SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4 FROM THE T-MOBILE ARENA IN LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
EARLY PRELIMS 3 PM PDT / 6 PM EDT | PRELIMS 5 PM / 8 PM | MAIN CARD 7 PM / 10 PM
After several weak weeks of fights, we’ve got a pretty solid month. Two pay-per-views with two title fights each, a couple potential title eliminators, a couple interesting debuting prospects, and a chance to hear a Rio de Janeiro crowd chant about how a bunch of foreign fighters are going to die.
It’s good times for the best month of the year. I can’t even be particularly mad at this pay-per-view. Merab vs Cory? Josh Emmett and his body of random geometric shapes? Ateba Gautier destroys A Guy?
We’ve done worse. And we will again before the end of the year when the pay-per-view model finally dies.
MAIN EVENT: THE DESIRED RESULTS
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Magomed Ankalaev (21-1-1 (1), Champion) vs Alex Pereira (12-3, #1)
I try to be honest in these write-ups, so in the interests of honesty, I will disclose that I initially wrote a long, learned spiel about the woeful history of instant rematches and how they’re so rarely worth it before erasing all of it.
Instant rematches are a factor of business interest. That is the end-all and be-all of it. If a title changes hands and the UFC books an immediate rematch, it’s because that’s where they see their money. This does not always denote a corporate favorite. Whether Chris Weidman beat Anderson Silva a second time or Amanda Nunes got choked out by Julianna Peña again, the company would have been entirely content. Sometimes, the sides are genuinely even.
This is not one of those times.
As we have discussed on multiple occasions, the UFC has gone out of its way, over and over, to keep Magomed Ankalaev from title contention and especially Alex Pereira. Ankalaev had to mostly abandon his occasional double-leg takedowns and commit to just kickboxing with everyone to finally get his shot at Pereira, and even then, it was only after Pereira had already beaten everyone they could feasibly throw at him without getting Royce Gracie out of retirement.
Which makes sense, when you consider just how all-in the UFC went on Alex Pereira. It’s hard to address it without sounding as though you’re diminishing his accomplishments, and to be certain, Pereira has accomplished an enormous amount in the sport. You cannot astroturf a man into knocking out Israel Adesanya or Jiří Procházka. But you can sign him as a 3-1 mixed martial artist, get him to a title shot with only one ranked fight, and get him to the 205-pound belt after just one fight in the weight class. You can give him rematches with people he already easily beat.
You can repeatedly book your #1 contender against other ranked men while Alex Pereira deals with contenders who are one fight removed from beating on Chris Daukaus.
But, hey: They did it! Like an angsty teenager reluctantly cramming for a test at the last minute, the UFC did what they had to do and booked their massively-marketed star champion against their repeatedly set-aside #1 contender. Did sport once again assert itself over spectacle? Was it a battle for the ages? Are we in an exciting new era for the Light Heavyweight division?
Respectively: Yes, no, and not as long as the UFC is desperately looking for the rewind button.
Magomed Ankalaev vs Alex Pereira was Fine. It wasn’t a barnburner, it was close and competitive and the biggest surprise was Pereira’s ability to stuff all of Ankalaev’s saved-up takedown attempts, but Ankalaev landed more strikes, and somewhat surprisingly, Ankalaev landed the better strikes and came closest to finishing the fight after a left hook sent Pereira wobbling into the fence just before the second round could end.
It wasn’t a blowout, but it was pretty definitive. The judges were unanimous as were most of the media scorecards. Ankalaev won, Pereira lost, and the Light Heavyweight division moved on and I am of course just kidding we can’t escape our Groundhogian hell we’re doing the immediate rematch because fuck you, give Alex his belt back.
Ankalaev clinched! It’s not fair to do clinches! Being boring for even a second means you are an invalid fighter, which is also why no one in the entire top fifteen at 205 pounds shoots takedowns anymore. The judges should have known Alex was apparently only giving it 40% of his motivation and scored him on a curve, by which standards he won the fight 78-63. Sure, Ankalaev may have outlanded and outdamaged Alex, but did you consider that he is a bitch and therefore Alex Pereira should still be our big scary kickboxing champion regardless of his having been out-kickboxed by a non-kickboxer?
