SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18 FROM THE ROGERS ARENA IN VANCOUVER, CANADA
PRELIMS 1 PM PDT / 4 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 4 PM / 7 PM
One week ago:
Welcome back to Brazil. This is the fourth-to-last stop on the UFC’s 2025 regional appeal tour--we’re in Canada next week, so look forward to co-main event Mike Malott again--and every single fight on this card has at least one Brazilian for people to cheer and clap and chant “uh vai morrer” about.
Welcome to Canada! Only half of this card has a Canadian in it, two of the fights on the main card have no Canadians in them, and the main event has a Dutchman and a guy from South Carolina. British Columbia will have to satisfy itself with the hope that Jasmine Jasudavicius can make it into top contendership, but hey, at least that means the ranked women’s fight isn’t on the fucking prelims for once.
MAIN EVENT: GRAPPLING WITH CHANGE
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Reinier de Ridder (21-2, #4) vs Brendan Allen (25-7, #9)
I’ve been doing a lot of complaining about the UFC’s largely successful attempts to push strikers to the forefront of the sport, and it’s amazing that of all of the weight classes in all of the gin joints in town, Middleweight, the division that gave us Rich Franklin, Anderson Silva, Robert Whittaker, Israel Adesanya and Alex Pereira, is the one growing a glut of top-ranked grapplers.
Khamzat Chimaev is the new bogeyman. Never beaten, rarely threatened, we just watched him put on a 25-minute wrestling clinic so comprehensive that Dricus du Plessis, one of the best wildmen in the sport, only managed to land three significant strikes in the first four rounds--that’s the kind of horrifyingly effective grappling game that makes people wonder if anyone in the division has an answer for it. Reinier de Ridder is one of those theoretical answers. Which is funny, because much like Dricus, a big part of RDR’s appeal comes from looking like he really shouldn’t win fights the way he does.
He’s gangly. He’s awkward. Like Keith Jardine before him, de Ridder both herks and, on occasion, jerks. His punches are kind of slow, his head doesn’t move very much, his boxing guard isn’t very effective, he eats lots of punches he really shouldn’t. Every once in awhile he moves across the cage as though puppeteering his own legs in the third person and it’s like watching a gazelle tumble over a hill towards an angry, underpaid lion. By all the laws of ocular science, he should be losing.
So why does he always win?
Reinier hasn’t even crossed twelve months in the UFC and he’s already 4-0 and a fight away from the title. Hell, just this past July we watched de Ridder theory in action. Robert Whittaker cracked him, repeatedly, and damn near knocked him out twice, and somehow RDR didn’t just make it to the bell, he tired Rob out with knees and clinchwork and his shockingly effective grappling, and the split decision that ensued may have been the dictionary definition of a coinflip, but de Ridder won it and Rob didn’t. He choked out Kevin Holland, he knocked out Bo Nickal, he outlasted a world champion and here, tonight, he’s fighting for guaranteed top contendership against the UFC’s other hot-streak Middleweight prospect in one of the best matchups of the entire year and I’m really exc--
Oh.
Anthony Hernandez got injured again.
Goddammit. Hi, Brendan Allen.
No, it’s fine. It’s not your fault. I’m not mad at you, Brendan Allen, in part because the statute of limitations has passed on that time you tweeted about how whooping your kids makes them better than other kids and I haven’t checked to see what other scientific childrearing observations you’ve made recently. You’re a fine grappler too! You do the jiu-jitsu. You choked out Paul Craig, that means you’re at least as good at fighting as Jimmy Crute, and that’s worth being proud of.
It’s just--you lost a fight to Anthony Hernandez, like, this year. It wasn’t even particularly close. He doubled you up on strikes and outwrestled the heck out of you. So from the perspective of a really interesting match between two very different styles of grappler, you are, definitionally, the less interesting grappling matchup.
