SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1 FROM THE PITILESS PIT OF THE APEX
PRELIMS 1 PM PDT / 4 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 4 PM / 7 PM
Wasn’t that a great two and a half months on the road? We had our best break from the Apex yet and absolutely nothing silly, disappointing or infuriating happened. Nothing that could at all make you question your fandom in the sport.
But we did get to enjoy audiences, and an at least perfunctory amount of production, and the barest levels of effort to put fights people would actually pay money to see on UFC cards.
And now we’re back in the Apex and our main event is Steve Garcia vs David Onama. Welcome home.
MAIN EVENT: THERE IS NO FLOOR
FEATHERWEIGHT: Steve Garcia (18-5, #12) vs David Onama (14-2, #13)
During last week’s pay-per-view, the commentary team repeatedly hyped this fight as ‘a battle between Featherweight finishers’ to hype up a knockout. This is true, in the sense that Steve Garcia has finished a bunch of people. David Onama has one finish in his last five UFC fights. This is a battle between Featherweight finishers in the same sense that if you put Demetrious Johnson and I next to each other, it is a factual statement to say there are multiple world championships between us.
Finishes are the primary currency of modern mixed martial arts. There is a higher-ranked Heavyweight fight directly underneath this one that could just as easily have served as a main event, but it doesn’t have a guy who always knocks people out in it, so it’s consigned to co-main status. There’s a top-five Women’s Bantamweight fight on this card that could easily be a title eliminator, and it’s buried in the middle of the prelims, and don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll have my usual heart attack about it when we get there.
Instead of any of that, we’re here. Steve Garcia and David Onama. This is our main event. And I’m gonna spoil it for you: Next week is worse. At least both of these guys are, technically, ranked. Next week we’re in the Apex again and we’re getting Gabriel Bonfim vs Randy Brown with a scheduled co-main event of Matt Schnell vs Joseph Morales.
Some folks have passed this off by saying November is the dumping ground for cards the UFC doesn’t care about, and to them, I say you have goldfish brain. Last year we got Brandon Moreno vs Amir Albazi and Neil Magny vs Carlos Prates. In 2023 it was Jailton Almeida vs Derrick Lewis. The sport is getting worse, and the currency of finishes are propped up as the counterbalance for why that is not only okay, but in fact, good. The fights are exciting and people might get knocked out and that’s why you will watch it if you’re a real fan and it’s okay if, on paper, it sucks.
If you want to feel like the stuff you are watching matters, you are not a real fan.
I am, in fact, a Steve Garcia fan. I have been talking about his capacity for fistic violence for almost three years to the day, at this point. When you lamp Chase Hooper in ninety seconds, you and your future both deserve a very close look, and the UFC clearly agreed, as Steve’s been steadily getting booked twice a year ever since. He’s been disposing of everyone he fights in roughly the same fashion, and it’s a sign of the depth of the Featherweight division that where one neat knockout separates you from the top fifteen at Heavyweight or Light Heavyweight, it takes five straight just to get a shot at the Featherweight rankings.
But that shot can be real advantageous. We said Featherweight has insane depth, and it does. The top fifteen is full of killers. Only one of them was on a four-fight losing streak, and coincidentally, that’s the one Steve Garcia got to fight. Five years ago, Calvin Kattar seemed like a potential title contender. When he met Garcia this past July he hadn’t won a fight since the start of 2022, and unsurprisingly, he didn’t beat Garcia, either. He did, however, end Garcia’s finishing streak. Steve was able to drop him, but not stop him.
Shockingly: Finishing people gets harder as you rise in the ranks. Max fucking Holloway couldn’t stop Calvin Kattar. The UFC was very excited about David Onama’s finishing streak when they signed him back in 2021, and then he immediately lost to Mason Jones, because it turns out it’s a lot easier to finish people who are 11-13 than people who held title belts in Cage Warriors. But they did get Onama back on his finishing streak, and all it took was matching him up with journeymen like Gabriel Benítez and guys like Garrett Armfield, whom Onama had already beaten before, who also had all of a week to prepare.
