CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 167: THE END OF THE ROAD
UFC 323: Dvalishvili vs Yan 2
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6 FROM THE T-MOBILE ARENA IN LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
EARLY PRELIMS 3 PM PST / 6 PM EST | PRELIMS 5 PM / 8 PM | MAIN CARD 7 PM / 10 PM
Well, this is it.
Thirty-two years, 323 numbered events (give or take a 37.5 here and an abrupt cancellation there), ten different television networks and multiple streaming partners have all led us to what is, for now, the last-ever UFC pay-per-view. It’s strange to feel nostalgia for the passing of a method of purchase, especially one as piss-poor as PPV, but as someone who got into the sport after renting UFC 6 on VHS, there’s something bittersweet about watching the era pass into dust.
And some part of this is the fear that our good ol’ numbered UFC events will, much like their corporate stepbrother the WWE’s Premium Live Events, become progressively less stacked and meaningful now that they’re far less financially incentivized to care. Given that UFCs 324 and 325 are happening on back to back weekends next year and are headlined by two of the silliest title fights they’ve ever made, unfortunately, that fear already looks pretty well-founded. After all, they don’t need to keep you happy anymore: It’s not your money they’re primarily concerned with.
So goodbye, Makhachev vs Volkanovski 1. Farewell, Lawler vs Condit. I will see you in the next world, awkward house parties made better by Anderson Silva kicking Vitor Belfort in the mouth. Thank you for the memories, one-night tournaments centered around 1990s caricatures who have never seen jiu-jitsu in their entire lives.
Goodbye, pay-per-view. You were really, really terrible, and I hate the likelihood that I’m going to wind up missing you after your replacement turns out to be even worse.
MAIN EVENT: RUNNING LAPS
BANTAMWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Merab Dvalishvili (21-4, Champion) vs Petr Yan (19-5, #3)
There’s something incredibly fitting about Merab Dvalishvili being the protagonist of the final UFC pay-per-view.
One of the constant issues in media is the sense that audiences need to be managed. Your consumers don’t know what they need, only what they want, and keeping them satisfied enough to come back means presuming you know better than they do. You know Hangman Page needs to lose before he can win. You know Thanos can’t come out until the third Avengers. You know your crowd of bloodthirsty fight fans really wants Sean O’Malley.
The thing the c-suite tends to forget is that they, too, are an audience. Over enough time, they, too, become a ravenous maw, and they, too, forget what they should be eating. For years, UFC matchmakers tried to get Merab out of the way. He’s a wrestler, and he’s tiny, and he’s foreign, and he always goes to decisions. No one wants him, they want Sean O’Malley and his candyfloss hair and his sex offender tribute tattoo. We need to defend our business interests against Merab, and on the off-chance Merab wins, we need to give those interests immediate chances at winning back the throne.
And then Merab kept winning, and it turned out that if you showed people a tiny, indefatigable human wolverine who throws opponents around like potato sacks, steals jackets, makes funny jokes, dances constantly, fights every single person put in front of him and beats them with ease, people--shockingly--started to like him.
Now it’s the end of 2025 and Merab is trying to stamp himself into memory as the greatest UFC Bantamweight Champion there’s ever been, and, almost indisputably, the owner of the greatest UFC championship year of all time.
Winning a belt is hard. Defending a belt is harder. Consistently defending a belt multiple times a year against the best in the world is obscenely difficult. Doing it three times in a year is damn near impossible, to the point that in the entire history of the UFC it’s only happened seven times, and even then there’s usually something fucked up about the process. Frank Shamrock did it, but one of those opponents was John Lober on a six-fight winless streak. Tito Ortiz did it, but it included Elvis “The King of Rock ‘n’ Rumble” Sinosic, who had one win in three years. Matt Hughes had Gil Castillo. Kamaru Usman had Jorge Masvidal. Alex Pereira got to duck the #1 contender--whom he’d eventually lose to--and fight Khalil Rountree Jr. instead.
Merab Dvalishvili came into his first title defense as an underdog against the undefeated Umar Nurmagomedov, widely considered the uncrowned champion. By the end of the fight he was clowning Umar to his face. Merab was thrown into a completely undeserved Sean O’Malley rematch in the hopes that the corporate favorite could get the title back. Merab beat him even worse than he had the first time around and handed him the first submission loss of his career. Merab took a fight with Cory Sandhagen, a top contender who’d been denied title shots for four straight years because he was just too goddamn dangerous to trust with marketing prospects. Merab dropped him on his ass with a left and took him down twenty times.