And the other intrigue of this fight was about who would win the race to stake a claim to #1 contendership against current frontrunner Nassourdine Imavov, and, at risk of being indelicate, he also beat you, like, twelve and a half months ago, and that one wasn’t all that close, either. He shut down 90% of your takedowns and spent the last two rounds just sort of casually butchering you. So you’re not really a great replacement from a top-contendership perspective, either.
It’s not that I’m counting you out! You’re neat. You’re aggressive as hell with your submission offense and you just proved that you’ve still got it in you to push the pace and win fights against no less than, uh, Marvin Vettori, who had one win in the last four years.
Jesus christ, Middleweight. I was so distracted by the shiny gold filigree of grapplers you’ve grown that I forgot about the rot in your cold, wooden heart.
Look: It’s a bad matchup for Brendan. One fight ago I would’ve said there’s a surprisingly good chance he could catch RDR on the feet and take him out, but we just watched de Ridder weather the Whittaker storm. I do not think Allen hits harder or better than Robert Whittaker, even in 2025, and that means this is likely to go where Allen’s fights tend to, which is the clinch and the ground, and I would be stunned if he doesn’t get controlled in both. Reinier’s bigger, more technical and more than capable of exploiting Allen’s problems jumping on chokes instead of maintaining control.
REINIER DE RIDDER BY SUBMISSION when Allen’s three rounds in and tired.
CO-MAIN EVENT: GENERATIONAL EXPERIMENTS
WELTERWEIGHT: Kevin Holland (28-14 (1), #15) vs Mike Malott (12-2-1, NR)
I’m keenly aware of the way I overuse certain phrases, and ‘this sport moves so fast’ is one of the ones I abuse constantly, but very little makes me think of it the way Kevin Holland showing up does, and I’m not sure how much of that is the actual speed of the sport as opposed to the combination of the time-warping effects of the pandemic and the way the linear flow of time accelerates as you age.
In my head, I still remember Kevin Holland as the Contender Series prospect Dana White didn’t like because, hysterically, he talked too much shit for Dana’s tastes. They didn’t even give him a contract! Alonzo Menifield and Greg fucking Hardy got offered contracts from that episode, but Kevin Holland just didn’t cut the mustard.
That was twenty-seven fights ago. This will mark twenty-eight.
Most UFC careers aren’t that long. A number of divisions don’t even have fighters who’ve fought that much. Raquel Pennington’s got the record for most bouts at Women’s Bantamweight in the UFC and she’s only at 18. Flyweight’s a tie between Tim Elliott and Joe-Jitsu master Joseph Benavidez at 19. Both of those divisions predate Holland’s UFC debut by almost six years, and he’s worn more tread off his tires than either.
And I think some of that feeling of time dilation comes from how long it’s been since he actually got anywhere by doing it. Kevin was a real, legitimate contender--five years ago, when he knocked out Jacaré Souza, who was seventeen years into his career and one fight away from retirement. Since then, it’s been a constant back-and-forth swing. Two wins, two losses. Two wins, two losses. One win, two losses. He spent the middle chunk of 2025 working up two wins again!
Then he lost his last fight to Daniel Rodriguez, and now they want to capitalize by trying again with Mike goddamn Malott.
We have been here before, almost two years prior. Mike Malott was one of the UFC’s great big hopes. Successful Contender Series prospect, only one loss in his career, regional champion in his native Canada, where, coincidentally, they could desperately use a contender to serve as a star attraction, having not had a main-event tier Canadian since Georges St-Pierre retired to cultivate his collection of dinosaur fossils.
And hey, signing him worked out great! He went on an immediate three-fight winning streak and he finished every single fight! Sure, two of those three men had 1-1 UFC records and the other one was Mickey Gall, the CM Punk slayer, but that’s how promotion works, baby! He’s a winner, so all he has to do is keep winning, and we’ve got a big pay-per-view in Toronto and we’re gonna put him against Neil Magny on the main card and he’s gonna dominate him and it’ll launch him as a star.
Which almost worked! Unfortunately, Mike Malott only dominated Neil Magny for 90% of the fight. Neil flipped him over in the last minute of the fight and pounded him flat fifteen seconds before the bell.