C’mon, man. We paid an intern $5,000 to make these Alex Pereira action figures that are definitely 100% not hastily recolored Glover Teixeiras that were sitting in a Las Vegas warehouse collecting dust.
We’ve got eight thousand infant onesies with Pereira’s face on them. Do you want all of that marketing genius to go to waste just because he lost a fight?
This is the problem with the instant rematch: Most of the time there’s nothing to talk about.
There’s no Nunes/Peña angle here where one competitor looked unusually terrible, nor a Moreno/Figueiredo situation where the fight carries an asterisk. If anything, it was the best kind of championship fight--one where every possibility played out. Most folks thought Ankalaev was sunk if he couldn’t take Pereira down: Ank whiffed on a dozen attempts and it turns out he did just fine on his feet. Analysts thought Pereira’s vicious leg kicks would kill Ankalaev given what Jan Błachowicz did do him: Magomed ate a bunch and survived. Pereira got stung by a huge punch and still recovered, putting fears about his chin to rest. Ankalaev had to resort to the clinch to make it to the decision and was able to control Pereira enough to minimize his output.
There’s no real narrative throughline, either. It’s not like it kills Alex Pereira’s legacy if he loses again, nor does it further legitimize him if he wins. The entirety of his championship story in the UFC comes from knocking out and promptly being knocked out by Israel Adesanya, noted Middleweight, who failed to win at 205 pounds in the first place, and the historic Alex Pereira Light Heavyweight title reign lasted three fights and one of them was a rematch with a man he’d already destroyed half a year prior.
And if Magomed Ankalaev wins again, he gets to be the guy who beat Alex Pereira twice, I guess.
There just weren’t any unanswered questions left. Instead, all we have is speculation. Maybe Ankalaev has too much faith in his fists now and he gets lit up. Maybe Pereira is overconfident about his grappling defense and he’s about to spladled like Joe Stevenson did to Nate Diaz. Maybe one or both men were fighting through an emotional struggle with impostor syndrome and this time with the help of a good therapist they’ll have both achieved self-actualization and can fight to the best of their abilities, or, even better, they’ll have finally accepted that words can heal more than fists can hurt and they will forge a beautiful bond of friendship, live on pay-per-view.
It’s the same fight. Alex can knock out a truck if he lands on it right and Ankalaev already won the last time he tried. The same thing will probably happen again. If it doesn’t, and you’re a Pereira fan, don’t worry: They’ll give Ankalaev a trilogy fight with Johnny Walker before they do Pereira. MAGOMED ANKALAEV BY SUBMISSION because it’s what I picked last time.
CO-MAIN EVENT: LOGICAL MATCHMAKING IS BORING
BANTAMWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Merab Dvalishvili (20-4, Champion) vs Cory Sandhagen (18-5, #4)
I’ve noted on multiple occasions that even among friends who know about the absurd amount of my time I’ve chosen to spend on mixed martial arts, I get very, very few casual inquiries about the sport these days. For all its financial success, MMA has rarely felt colder. There is only one thing multiple people reached out to me about this year:
Wanting to know more about the little Wolverine guy who bodyslammed Sean O’Malley and ripped his head off.
Ironically, neither had anything to do with O’Malley’s purported drawing power, both were at bars by random happenstance and the UFC is still the predominant entertainment of weekend drunks. And it makes it very, very funny to consider how hard the UFC attempted to keep Merab Dvalishvili from the belt.