It’s an incredible set of accomplishments. It’s an incredible year. And he wants one more. He wants to cement his legacy. He wants that fourth title defense. He wants to be the only person to have ever done it--quite possibly the only person to ever do it.
And, if we’re being honest, most of the world has accepted that Petr Yan is simply in the way.
For years, Yan looked like the next big generational champion at 135 pounds. He wasn’t undefeated, but he’d beaten the only man to ever beat him; he wasn’t always a finisher, but when he did stop people, he battered them with his boxing until they simply broke down. He beat prospects, he beat title contenders, he retired Urijah Faber, and when Henry Cejudo dropped his double-champ titles and retired in one of the sport’s least successful power plays Yan was right at the top of the heap, and all he had to do was beat José Aldo, one of the best fighters in the history of mixed martial arts.
History’s forgotten, but it was actually a very competitive fight--for the first three rounds. Then Yan broke him. He tired him out, he smashed his ribs, he busted his nose, he walked him down, and after three and a half minutes of unanswered punches, the referee saved Aldo from himself and handed Yan the world title. It was a career-defining performance for a career-defining moment, and for the UFC’s management and audience alike, it justified the feeling that Yan was the man who’d run the division for years to come.
One fight later he instead became the first man ever to lose the belt by disqualification after illegally kneeing Aljamain Sterling in the face. He managed to get an interim title win over Sandhagen while Aljo recovered from injuries, but Yan couldn’t keep Aljo from outgrappling him in the rematch. Six months later Yan pitched what felt like a sure-thing decision against Sean O’Malley, and in what would ultimately be voted one of the biggest robberies of 2022, O’Malley got the split and the top contendership.
Two years prior, Yan was the newly-crowned champion and felt downright unbeatable. Suddenly, he was 1 for his last 4 and boxed out of title contendership. There was a silver lining, though: Even in loss, Yan was only barely losing. He got DQed, but he was visibly wearing Sterling down and seemed to be six minutes away from an assured victory. He lost the rematch, but it was a competitive split decision. He’d lost against O’Malley, but outside of the judging table, damn near nobody thought he’d actually lost.
Petr Yan hadn’t won those fights, but there was a prevailing feeling that he’d never really been beaten. No one had really defeated him, no one had shut him down, no one had made him look like he was outright losing a fight.
And then, at the start of 2023, Petr Yan fought Merab Dvalishvili.
Yan lost. He lost badly. For the first time in his career, nothing he did worked. His excellent combinations, his deadly work in the pocket, his historically fantastic trips, all of them were useless. Merab took him down eleven times (although Yan is credited with stuffing 38 takedowns, because those are the kinds of hilarious statistical anomalies you get with Merab Dvalishvili fights) and more than doubled him up on strikes. After an entire career of asterisks Yan didn’t just lose, he got completely shut out to a unanimous 50-45 decision.
If he’s going to stop himself from becoming a footnote in Merab’s story, he has to find some way to, just two years later, completely change the nature of the fight.
There’s no two ways about it: Yan’s probably going to lose. Everyone outside of Yan’s camp agrees to the point that despite being one of the most accomplished Bantamweights of this generation Yan is around a +350 underdog. You can’t erase that first fight from memory. Folks thought Yan could put his hands on Merab and box him up and tire him out and hurt him too much to engage in his gameplan and Merab drowned him without even breaking a sweat. In the time since then, Merab has put progressively more impressive beatings on the top of the division, and Petr Yan dropped a round to Marcus McGhee. The biggest question mark here isn’t if Yan has become a brand new fighter who can stop Merab, but if Merab’s level of activity means he’s flying too close to the sun and is about to immolate.
This is the difficulty of sport. Merab’s beaten four out of his top five contenders already. There’s no one left without going to Song Yadong at #5, and the UFC’s already booked him against Sean O’Malley next month. Yan’s the most successful top contender left, and he’s still elite among the elite. He’s still brutal and dangerous and one of the most well-rounded fighters in the entire sport, and he’d be a favorite against damn near any Bantamweight on the planet.
Just not this one. MERAB DVALISHVILI BY DECISION.