But it’s a learning experience, and the UFC definitely wouldn’t slow-walk Malott again. In fact, both of his two subsequent fights were against fighters with winning UFC records!
Those records were 7-6 and 3-1, and hilariously, both of them had also been violently knocked out by Carlos Prates within the last twelve months.
The UFC wants Malott to win. Honestly, they kind of need a Malott win. They’ve been trying to make Mike Malott a thing in Canada for two straight years and they really need him to wrestle Holland to death. They’re firmly in the value-extraction stage of the Kevin Holland career arc and this is his time to put over the regional talent and give the marketing team what they desperately want.
Which means I will, of course, root against it and hope for Holland and his monstrous reach advantage to get another upset. KEVIN HOLLAND BY SUBMISSION.
MAIN CARD: MANON AND ON
BANTAMWEIGHT: Marlon Vera (23-10-1, #7) vs Aiemann Zahabi (13-2, #9)
The same way it’s hard to truly accurately evaluate something’s quality until it’s been around long enough for its impact to be felt, it’s easy to get excited about winning streaks that, in hindsight, were a little porous. It’s similarly easy to see why people went nuts for Title Contender Marlon Vera: He’s a likable dude with a great story (he fights for his daughter!), he’s a perpetual underdog with a long history as a journeyman (eleven years in the UFC!), and he’s got a style that lends itself to big, dramatic moments (don’t do anything and then suddenly knock someone out!). That said: His journey into the top ten was predicated on victories over Davey Grant, an eternal gatekeeper in Rob Font, and two former champions in Frankie Edgar and Dominick Cruz who were two minutes from retirement. Against his actual peers in top competition Chito’s only 1-3 over the last three years, and with respect to Chito, the decision that gave him that win was a disgrace.
So now, he gets to test prospects. Aiemann Zahabi is not the Canadian the UFC saw coming. By mid-2019 he was 1-2 with the company, he’d only fought twice in two years, he was about to miss two more years of his prime thanks to Covid, and by the time he returned in 2021 he was an unidentifiably average mid-30s Bantamweight on a losing streak that stretched back to 2017. Now he’s on a six-fight winning streak, five of which saw him enter as a sizable underdog. And a lot of people still hate him, because one fight ago, he retired José Aldo. When Aiemann beat Javid Basharat and Pedro Munhoz people were at best mildly impressed; theoretically, beating one of the greatest fighters of all time should have justified his place on top. Unfortunately, damn near the entire world thought the fight was a robbery. Aldo seemingly clearly won the first two rounds, but the third round was a wild, back-and-forth affair that saw Aldo almost knock Zahabi cold only for Zahabi to turn the fight around and spend the back half of the round pounding Alto insensible. Was it enough for the win? Probably shouldn’t have been.
But was it enough to justify Zahabi in the top ten? Dude, he almost punched out José Aldo. He caught a beating from one of the greatest and by the end of the fight he was the one on top. He shouldn’t have taken the decision, but that doesn’t erase the performance. Marlon’s been held back by his own low-volume, knockout-hunting style, and it’s hard to see him overcoming Zahabi’s fundamentals here. AIEMANN ZAHABI BY DECISION.
WOMEN’S FLYWEIGHT: Manon Fiorot (12-2, #2) vs Jasmine Jasudavicius (14-3, #5)
Opportunities are slim and fleeting. Between the difficulties of matchmaking, the drag of the Valentina Shevchenko vs Alexa Grasso championship trilogy and the UFC’s attempts to get Rose Namajunas into the title picture come Hell or high water, it took seven fights across more than four years for Manon Fiorot to get her shot at Valentina Shevchenko. The fight was, objectively, two things: Extremely close and extremely uneventful. Shevchenko won the decision and deserved to, but a couple extra punches or a shifting opinion on a single round would’ve made Fiorot the champion. Having lost and, of course, lost boringly, it’s time to fight down in the division.