Because he’s been great for them. Shockingly: People like funny guys who beat everyone up. The more time Merab’s had in the spotlight, the more people have flocked to him, to the point that the most-discussed moment of O’Malley’s title victory over Aljamain Sterling wasn’t Aljo’s fall or O’Malley’s punching power, but rather, Merab stealing O’Malley’s Michael Jackson jacket. Everything in his title reign thus far has been a wonderful example of the sport asserting itself over marketing. Sean O’Malley was the focal point of RIYADH SEASON PRESENTS NOCHE UFC AT THE SPHERE, A TRIBUTE TO THE SPIRIT OF MEXICAN INDEPENDENCE AS INTERPRETED BY THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA AND A BUNCH OF AI VIDEO GENERATORS and Merab ground him into paste and it was wonderful. Four months later the UFC had Merab back in the cage defending his title against the meteorically-pushed Umar Nurmagomedov, who was an outright betting favorite against him: Merab spent the back half of the fight clowning Umar to his face.
And when the UFC marched O’Malley out for a rematch after letting him sit, rest and prepare in total peace for nine months while Merab had been repeatedly fighting, Merab beat O’Malley even worse and handed him the first submission loss of his career.
It’s fun. It’s exciting. And, by getting marketing out of the way, we finally get to see contenders who have long deserved another shot at the top.
Cory Sandhagen has been the Bantamweight bridesmaid for years. Between his UFC debut in 2018 and just last year, only three men got past him: Petr Yan, one of the definitional Bantamweights of this generation, Aljamain Sterling, the man who defeated him, and multiple-time world champion T.J. Dillashaw, who got a very, very narrow split decision most of the media scored for Cory. He beat top contenders, he beat world champions, he lost only to the best of the best, and the timing of those losses and the UFC’s willingness to prioritize Sean O’Malley over the entire division meant Cory was continually pushed away from the top.
He had one shot, and it was the aforementioned Yan fight--which was a short-notice, hastily-configured replacement after Aljo was sidelined with a neck injury. After that loss he broke Song Yadong’s face, dominated Marlon Vera (in a fight inexplicably given a split decision anyway), agreed to put his top contendership on the line against Umar Nurmagomedov despite Umar’s lack of ranked wins and, when Umar couldn’t make it, he fought Rob Font on short notice instead and dominated him, too.
It was a great run that could and should have gotten him a shot at Sean O’Malley’s championship.
Instead, the UFC gave it to Marlon Vera, the man Cory had already beaten. Cory got to wait until Umar was healthy again so the UFC could get a Nurmagomedov into title contention.
Cory tried, but Umar was too much for him. For the first time in his career Cory found himself thoroughly outwrestled, and forced to focus on takedown defense, he lost the striking war. With how dominant Umar had looked and how invested the UFC was in O’Malley, it was clear Cory’s path to the title was closed unless they both happened to fall by the wayside.
And then Merab wadded both men up and threw them in the trash.
And then Cory Sandhagen shredded Deiveson Figueiredo’s knee ligaments in two rounds.
And now, seven years later, he has his first real title shot, and as a longtime Cory Sandhagen fan, I cannot tell you how happy it makes me that he’s finally gotten here. His laurels are verdant, his opportunities are deserved, and as a fan of the sport, it’s just fantastic to see him receive his shot at the top of the mountain.
Anyway, Merab’s gonna kill him.
I’m sorry! I’m sorry, Sandman. I love you and your many weird long-legged guard tricks. But I don’t think you’re going to be able to stop the wrestling spam any better than Umar did, and O’Malley’s already proven Merab’s ability to deal with range. You are the one person other than Merab I would love to see win gold at 135, but I think you are going to get tossed around for three out of five rounds here and it’s probably going to be really, really fun to watch.
MERAB DVALISHVILI BY DECISION.
MAIN CARD: WHO’S GOT NEXT
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Jiří Procházka (31-5-1, #2) vs Khalil Rountree Jr. (14-6 (1), #4)
Over the last few events we’ve been openly discussing the many troubles facing the future of Light Heavyweight, and this fight is a companion piece to last week’s Carlos Ulberg vs Dominick Reyes in figuring out who gets the first crack at that future. Ulberg’s absolute trucking of Reyes gives him a very strong argument, and as good and vicious as Jiří Procházka and Khalil Rountree Jr. can both be, they are, unfortunately, stuck in very similar positions: Both are top five fighters, both are coming off dominant victories over former champion Jamahal Hill, and if Alex Pereira wins back his belt, both of them are completely boned.