Losing to Nate Landwehr immediately after did not help matters. There was a flash of hope, though, when Onama blasted Gabriel Santos out of his shoes. Santos is perpetually overlooked, but he almost inarguably should have a decision victory over current top contender Lerone Murphy and he’s sitting on a two-fight winning streak that includes choking out Jack Jenkins, so Onama not just beating but knocking him cold was an enormous feather in his cap, and a great way to get his hype back as a contender.
That hype has mostly stayed neutral. Onama’s on a winning streak, he’s riding solid victories, he has nothing to be ashamed of. But he has three decisions in a row and one of them included missing weight, and much like Garcia, the fight that got Onama into the rankings was a victory over Giga Chikadze, who, himself, has just one win in four fights across the last four years. The shine one gets from Giga has waned.
And that’s your main event. It’s a rankings-appropriate matchup between two guys who are basically just making a lateral move by beating each other. Which is, to bring things full circle, part of why the UFC is so focused on the finishing aspect of things. They want someone to end the night face-down and the highlight reel to do the promotion for them.
I’m not sure they’re going to get what they want. Garcia and Onama are both tough competitors, but the Kattar fight showed Garcia’s willingness to keep things a touch more strategic instead of throwing himself headlong into danger to land a punch like he used to, and Onama has always been a defensively sound fighter, which is part of why he hasn’t knocked anyone out in several years. My inkling here is to pick Onama, as his more measured assault seems a hair more likely to get through Garcia’s offensive onslaughts.
But for once, I’m going to let myself hope for fun and chaos. STEVE GARCIA BY TKO.
CO-MAIN EVENT: WHITTLING TO THE BONE
HEAVYWEIGHT: Waldo Cortes-Acosta (14-2, #6) vs Ante Delija (26-6, #9)
If you want a simple shorthand for how dire the entire situation was, it’s this: Tom Aspinall vs Ciryl Gane is the first undisputed UFC Heavyweight Championship bout between full-time fighters since January 22, 2022.
Forty-five months. I have spent a great deal of time in these columns discussing the UFC’s many promotional failures, and all of those evaluations carry the frustrated self-awareness that failure, as a concept, can barely even be considered to exist when the UFC is inherently insulated from consequences for it. But it took the UFC forty-five months to get the Heavyweight division to a state that can be called, at its most basic level, functional, and by any measure, that is an incredible failure.
But we’re here, right? We have at long last arrived at the point that we begin un-fucking this situation, and we have our champion and his number one contender, so it’s all champagne and roses now, right?
After forty-five months of waiting, the new beginning for the UFC Heavyweight Championship ended in a No Contest after four and a half minutes when Ciryl Gane managed to gouge both of Tom Aspinall’s eyes at once. The UFC’s response to this has primarily been to vow an immediate rematch while subtly blaming Tom for not continuing to fight, a choice that is definitely in no way driven by their longterm discontent with him or his father’s comments about how Tom should end his UFC run when his contract expires to go somewhere that respects him.
But that was just the capstone on a night of Heavyweight humiliation. A few fights beforehand, Alexander Volkov and Jailton Almeida fought a potential title eliminator that ended in a split decision with zero submission attempts and a grand total of 33 significant strikes landed between both men. (Jailton Almeida threw 10 in fifteen minutes.) A few fights before that, Valter Walker submitted Louie Sutherland with his fourth consecutive heel hook in the UFC, which would have been more impressive had it not been Sutherland’s UFC debut after a career spent beating underexperienced guys on the regional circuit. Also: That was a ranked fight. And a few before that, Hamdy Abdelwahab beat Chris Barnett in a gassy wrestling affair, which gave Hamdy his second UFC win. Two days later, Hamdy was removed from the roster.
Last month, the UFC took a Heavyweight Contender Series fight between the 5-1 Elisha Ellison, who had just won his first career bout against an opponent with a winning record, and the 4-1 Brando Peričić, who had spent the last year of his life fighting multiple men with 0-0 records, and promoted them both straight to the big show. Back in July the UFC tried to push Tallison Teixeira into the main event and the rankings after just one UFC bout and Derrick Lewis destroyed him in thirty-five seconds. Two weeks later, Martin Buday scored his third consecutive UFC win over a debuting Marcus Buchecha, and the UFC kept Buchecha and cut Buday, because wrestling.