I have been doubting Jasmine Jaduavicius, and it’s possible I need to stop. Her rise up the ranks, in fairness, reads a lot like Marlon Vera’s. Priscila Cachoeira was a journeywoman who hadn’t won a fight in years, Fatima Kline was making her debut, Ariane da Silva was 6-6, Mayra Bueno Silva was already two losses deep on a precipitous collapse. The fight that got Jasmine into the top five was her submission over Jéssica Andrade, and as much as it pains me to disrespect one of my favorite fighters, beating Jéssica Andrade ain’t what it used to be. In 2025 she’s 2 for 8 and bouncing between weight classes and seemingly deeply confused about the trajectory of her own career.
But submitting Jéssica Andrade is still a big deal. That said: This is a big jump. Manon’s real hard to take down, she’s got a strength advantage over most of the division, and her striking’s been leagues better than Jasmine’s. MANON FIOROT BY DECISION feels very likely, but I’m gonna quietly root for an upset because it’d be a lot more interesting.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Cody Gibson (21-11) vs Aoriqileng (25-12 (1))
Cody Gibson, you lost the battle, but you won the war. Gibson got cut from the UFC a decade ago after going 1-3 in a run notable only for including both Aljamain Sterling and Manny Gamburyan, a sentence that feels like it should be temporally illegal, and was lost in the regional shuffle until the UFC invited him back for The Ultimate Fighter 31 (jesus christ) as a member of the second-chances comeback team. And he--lost. He made it to the finals and got beat by Brad Katona, who was, himself, making a UFC comeback. But Katona got cut again after a last knockout loss in May, and now Gibson, who is a mighty 2-3, is here to pick up the pieces as the heir to the TUF fortune, thanks to the incredible momentum imparted on him by his last fight this past March when Da’Mon Blackshear beat him and nearly broke his arm with a kimura.
Aoriqileng is here for revenge. You might think I mean revenge for his last fight, when Raul Rosas Jr. wrestled him to death, but no. You might think I’m referring to the fight before that, when Daniel Marcos punted an airborne Aori in the junk so hard he had to be carried out of the arena, and that’d be a better guess, but no, it’s not that either. Aoriqileng is here for revenge on Vancouver. After eight years and thirty-four professional fights, Aoriqileng had never once been knocked out, and that record was taken away from him two years ago in this very arena when main-card buddy Aiemann Zahabi dropped him in a minute flat. A burning hatred for everything Vancouver lives in Aoriqileng’s heart now. He wakes and stabs a dagger into the Canucks poster that lives beside his bed. He dreams of the fall of Bryan Adams.
He’ll settle for starting with a win. AORIQILENG BY DECISION.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Kyle Nelson (16-6-1) vs Matt Frevola (11-5-1)
The rise of Kyle Nelson was not foreseen by the oracles of combat. When the UFC booked him into his 2023 fight with Choi Doo-ho on their eastern-appeal Lewis vs Spivac card, Nelson was on a two-fight losing streak, hadn’t won in almost three and a half years, and was widely considered a soft target for the returning Korean Superboy. Instead, Nelson gutted out a majority draw with the aid of a slightly sketchy point deduction. The UFC tried to dispose of him by throwing him against Contender Series winners and late-replacement signings, but an odd thing happened: Nelson kept winning. When he knocked out Bill Algeo in early 2024, the world was suddenly concerned about a possible Kyle Nelson rankings run. And then he missed weight and got dusted in a round by Steve Garcia and now he’s been sitting idle for thirteen months and he’s a Lightweight.
Matt Frevola’s ship, however, is actively burning in the harbor. After a somewhat shaky start to his UFC career Frevola established himself as the wild gunman of the Lightweight division, a guy who at one point was a well-rounded wrestleboxer who abandoned the pretense of grappling in favor of a fighting style oriented around hitting people in the head as hard as he could. This is the classic mixed martial arts crowd-pleasing technique, and as always, it works until it doesn’t. It got Frevola right up to #14, and then he was horribly, violently ejected from the rankings thanks to back-to-back knockout losses and now he’s stuck in the unranked morass again, trying to violently punch his way through the walls of his prison.