Khalil’s shot at Alex may have been silly, but it was, at least, fun, with Khalil even cracking Alex early in the fight before getting battered to a stoppage in the fourth round. Jiří has managed two shots at Pereira’s belt, and both times saw him get brutally knocked out in the second round. Not only have both men failed to beat Alex, they failed within the last calendar year. If Magomed Ankalaev stays on top, they’re live contenders and a victory would give either a great claim on top contendership. If Pereira sits back down on the throne, they’re going to be watching Carlos Ulberg fight for the title while they go back to fighting Johnny Walker.
It’s a stylistically fascinating matchup, though. Both men are exceptionally talented strikers, but where Khalil succeeds based on his ability to stay composed and commit only to tactical, strategic attacks and counters, Jiří doesn’t seem to perform to the best of his abilities unless he lets himself fly into loose, berserker rages. Counterintuitively, this works really, really well for him, because he makes his own opportunities to blitz people, where Khalil has sometimes found himself hypnotized into never finding the openings he’s looking for. I cannot help seeing this fight as a lot closer than the Jiří-will-kill-him mentality most people are bringing to it, but I also share their dreams, so JIŘÍ PROCHÁZKA BY TKO.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Josh Emmett (19-5, #8) vs Youssef Zalal (17-5-1, #9)
It’s hard not to feel like we’re winding down the clock on Josh Emmett. He’s one year away from hitting a full decade in the UFC, and it’s hard to keep that amount of time in mind given how recent his rise to contendership really was, but you’ve gotta get six fights into his company tenure just to find someone who isn’t retired from the sport. I was still holding out hope that Emmett could bullrush his way back into the title picture, but Lerone Murphy was just too much for him, and that makes it awful hard to see another Josh Emmett championship prospect run. He’s going on 41, he’s gotten beat by two top contenders and Ilia Topuria, and there are at least three more with better claims than his. But we’ll always have the beautiful moment he destroyed a Nazi.
Youssef Zalal, funnily enough, is following Emmett’s path to relevancy. Zalal flamed out of the company in 2022 on a four-fight winless streak that also included a loss to Topuria, he battled his way back onto the roster through the regional scene, and now he’s in the top ten the same exact way Josh Emmett got there: Feasting on Calvin Kattar’s bones. When Emmett beat Kattar it was 2022, Kattar’s only losses in years came against the best in the world and Emmett won a razor-close decision that arguably should have gone the other way. When Zalal did it, Kattar was on the 4th drop of a now-five-fight losing streak, it was pretty one-sided up until a third round Zalal mostly spent backpedaling out of danger, and everyone went home feeling kind of bummed out about life.
This is a tough one for me. I have, demonstrably, always had an outsized view of Emmett’s skillset and capabilities, and I have been a big fan of Zalal’s rise up the ladder, and logically, Zalal should take this fairly handily, and I am still resistant to the idea. Youssef’s got range and speed, but he doesn’t have the kind of power it’s typically taken to back Emmett off, nor do I think the back-pocket wrestling game he likes to employ is enough to get Emmett off his feet. I am almost assuredly making the same mental mistake I always have, but: JOSH EMMETT BY DECISION.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Abus Magomedov (28-6-1, #14) vs Joe Pyfer (14-3, NR)
How far must a man go in the sport for us to forgive him for allowing World Champion Sean Strickland to happen? Is our justice system punitive or rehabilitative, and if so, what is beating Michel Pereira worth? Do we give Abus Magomedov time off for good behavior just because he choked out Brunno Ferreira? His skillset is still solid and I enjoy his long-ass kicks, but I am still furious with him and may well be for the rest of recorded time.