Heavyweight is bad. Heavyweight has always placed someone on the spectrum of disdain by the standards of the sport, but right now, Heavyweight is bad. Every UFC main event for 2025 has been booked and announced, so we can now factually state that Heavyweights will have main evented exactly two events this year. That is how much faith the UFC has in its big boys right now: They willingly booked as many Mateusz Gamrot main events this year as they did Heavyweight headliners.
Waldo Cortes-Acosta was supposed to be one of their solutions to this problem. Big, strong Heavyweight brawler with a background in boxing, a bevy of knockouts, a Legacy Fighting Alliance title to his name and an undefeated record? They saw the nickname “Salsa Boy” in lights. Waldo got booked persistently and advantageously, and with enough finishes to his name, they were going to push him to the moon.
But he topped out somewhere around Wyoming. He couldn’t beat Marcos Rogério de Lima--who would also be cut just two fights later, despite knocking out Junior Tafa in his last UFC bout--and he only managed two knockouts in seven UFC wins, and even then, one of them required fighting Łukasz Brzeski, who is, as of now, 1-6 in the UFC. After a truly incredible five-fight winning streak that included the aforementioned Brzeski, a 44 year-old Andrei Arlovski, one-fight UFC veteran Robelis Despaigne, one-for-his-last-four Ryan Spann and Serghei Spivac coming off two stoppage losses in his last three fights, why, Waldo was ready for his contendership test.
The test was against Sergei Pavlovich. Waldo failed. It was not particularly close. So, traditionally, what do you do with prospects who can’t get over the hump?
You put them on the welcoming committee. Ante Delija is one of the precious few outside-talent pickups the UFC has made lately that did not flame out dramatically under the spotlights of the big top. He won the 2022 Professional Fighters League tournament (and was the runner-up in 2021), he left the organization this year on account of It Was The PFL, and a few short months later, he was in the UFC for a rematch a decade in the making.
In 2015, a year dominated by Drake and Disney, a much younger Ante Delija fought Marcin Tybura for Russia’s M-1 Heavyweight Championship. Delija lost after breaking his leg on Tybura’s shin. This past September, ten years of rage later, they met again in a rematch so important it didn’t even make it to the preliminary headlining spot on the undercard of Caio Borralho vs Nassourdine Imavov. Delija didn’t care, though: He walked through Tybura and punched him out in two minutes. Within one fight, Ante Delija went from a forgotten PFL veteran to a top ten UFC fighter.
Sometimes, you just have to put your young guns together. Ante Delija is an old veteran at 35, and Waldo Cortes-Acosta, a young buck of 34, and at this point, who’s to say anyone can’t be the Heavyweight champion? Ciryl Gane almost got knocked out by Tai Tuivasa, Tom Aspinall (correctly!) wants to take the Francis Ngannou route into boxing, Jon Jones only exists at the confluence of ego and enablement and the UFC was ready to get Tallison Teixeira into title contention in two fights.
When everything is ruined, anything can happen. I’m going to will ANTE DELIJA BY TKO into existence. Rescue us from this bottomless pit of salsa and boys.
MAIN CARD: DEFERRED ANGER
WELTERWEIGHT: Jeremiah Wells (12-4-1) vs Themba Gorimbo (14-5)
And just like that, we’re ass-deep in the Apex. Jeremiah Wells is 4-2, this is his seventh UFC bout, and this will be his fourth Apex appearance. More than half of this man’s UFC tenure has taken place in this warehouse, and what a tenure it has been. He beat Warlley Alves to start the four-fight skid that would see him out of the company. He choked out Mike “Blood Diamond” Mathetha, the Israel Adesanya training partner who would, too, get kicked out of the UFC after going 0-3. He knocked out Court McGee, which would be really impressive if it were 2011, but unfortunately, it was in 2022. He squeaked by Matt Semelsberger, who--you guessed it--proceeded to lose four straight fights. And then he lost his streak to Carlston Harris and Max Griffin and went away for almost two whole years.
So now he’s back as an underdog to Themba Gorimbo. Themba exists in this perpetual flux where the world wants him to be a contendership prospect and, unfortunately, he is not. He’s a good, talented, multi-faceted fighter, and the UFC wanted him in the rankings to capitalize on what press he’s gotten online, and they wanted him to have a good-ass chance at it, which is why they hand-picked Vicente Luque for him. Luque was a contendership prospect too, once upon a time, and for the past three straight years, everyone with a shot at the top had run through him without breaking a sweat. Luque dropped Gorimbo and choked him unconscious in fifty-two seconds. When a gate is so thoroughly kept, there’s nothing to do but drop right back to prospect testing.