You would think Nelson coming up from 145 would make him the smaller man here, but he has the size advantage, which is presumably why he had so much trouble making weight. I dunno, man, this one could be a coinflip. I think Frevola has the tighter boxing and the better odds of winning, but he likes to wing it and Nelson could starch him the same way he did Algeo. MATT FREVOLA BY TKO but the gods will be watching.
PRELIMS: SURPRISINGLY FEW CANADIANS, ACTUALLY
FEATHERWEIGHT: Charles Jourdain (16-8-1) vs Davey Grant (15-7)
In this modern era where the entire sport of mixed martial arts has reoriented itself around the right wing it takes a lot for me to singularly identify a fighter for being a shithead, but Charles Jourdain blaming his 2024 split decision loss to Sean Woodson (which 92% of the media scored for Woodson) on the judges being transgender liberals is one of those particularly pathetic things that really burns itself into your brain. On the plus side, that also made it extra satisfying when Jean Silva punched him out. Jourdain’s been on the shelf with injuries since his strangling of Victor Henry last November, and now he gets to be in his home country to hopefully get beaten up by Davey Grant, who is somehow back on a Featherweight winning streak as he stares down his thirteenth year in the UFC and his fortieth birthday. He’s always been a less flashy, solid-fundamentals kind of fighter, and that’s played really well into his age. Hell, if it weren’t for a dodgy split decision loss to Daniel Marcos, he’d be riding five straight wins instead of two. But shutting down Da’Mon Blackshear this past July was a real solid showing.
Fuck Chuck Jordan. DAVEY GRANT BY TKO.
FLYWEIGHT: Bruno Silva (14-7-2 (1), #14) vs Hyunsung Park (10-1, NR)
Welcome to the Flyweight division rehab center, your home for wayward prospects. Bruno, this is your second time coming through our facility and I just want you to know, no one here is disappointed in you. It was okay when you were losing to Tagir Ulanbekov five years ago and it’s okay that you’re losing to Joshua Van now. There’s a big world between beating up JP Buys and fighting Manel Kape, and this is a place to stop and quietly reflect on where your place in that world is and why it’s stuck at #14. Mr. Park, Bruno can show you around the grounds and help you find your room, but make sure you’re down in the morning for orientation so you’re not late to your 11 AM therapy session. The theme is “How to cope with losing your top prospect status because the UFC asked you to go from fighting journeymen to competing for the #6 spot on incredibly short notice and you got pasted in six minutes and now you’re on the prelims trying to get your groove back.”
And then you two will fight to the death for our amusement. Thanks for destroying mental health services in America, Mr. Reagan. HYUNSUNG PARK BY TKO.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Danny Barlow (9-1) vs Djorden Santos (10-2)
At some points in your life, you come to crossroads, and those crossroads mean asking yourself difficult, life-changing questions. Do you stay safe in your home, or seek adventure? Is the risk of change worth the reward of growth? Can you find it within yourself to give love a chance despite being hurt before, or has the transfigurative experience of pain ruined your ability to trust someone’s heart? Do you, at the end of the day, believe in a man who got knocked out by Sam Patterson more than you believe in a man who lost a decision to Ozzy Diaz?
I choose life. DANNY BARLOW BY TKO.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Kyle Prepolec (18-9) vs Drew Dober (27-15 (1))
Kyle, this is your chance. Prepolec was plucked out of the Ontarian aether to rescue a main-card pay-per-view fight this past May during the UFC’s trip to Montreal. Benoît Saint Denis needed an opponent a week before the show, it’s harder than it used to be to get fighters into Canada for reasons that assuredly have nothing to do with the UFC’s politics, and Kyle Prepolec had the happy confluence of having been in the UFC for an unsuccessful cup of coffee six years prior, having already been training for a local fight that weekend, and most importantly, Being Canadian. So he lived the Rocky dream of going from the locals to fighting at the big show for a top fifteen ranking in the world on short notice! And he got dominated and choked out in two rounds. But he’s still here, and he gets to fight Drew Dober now, who is much more a fan of the big swinging striking style Prepolec prefers to fight with. And hell, at this point Dober’s been fighting for a dog’s age and he’s getting knocked out a bunch and he hasn’t won in two years, so the time is right for a new Canadian hero to take root.