That is, however, a reaction. Despite the UFC’s best attempts I still cannot find it in myself to have a reaction to Joe Pyfer. We’re six fights into his tenure and my favorite moment of the whole run is still Jack Hermansson beating him and the company trying very hard to pretend it never happened. We just saw Joe Pyfer fight Kelvin Gastelum, furiously drop him in the first round, and somehow, impossibly, he proceeded to somehow still almost lose a fight with 2025 Kelvin Gastelum.
I have very little faith in either of these men to get past the top ten, but for love of the hating game, let’s say ABUS MAGOMEDOV BY DECISION.
PRELIMS: THE AWKWARD MIDDLE CHAPTER
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Ateba Gautier (8-1) vs Tre’ston Vines (10-3)
This was already a mismatch and now it’s basically an execution. Ateba Gautier is the UFC’s new big Middleweight knockout star, an enormous, terrifying Cameroonian punchman who dropped José Medina in three and a half minutes and barely needed 70 seconds to stop Robert Valentin, which is why they had him booked to headline the prelims against Ozzy Diaz, who is 1-1 in the UFC and who got brutally knocked out in both his company debut and his 2022 bid at the Contender Series. If that matchmaking wasn’t subtle enough for you, when Ozzy pulled out just five days before this event, instead of any standing Middleweights or other DWCS prospects, the UFC decided to sign Tre’ston Vines. He’s 10-3! He’s finished all of his last three fights! Said fights were against the 3-2 Ethan Hughes, the 14-9 Robert Hale, and my personal favorite, Ratavious “Playboy” Thrasher, who is 0-8 in MMA, 0-5 in boxing, and has exactly one kickboxing fight to his name, during which he was knocked out in seventeen seconds. But those are the people he beat, you say, and surely, that doesn’t mean the UFC would be so underhanded as to bring Tre’ston up as a lamb to the slaughter on live, internationally-broadcast television!
Tre’ston has three professional losses and every single one involved someone punching him to death in a single round. I’m sorry, buddy. I hope you shock the world and really, really piss off the matchmakers, but ATEBA GAUTIER BY TKO feels a lot more likely.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Edmen Shahbazyan (15-5) vs André Muniz (24-7)
We are here adrift in the world of broken prospects. Edmen Shahbazyan was supposed to be the UFC’s brand new striking golden boy, as subtly indicated by his nickname, “The Golden Boy,” and he was struck down in his prime by the unfair curse of grappling being legal in mixed martial arts. The UFC would like to sell you on the sharp new Shahbazyan that’s learned from his mistakes and grown as a fighter, as indicated by his first winning streak in six years, but those two wins were over Dylan Budka and Andre Petroski and one fight/one year ago Edmen was getting pasted by Gerald Meerschaert, so as always, do not believe their lies. André Muniz, though, I just don’t really know what to tell you, man. André was this fantastic grappling prospect who tapped Eryk Anders and retired Jacaré by snapping his humerus with an armbar, and he looked all to hell as though he’d be a genuine threat to the kickboxing-heavy upper classes of the division. And then Brendan Allen and Paul Craig both outgrappled him, and Jun Yong Park arguably got boned out of a decision against him, and Ikram Aliskerov knocked him out in a round, and now Muniz is 1 for 4 over the last three years.
In other words: This is the cover fight. If Edmen knocks André out, it proves that he’s solved his grappling problems, even though André is a middling wrestler who couldn’t ground Brendan Allen, a man who was once taken down by the wrestling god Kevin Holland. My brain thinks this ends with Edmen punting him into the third row, but my heart refuses to quit. ANDRÉ MUNIZ BY SUBMISSION.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Chris Gutierrez (22-5-2) vs Farid Basharat (13-0)
These two boys have a bad case of the barely-unranked Bantamweight blues. Chris Gutierrez has been kicking and punching and backfisting men for the last seven years with only two losses on his record, but they were incredibly poorly-timed losses to Pedro Munhoz and Song Yadong, so he got stuck with the unfair reputation of being unable to get past gatekeepers. Instead, he gets to fight the Quang Les and John Castañedas to see if they’re worthy of a push up the ladder. Farid Basharat is in need of that push. He’s undefeated and he’s looked good in all of his UFC fights, but unfortunately, when you’re not a finishing artist, things like “looking good” and “never losing” are no longer enough to get you over the hump, which is why after four straight wins he’s still not fighting for a spot in the rankings despite being in the same division that just gave Marcus McGhee a shot at top contendership.
