELIMINATOR BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE NEED TO PUT BRYCE MITCHELL ON PAY PER VIEW
FEATHERWEIGHT: Dan Ige (38-9, #15) vs Sean Woodson (13-1-1, NR)

The trouble with being a world-class gatekeeper is how damned often you have to keep the gate. Dan Ige has been the living you-must-be-this-tall-to-join-the-top-ten demarcator for the UFC across five straight years of competition, and every time the losses have started to stack up he's dropped a Damon Jackson or outclassed a Nate Landwehr just to make sure people don't forget how good he is at what he does. But he's still the UFC's measuring stick, and it's awful hard to measure someone so goddamn tall. Sean Woodson would've been a star already were it not for his turnaround into a defensively-minded fighter, which makes management very, very sad. It took seven fights without a loss to get the man a ranked fight, and even then, I'm less certain it had to do with the streak than with his finally getting a stoppage again after battering Fernando Padilla last December. He's a 6'2" Featherweight with 78" reach, he outranges damn near everyone in the division, and he's deserved a test for quite some time.

Dan will most assuredly test him. He's made mincemeat of fighters with bad fundamentals for years and Woodson's tendency to get wigged out by pressure could easily cost him against that kind of veteran experience. I'm still siding with SEAN WOODSON BY DECISION, as I've seen him as a potential contender for a long time, but if he cannot keep Ige at the end of his fists, he's in for a long night.

WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Yan Xiaonan (19-4 (1), #1) vs Virna Jandiroba (21-3, #3)

Of all the episodes of Why Are You Booking The Women On The Prelims I've done, this might be the most grating. These are the #1 and #3 contenders at Women's Strawweight, and the #2 just lost a title shot. Yan Xiaonan beat Mcakenzie Dern, obliterated Jéssica Andrade and had an incredibly gutsy performance against Zhang Weili. Virna Jandiroba outgrappled Marina Rodriguez and Loopy Godinez and did what Weili couldn't by finishing Amanda Lemos. Both of these women have spent years working their way to the top of their division and whoever wins will be the clear, unequivocal top contender to the title. Hell, Virna was already supposed to have a title eliminator against Tatiana Suarez this past December, it was the UFC's call to simply jump Suarez to the title instead. Even more Hell, with the credible rumors that Weili is giving up the belt to go challenge the winner of Valentina Shevchenko vs Manon Fiorot up at 125 pounds, either of these women could extremely clearly be fighting for the vacant belt. This fight, itself, could have been for the vacant belt.

It is less important than Dan Ige vs Sean Woodson. Yan is impossible to count out, especially after coming back from being virtually finished twice by the champ, but I have been banking on Virna's grappling for years and given Yan's takedown defense issues I see it being the main factor again. VIRNA JANDIROBA BY DECISION.

LIGHTWEIGHT: Jim Miller (38-18 (1)) vs Chase Hooper (15-3-1)

The old model must be changed in for the new. Chase Hooper spent years in the UFC trading wins and losses back and forth and they've only now cottoned to the strategy of having him fight people he should easily crush. He beat Jordan Leavitt, so they gave him someone who is allergic to grappling in Viacheslav Borshchev, and then they had him squash a retiring relic in Clay Guida, and now he's got Jim Miller, the eternal engine of strife. 46, man. This is Miller's 46th fight in the UFC. You have to get nine fights deep into his tenure to find another fighter who isn't retired, and that fighter is, of course, world-class top Lightweight Charles Oliveira, because sometimes MMA is magic. Miller's doing alright, but his best performances have come against guys nowhere near the rankings or fighting out of their weight class--as in his last outing, where he beat Damon Jackson in half a round--but his big UFC 300 showdown with King Green was an incredibly one-sided beating, and the +500 underdog odds here reflect what folks expect to see happen again.

And I will hope against hope that Miller catches one of those guillotines one more time. JIM MILLER BY SUBMISSION.

FEATHERWEIGHT: Darren Elkins (29-11) vs Julian Erosa (30-11)

I have commented so many times on what a bad sign it is when a fighter's defining trait is Being Tough, as that means they are catching hellacious beatings with enough regularity for it to be a noticeable trend, and inevitably, that shortens careers. This has rarely been as true as in the case of Darren Elkins, and yet we are here, walking into his thirtieth UFC fight. Dude has been breaking prospects by way of sheer grit for close to a decade--and getting occasionally blown out of the water by top-level guys for just as long. Julian Erosa's trying to shake his own reputation as a spotty fighter. His highlight reel is fantastic and victories over guys like Sean Woodson and Christian Rodriguez are worth their weight in gold, but his overaggression and sometimes loose style have also gotten him knocked out repeatedly.