Anyway, DREW DOBER BY TKO.
WOMEN’S STRAWWEIGHT: Stephanie Luciano (6-2-1) vs Ravena Oliveira (7-2-1)
The career arcs here are really something to write home about. Two years ago, Stephanie Luciano and Talita Alencar fought to a draw on the Contender Series. Luciano got signed and Alencar didn’t, but scheduling and health issues meant Luciano didn’t get to fight for almost a full year, at which point the UFC had changed their mind, signed Alencar and given her a fight already. So the UFC booked a rematch between the women, because that’s what we have come to, and this time, Luciano won. And then she lost a split decision to Sam Hughes and fell right back out of favor. Ravena “Kenoudy” Oliveira went from fighting three straight fights against 0-0 opponents to beating Simone da Silva, who was 8-5 at the time, is now 8-8, and is riding a truly incredible 32-fight losing streak when you include her boxing career, and through that fantastic victory, Ravena got signed to the UFC as a late replacement. She immediately lost a clear decision to Tainara Lisboa and hasn’t been back to the cage in two goddamn years.
This is our life. This is what we have chosen. STEPHANIE LUCIANO BY DECISION.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Azamat Bekoev (20-3) vs Yousri Belgaroui (8-3)
Sometimes a box has either a beautiful surprise or a dead body inside of it, and you can’t tell until you open it. On one hand, this fight could be really, really good. Azamat Bekoev is only two fights into his tenure as a late-replacement signing for the UFC but he’s already made a great accounting for himself after punching Zach Reese flat on the ground and knocking out TUF 32 (jc) champion Ryan Loder in just about six minutes, collectively. Yousri Belgaroui won his way through DWCS last year after knocking out Taiga Iwasaki, a veteran of not just Shooto but Ganryujima, the great holy moat of combat, and those knockouts are the centerpiece of his record, which is why the UFC anticipates fireworks here. And they could be right! But Yousri is also the man who went to a decision so uneventful with Marco Tulio that the UFC passed on both of them, and Azamat is the man who went to a split decision with Dylan “The Mindless Hulk” Budka, who spent his brief UFC career getting repeatedly punched silly, so this could be a quiet, uneventful, tentative sparring match.
But I’m hoping for fun. AZAMAT BEKOEV BY TKO.
WOMEN’S BANTAMWEIGHT: Melissa Croden (6-2) vs Tainara Lisboa (7-3)
The UFC’s been trying to get more prospects into Women’s Bantamweight lately, and Melissa Croden, as our resident Canadian, it’s your turn to come on down. Having done as I do and watched a bunch of tape on the debuting fighter, I’m both curious and concerned about how this one will go. Croden has a lot of promise as a fighter. She’s tall, she’s got good range and she knows how to use it, her long kicks and punches are solid and so is her clinchwork. She also has the hallmarks of the regional fighter who hasn’t had to worry about defense to the point that she won her last fight by putting the 8-7 Ashley “Cookie” Deen in the Thai plum and just walking her across the cage while repeatedly kneeing her in the gut because that’s the kind of thing you can get away with up until you can’t--which Croden learned the hard way back in 2023 when she got knocked down three times in one round by Jacqueline Cavalcanti, who’s now the #11 woman in the UFC. Tainara Lisboa is a decent kickboxer who has demonstrated an at least passing ability to lock up submissions when she needs to. But she’s been locking them up on women with little to no success in the sport. Hell, her best career win was that aforementioned victory over Ravena Oliveira, and Ravena, as you read, is now fighting 20 pounds down at Strawweight.
I’m gonna hope for the underdog on this one. If Croden hasn’t shored up her defense and worked on her gameplanning Lisboa could buzzsaw her, but there’s enough promise in Croden’s strengths that I want to believe. MELISSA CRODEN BY TKO.