Gutierrez is one of my favorite prospect killers and I always love the chance to watch him kick people, but I think Farid’s too defensively sound and too well-rounded to get overwhelmed the way his other opponents have. FARID BASHARAT BY DECISION.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Daniel Santos (12-2) vs Joosang Yoo (9-0)
I am fully and wholly into this thanks to the unforeseen scarcity of Daniel Santos fights. “Willycat” is fun and talented and a perpetually intriguing prospect and he’s also secretly the subject matter of Cake’s 1998 absentee-partner alt-jam “Never There” because motherfucker cannot stay booked for fights. This will mark Daniel’s fifth cagewalk with the UFC in four years, and in that same span of time he’s pulled out of five fights and had two others blow up on him. He’s fought once in the last two and a half years and it was an upset decision over Lee Jeong-yeong that was assembled a week before the event, which as a barometer of his current competitive state makes it either incredibly valuable or absolutely useless depending on how you feel about agnosticism. Joosang Yoo has been here four months and his only win came against a guy who got beat up by the guy who lost a UFC fight because someone started barking at him. It’s one of the extremely rare cases wherein a fighter’s regional performances are actually more of a justification for his level of quality than his UFC debut, and that sentence is going to become a lot more common in the next few years, and that’s very, very depressing.
Anyway, JOOSANG YOO BY DECISION.
EARLY PRELIMS: AN ELEGY FOR PATCHY
WOMEN’S BANTAMWEIGHT: Macy Chiasson (10-4, #5) vs Yana Santos (16-8 (1), #10)
I feel very “say the line, Bart” about the degree to which I am obviously going to complain about a top five Women’s Bantamweight fight being all the way down on the early prelims below such luminaries of the sport as Abus Magomedov, Edmen Shahbazyan and no less than Tre’ston Vines, but how angry can I really be when even I made the title of this section center on Patchy Mix instead of either of these women? How can I come on when I know I’m guilty? Macy Chiasson went from one fight away from the championship to trying to stay on the borderline rankings thanks to Ketlen Vieira bouncing her out of the contenders’ circle and Yana Santos only has two wins in the last four and a half years and they came against Chelsea Chandler, who had never made the Bantamweight limit and failed once again to do so during their contest, and Miesha Tate, who was returning from her second or third or fifth retirement from the sport after washing out at Flyweight. Do these women deserve more respect from the UFC? Absolutely. Is the smoldering wreckage of Women’s Bantamweight going to be reinvigorated by this fight? No.
But it sure would be nice to see Macy get to the belt one day. MACY CHIASSON BY DECISION.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Patchy Mix (20-2) vs Jakub Wikłacz (16-3-2)
In an era marked by damn near everyone the UFC has brought in from other organizations flaming out under the spotlight, no one flamed out as unspectacularly or depressingly as Patchy Mix. Patrício Pitbull losing was understandable; he’s up there in years. Kai Asakura losing was understandable; Alexandre Pantoja is a monster. Patchy Mix losing would have been equally understandable if he hadn’t lost so bafflingly. Mario Bautista is an underrated contender who could easily be fighting for the belt next year, but Patchy was one of the best Bantamweights outside the UFC, a man with victories over UFC veterans, former champions and some of the top fighters in the world. Against Mario, he looked frozen. He was stiff, he was confused, and despite being one of the most dangerous grapplers in the sport, he made one single attempt to get the fight to the floor. If he were a DWCS prospect, this is where he would be given a soft target so he could begin rehabilitating himself for a proper run. Instead: Jakub Wikłacz. Jakub Wikłacz is another of those best-Bantamweights-outside-the-UFC candidates, the reigning champion of Poland’s KSW, a killer grappler in his own right, and a man who’s only lost one fight in the last eight and a half years, and he proceeded to have a Moreno/Figueiredoian series of rematches that involved drawing with him once and beating him twice, the last time by submission. He’s been twiddling his thumbs since the Summer of 2024, but a lot of very smart people are very excited to see him tear up the UFC.