In other words: Welcome back to the back of the line. THEMBA GORIMBO BY DECISION.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Isaac Dulgarian (7-1) vs Yadier del Valle (9-0)
If it feels like it’s been awhile since you saw Isaac Dulgarian’s name, not only are you correct, you’re amazing for remembering who Isaac Dulgarian is. He showed up in the UFC as a 4-0 rookie, he had three fights, the last guy he beat isn’t here anymore, and that was already more than a year ago. He throws large punches and he likes wrestleboxing and he lost to Christian Rodriguez but since when has that stopped anyone from becoming a top fifteen fighter in the UFC. So, hey: He’s back. He’s gonna throw some more punches from his hips and there will probably be a takedown attempt. Be excited for this, the return of the Dulgarian.
Yadier del Valle is the new model of Contender Series guy, and we know this, because his only act in the UFC thus far involved disposing of the old model. When we first (and last) saw him this past May we discussed his role as the personification of the squeaking cogs in the DWCS meat grinder, as he made his debut against Connor Matthews, a DWCS winner turned 0-2 fighter. Yadier did his job and choked Connor out in a round, and now Connor is off the roster and Yadier stands nervous atop the cliff, waiting for the day someone’s kid comes to take him down, too.
It’s a rough life. ISAAC DULGARIAN BY DECISION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Charles Radtke (10-5) vs Daniel Frunza (9-3)
Speaking of people who fought Blood Diamond: Howdy again, Chuck Buffalo. Charlie Radtke hasn’t been doing all that swell lately, but when you look at his competition, it’s hard to blame him. Matthew Semelsberger is a gentler breeze sandwiched between the more serious threats of Carlos Prates and Mike Malott, and getting knocked out by both of those men is nothing to feel too terrible about. Aside from the part where you’ve permanently lost some neurons because the UFC needed a prelim fight to make sure they packed people into the KFC Yum! Center.
Daniel Frunza beat Haris Talundžić so he could go to the Contender Series and pound out Vadym Kutsyi and then his UFC debut got spoiled by Rhys McKee. I was sitting in my fiancée’s office today talking to her about how I stopped making “MMA fighters have funny names” jokes because while I am in no way too mature to laugh at them, I had started to feel that they were tired at best and insensitive at worst. But this is like dying of thirst while laying next to an oasis. This is like having a million-dollar lotto ticket and trading it for a McDonald’s Sausage Biscuit. I am awash in gold and I have chosen a life of dross.
On my deathbed I will revisit my choices and the thousand variations of Paddy Pimblett I left in drafts, and I will have to answer to Anubis for my sins. CHARLES RADTKE BY TKO.
FLYWEIGHT: Allan Nascimento (21-6) vs Cody Durden (17-8-1)
This should be the time of Allan Nascimento’s life. He was a vital Flyweight contender on a solid winning streak before injuries, illness and bad fucking luck kept him on the shelf for just shy of two and a half years, right as the Flyweight division was being busted open by changing tides. But this Summer, after all that time, Allan finally set foot back in the cage, and it was against a genuine prospect in Jafel Filho, and Allan won! Unfortunately, he also missed weight. The UFC was attempting to throw him up against Rafael Estevam, the undefeated Flyweight who also keeps missing weight, but Estevam couldn’t make it, and in times of need, there’s only one man the UFC turns to.
Hi, Cody. I’m sorry we’re here again. I’m sorry they keep doing this to you. One for your last five, huh? That’s fuckin’ rough, buddy. Tagir Ulanbekov, Bruno Silva, Joshua Van and Jose Ochoa is an awful unpleasant lineup to have to deal with, I do not blame you for getting knocked out just a whole bunch. That choke over Matt Schnell right in the middle of all of them is saving you, at least. If it weren’t for that, you probably wouldn’t be in the UFC anymore. Of course, if it weren’t for that you also wouldn’t have gotten punched in the head one hundred times by Joshua Van. I guess it’s up to you which way would’ve been better.