No one's going to test a loose style like Elkins. Erosa's got more than enough gun to stop Elkins, but he doesn't always use it wisely, and if he fails to get Elkins out early and tires from the attempt he's going to get ground into paste. JULIAN EROSA BY SUBMISSION feels oddly likely given how often Elkins gets himself stuck in chokes, but he wiggles out of them every damn time, and if he gets Erosa's arms tired we're in for another clinic.

EARLY PRELIMS: THE EXPERIMENTS CANNOT FAIL
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Sedriques Dumas (10-2) vs Michał Oleksiejczuk (19-9 (1))

They absolutely will not stop trying to make Sedriques Dumas a thing. You'd think getting choked out by Josh Fremd in his debut would've soured things, but no: They gave him a succession of men on losing streaks to rehabilitate him. You'd think getting punched stupid by Nursulton Ruziboev would've set things back, but no: They had him steamroll Denis Tiuliulin, who was three fights in the hole and 1-4 overall. Michał Oleksiejczuk, and this may shock you to hear, is 1 for his last 5 and riding three straight losses into this fight with good ol' Sedriques. Those losses, in all fairness, were to dudes like Caio Borralho, Michel Pereira, Kevin Holland and Shara Magomedov, which is a far cry from Josh Fremd, but the momentum intention is very clear.

And I am hoping it gets wildly turned around on them. MICHAŁ OLEKSIEJCZUK BY TKO.

FLYWEIGHT: Sumudaerji (16-7) vs Mitch Raposo (9-2)

Sumudaerji is fighting to keep his job. His tenure in the UFC was always a little on the middling side--those three victories came against Andre Soukhamthath, Malcolm Gordon, and Zarrukh Adashev, whose presence in the UFC is still frankly baffling--but since going down in 2021 with a knee injury, it's all been bad news. Choked out by Matt Schnell, choked out by Tim Elliott, outboxed by Charles Johnson; it's been more than four years since Sumudaerji won a fight, and he's on the dreaded three consecutive losses now. And he's still the favorite to beat Mitch Raposo. This is, on paper, unsurprising. Raposo was brought in as a last-minute replacement against André Lima last June, based on his stellar wins over 2-0 rookies and 50/50 journeymen on the regional circuit, as before that he was best known for dropping two separate attempts at UFC entry after getting choked out by Jake Hadley on the Contender Series and outpointed by Liudvik Sholinian on The Ultimate Fighter 29 (jesus christ). That Lima fight was a split decision, though! But it really, aggressively should not have been, and in a better world, Judge Dave Tirelli would have to answer for his crimes.

SUMUDAERJI BY DECISION.

MIDDLEWEIGHT: Tresean Gore (5-2) vs Marco Tulio (13-1)

As Josh Fremd was evoked two fights ago to denigrate a man, now he is here to celebrate him. Tresean Gore is a oddly-placed puzzle piece. He, too, was on TUF 29 (jc), he was supposed to be one of its finalists, and injuries forced him out of the contest. He came into a make-up fight with eventual winner Bryan Battle as a favorite, and then he lost. And then he got knocked out by Cody Brundage. Suddenly, it is 2022 and Tresean Gore is a signed UFC fighter whose professional record is 3-2, and what do you do with that? You send in Fremd. Gore won, then promptly missed two straight years with injuries, and now he's four years into his UFC contract with just four fights and he's fighting the last man to win the Ihor Potieria sweepstakes. Marco Tulio is the latest in a long line of Contender Series strikers the UFC would like to push. Unlike many of them, he's at least pretty solid. His technique is clean and his strikes are accurate, which makes it all the funnier that he in part defeated Potieria by just beating the absolute shit out of his testicles. Just all up in there with his kneecap.

I don't think Tresean will win, but more than that, I hope his cup is solid. MARCO TULIO BY TKO.

WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT: Nora Cornolle (8-2, #13) vs Hailey Cowan (7-3, NR)

This is the logical end of the tail on Women's Bantamweight. This is where we are. There's a ranked fight curtain-jerking the early prelims and even I cannot consider it an injustice. Nora Cornolle beat Joselyne Edwards, who is 5-4 in the UFC, and Melissa Mullins, who was 1-0, and then she lost a split decision to Jacqueline Cavalcanti and that resulted in her being ranked. To be clear: The loss got her ranked. Mullins was #15 when Cornolle beat her, and that did not confer a ranking on Cornolle, and then she lost against Cavalcanti, who was also unranked, and now they're #12 and #13. And Hailey Cowan is fighting for the spot. Hailey Cowan, to be clear, won a contract on the Contender Series in 2022, got rebooked twice before finally debuting the following April, missed weight, lost, and spent the last two years back on the shelf with injuries, and now, at 0-1 in the UFC, with one fight in three years, she will fight to be one of the fifteen best Women's Bantamweights on the planet.

And you can't even be mad. There is barely a division to protect. We are hanging on by the quicks of our claws. NORA CORNOLLE BY DECISION.