And I cannot let go of my dreams. Patchy: This is your shot. You only get one more before people give up on you. You have already gone from the main card of a pay-per-view to the early preliminaries. Choke this man and get your groove back. PATCHY MIX BY SUBMISSION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Punahele Soriano (11-4) vs Nikolay Veretennikov (13-6)
In his last fight Veretennikov met Austin Vanderford, a Bellator titlist the UFC actively turned down for so much as a shot on DWCS, and Vanderford smashed him, and that was five months ago, and Vanderford is gone but Veretennikov is here, fighting another man the UFC doesn’t really care about anymore.
I appreciate that Austin Vanderford is finally booked again, and somehow it’s not only on the same card as Nikolay Veretennikov’s next appearance, it’s one fight under Veretennikov’s, despite Vanderford beating the piss out of him. It’s like one little passive-aggressive fuck-you. It’s extra funny because Veretennikov probably should’ve lost his last fight against Francisco Prado and been cut on a three-loss skid but was saved by a dodgy split decision, and it’s especially funny because Punahele Soriano is, himself, also one of those guys the UFC is kind-of sort-of giving up on. Puna’s a big brawling knockout artist, and they had some real hopes for him as a highlight-reel prospect, and then he went 1-4 across three years and got repeatedly finished and had to drop from Middleweight to Welterweight in the hopes of saving his career, and now he’s lost in the great sea of 170-pound prospects. He destroyed Uroš Medić when last we saw him, but that meant so much to the UFC that he’s all the way down here again.
It could be a fun fight, though. Veretennikov’s got fun combinations when he lets them flow and Soriano hits like a bus crashing into another bus in some sort of horrifying crossing guard accident, so there’s a high potential for fun exchanges here. But I think that plays into Puna’s hands both figuratively and literally. PUNAHELE SORIANO BY TKO.
WELTERWEIGHT: Ramiz Brahimaj (12-5) vs Austin Vanderford (13-2)
Speaking of misplaced puzzle pieces, good lord, you two. Ramiz Brahimaj was supposed to be a Welterweight contender with fast hands and an elite, Travis Lutter-trained grappling game who upended the division, and Austin Vanderford was the undefeated wrestling pride of Coconut Creek who strangled people on the Contender Series back when it was new and got turned down for a UFC contract for daring to grapple. Vanderford fell off in 2022 after getting stopped by one of the greatest to ever do it, Gegard Mousasi, and Aaron Jeffery, who, by contrast, exists. But Ramiz couldn’t get past Max Griffin, Themba Gorimbo or 2022-era Court McGee, so no snickering is allowed from his corner.
I expected great things from Ramiz once, and now, years later, I am more willing to ride the Bellator nostalgia train all the way down. AUSTIN VANDERFORD BY DECISION.
WOMEN’S FLYWEIGHT: Veronica Hardy (9-5-1) vs Brogan Walker (7-4)
I did a double-take when I saw Brogan Walker. We already went through this back in 2023 when Veronica Hardy abruptly returned after three full years away from the sport, went on a genuinely cool three-fight winning streak, then got beaten up by Eduarda Moura and went away for a year again, and now it’s Brogan’s turn to be dug out of the lost ice floes of World War II. Brogan was the runner-up on The Ultimate Fighter 30 (jesus christ), having lost in the championship match-up to the future all-weight-classes champion Juliana “Killer” Miller, and eight months later she came back and got pieced up by Iasmin Lucindo, too, and for the last two and a half years, that’s been it. I assumed she had either retired or suffered some Ponzinibbian medical condition that did it for her. But it’s 2025, and by god, Brogan Walker has returned from beyond the rim to save us all.
Anyway, VERONICA HARDY BY DECISION.