This matchup is not meant for your benefit, I’m afraid. I do kind of hope you manage to turn it around, though. If you could find a big right hand out of nowhere, it would be very, very funny. Until then, I have to side with reality. ALLAN NASCIMENTO BY SUBMISSION.
PRELIMS: CORRECTLY PLACED ANGER
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Billy Elekana (8-2) vs Kevin Christian (9-2)
Not to jump the gun here, but Ketlen Vieira vs Norma Dumont is three fights down from here. The #3 and #4 women in their division do not rank a preliminary headliner, but by god, Billy Elekana does. The UFC didn’t even want Billy Elekana. He was a late replacement for Johnny Walker and he did the job of getting eaten alive by Bogdan Guskov, and now he’s just there and we all get to deal with it. Kevin Christian is a 6’7” Contender Series winner who’s here because he’s 6’7”. If you think this is shortchanging a man with ten professional fights, let me tell you that he was also the champion of no less than Rei da Selva Combat down in Manaus, and the man he beat to get it was the 3-3 Álvaro Tabosa. Christian is very tall, more Brazilian than the name would lead you to believe, and he does, to his credit, have some semblance of a jiu-jitsu game, which means the sky is the limit.
Except it’s 205 and beating people who lose to guys named Aldo Pereira (not a joke!) doesn’t go as far with me as it used to. The tape wasn’t enormously impressive and I hope Christian can pull it together because more interesting prospects in Light Heavyweight would be manna in the desert, but BILLY ELEKANA BY DECISION.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Timmy Cuamba (9-3) vs Chang-ho Lee (11-1)
Timmy Cuamba, your stay of execution was earned the hard way. After a short-notice signing and two hard-fought losses, Timmy finally leapt off the rooftop and learned to fly by kneeing fellow embattled newcomer Roberto Romero right in the face and got his first UFC win. It was a win that was immediately and possibly rightfully protested as an early stoppage, but as we are becoming more and more aware in all facets of life, the rules only matter inasmuch as they can be enforced. Chang-ho Lee is the man who won the 2023 Road to UFC tournament instead of Xiao Long, the fighter the UFC actually wanted, and they still have not fully forgiven Lee for it. He didn’t make his debut until this past April and he drew my favorite name in mixed martial arts, Cortavious “Are You Not Entertained?” Romious, and to the devastation of future supply of cheap jokes, Lee pounded him out in two rounds and drummed him out of the company.
I don’t think Timmy’s as iffy as his record makes him look, but I don’t think Lee’s all-around game is going to give him a huge chance here. CHANG-HO LEE BY DECISION.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Sedriques Dumas (10-3 (1)) vs Donte Johnson (6-0)
That’s right: We’re still doing this. After three straight years of endlessly pushing the man, Sedriques Dumas is 50/50 in the UFC and his greatest accomplishment is either being the only man in the UFC to beat Denis Tiuliulin and not finish him, using his victorious post-fight interview to tell his doubters that anyone accusing him of criminal behavior is ignorant because all of that is in his past, or being unable to make it to a fight this past June because his very much continuing behavior meant he couldn’t get a judge to remove his ankle monitor in time. And now he’s fighting Donte Johnson. Donte Johnson is a 5’8” Middleweight, and that’s an improvement over his Contender Series win from this past August, during which he was a 5’8” Heavyweight. I know my ranting about the things DWCS has done to the roster are so thoroughly circular that my fists have rendered the horse down to a puddle of glue, but you really need to put in perspective that this is Sedriques Dumas, a guy who, demonstrably, isn’t that good, getting his eighth UFC opportunity after having only one win in his last four attempts, and his opponent is a 5’8” Heavyweight who got here by beating a guy who’s now 7-5 and whose best career victory was against Alex “The Spartan” Nicholson, whom longtime fans may remember as the UFC veteran who was losing to Sam Alvey a decade ago.
And this is more important than a top three fight at Women’s Bantamweight. DANTE JOHNSON BY TKO.
WOMEN’S BANTAMWEIGHT: Ketlen Vieira (15-4, #3) vs Norma Dumont (12-2, #4)
At a certain point, what do you even fuckin’ say?
The main event of this card is Steve Garcia vs David Onama. The main event of this card is Steve Garcia vs David Onama. We are in the Apex in the dead of November on a card main evented by Steve Garcia and David Onama, and we’re having a top contendership match for a women’s division all the way down here on the prelims under Sedriques fucking Dumas. Ketlen Vieira was fighting Kayla Harrison on pay-per-view one bout ago. Norma Dumont’s last appearance was an incredible scrap that saw her breaking Irene Aldana’s entire goddamn face open. Vieira’s a top contender with wins over multiple world champions and Dumont’s on a five-fight, three-year winning streak. One of these women is going to win this fight and be in a position to either challenge for the title or determine who will, and they will have done so in an empty warehouse on the part of the broadcast half the audience skips and then we’ll get to have yet another conversation about how the women don’t get promoted because no one wants to watch them while Bo Nickal gets his fifth pay-per-view spot in six UFC fights at the end of this month.
This shit sucks. It sucks even on a good card, but it sucks so much more when you can’t bring yourself to say “yes, this fight between two of the best Women’s Bantamweights on the planet should probably have a higher place of esteem on this card than Isaac Dulgarian.” Yeah, it’s probably going to a fucking decision. That’s fine. You will survive if you have to promote fighters who do things other than swing haymakers until they die. Stop nihilistically sabotaging your own goddamn product every time women are involved. NORMA DUMONT BY DECISION.
WOMEN’S STRAWWEIGHT: Alice Ardelean (10-7) vs Montserrat Ruiz (10-4)
Oh, Conejo. I think this is the end of the road, my old friend. Montserrat Ruiz was the UFC’s other big hope for the Mexican MMA market, a regional champion with some solid submissions and a tough chin, and a debut win raised their hopes for her future as a headline attraction. That win was more than four years ago and it was her last. She got knocked out by Amanda Lemos, she took two years off, she spent 2023 getting knocked out two more times, and she has, once again, taken two years off. Now she has to fight Alice Ardelean, a woman who could not beat Shauna Bannon, who is bad, but could beat Invicta Atomweight Champion Rayanne dos Santos, who is good, because there is no sub-115 pound weight class in the UFC and you must march yourself into the meat grinder with your own damn feet.
Montserrat is 5’ flat. She, too, would benefit deeply from Atomweight. In another life, Conejo. ALICE ARDELEAN BY DECISION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Philip Rowe (11-5) vs Seokhyeon Ko (12-2)
I said finishes were the primary currency of mixed martial arts, but not everyone gets to trade that currency equally. When we last saw Philip Rowe in June, he snapped a two-fight losing streak by demolishing Ange Loosa. It wasn’t just a fantastic knockout, it wasn’t just a fantastic comeback win in a fight he was a minute away from losing, it was a fantastically-picked knockout over a man who had been in the cage with Bryan Battle, Gabriel Bonfim and no less than Jack Della Maddalena without ever being stopped. Rowe blasted him out in the second prelim of the night. For his efforts, he is here, once again, in the second prelim of the night, fighting as an underdog to a higher-rated prospect. Seokhyeon Ko is one of South Korea’s best. He trains with former contender Dong Hyun Kim, he’s gone four years without a loss, and he absolutely dominated a solid fighter in Oban Elliott in his UFC debut a few months back.
He’s very fun to watch. He’s fantastically well-rounded. I am, for some reason, still not sold. PHILIP ROWE BY TKO.
WOMEN’S STRAWWEIGHT: Talita Alencar (6-1-1) vs Ariane Carnelossi (15-3)
I was starting to wonder if we were ever going to see Ariane Carnelossi again. We’ve only been graced with her presence twice in the last four years. Once was in 2022, when she was so thoroughly dominated by Loopy Godinez that some media scored the fight 30-24, and the other was May of 2024, when she won the ultra-rare disqualification victory after Piera Rodriguez headbutted her, turned to the ref as the ref said ‘hey, don’t throw headbutts,’ and responded by headbutting Ariane a second time, only worse. Barring that disqualification Ariane has two UFC wins, and they’re over women who managed to go 0-4 and 0-5 in the company. Somehow, a year and a half later, she is back and they have lined her up to lose to Talita Alencar.
Ariane’s going to lose this fight. She never had a great gas tank, she always had big holes in her game, and her most notable talent was being very strong. The only reason anyone would pick Ariane is a crippling addiction to either comedy or foolishness.
So, y’know. ARIANE CARNELOSSI BY TKO.