CO-MAIN EVENT: THE LEFT HAND PATH
FLYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Alexandre Pantoja (30-5, Champion) vs Joshua Van (15-2, #1)
One of the UFC’s most common canards these days is the emphasis on the nature of fighting as an opportunity. It’s the central building block of the false-meritocracy narrative, because it simultaneously absolves the UFC of any responsibility for treating its fighters like human beings making valuable contributions and puts all of the pressure on those fighters to take whatever they are given, because opportunities are granted from on high rather than earned--the same way the commentators constantly discuss the only paths to the UFC coming from either the minimum-wage funnel of the Contender Series or the starving man’s meal of a contract as a last-minute replacement.
Joshua Van is a product of that modern opportunism. It’s not his fault, and he’s made the absolute most of every one of those opportunities. But it’s hard not to feel just a little weird about it when you lay it all out.
But before we get there, we have to talk about what Alexandre Pantoja has done to the Flyweight division and how it created those opportunities. It’s hard to evaluate just how dangerous the 125-pound world has been for the top of its class, so let’s simplify it: In the first eleven years of the UFC’s Flyweight division, only one champion ever managed more than a single successful title defense, and it was Demetrious Johnson, the man who inaugurated it and is still unquestionably the greatest Flyweight of all time and a top-ballot contender for greatest fighter of all time. He ran the table for half a decade and set an eleven-fight defense streak, a feat that genuinely might never be surpassed.
Aside from him? Not a single person could hold onto the damn thing. Henry Cejudo gave it up because being a double-champ was too hard. Deiveson Figueiredo and Brandon Moreno traded the belt back and forth for two and a half years. The second Moreno sent Figgy away for good, Alexandre Pantoja swept in and took the title away from him.
There was only one successful title defense in the four years between December 2019 and December 2023. No one could even stay champion for more than a year. No one could stay on top of the mountain.
And now Alexandre Pantoja is about to step into the cage for the fifth fight of his reign as the king of the Flyweights.
He beat Brandon Moreno. He beat Brandon Royval, giving him a truly incredible rate of success against Brandons. He outlasted Steve Erceg, he made the UFC bring Kai Asakura all the way from Japan only to demolish him in a round and a half, and he strangled Kai Kara-France with ease. Unlike a Khamzat Chimaev or an Islam Makhachev, though, Pantoja has looked persistently human. He leads with his head, he catches a few too many punches, he looks winded, he fights mad. He wins anyway. He’s too good at getting his punches on target, he’s too good at taking people to the floor, he’s too good at catching their necks.
He’s too good to keep the rankings steady. Between his run to the title and his subsequent reign, Pantoja’s beaten half the top ten already. It’s why they had to poach Asakura, it’s why Kyoji Horiguchi is back.
It’s why Joshua Van is here.
Van managed to hit both sides of the UFC’s opportunity tree. He was a FuryFC champion who, as so many do, traded in his belt for a shot at the Contender Series, but the UFC offered him a jump up to the main show a month and a half ahead of time if he took a short-notice bout with Zhalgas Zhumagulov instead. Zhumagulov was one of those fighters opportunity persistently shat upon--his last two UFC fights had been split decisions he almost certainly should have won, but, of course, he did not. He had three opponents pull out in two months, and when the UFC gave him Van on short notice, he took it.
Van won. It was another split decision, if a much less controversial one. Zhalgas was out of the company in short order and Van had successfully jumped the line. The UFC saw promise in Van immediately. He was young, he was aggressive, he had great cardio and he vastly preferred striking to wrestling. He was another title prospect in their Contender Series army and his growing winning streak only justified their belief that he was the future.
And then he got knocked out by Charles Johnson.
This is the other side of the opportunity conversation. It would be categorically incorrect to say the UFC didn’t give Charles Johnson opportunities after he knocked Van out. We’ve seen them freeze people out when they really want to. They kept booking Johnson, just like they kept booking Van.
But Johnson was booked on TV cards. Hell, his next booking was a main-card bout, and he won, and for winning, he was demoted to curtain-jerking the televised prelims of Kape vs Almabayev against Ramazan Temirov, one of the stiffest prospects in the entire world. Every Joshua Van fight since his loss has been attached to a high-profile pay-per-view, and to follow up his losses, he got the ever-embattled Edgar Cháirez and a tune-up against Cody Durden, who was 1 for his last 3 and is, as of now, 1 for his last 6.
That has, in fact, been the majority of Van’s journey up the ladders. Cháirez was unranked. Durden was unranked. Rei Tsuruya only had one UFC fight. Bruno Silva was Van’s first ranked opponent, and he was #12 and coming off a knockout loss and the only man he’d beaten who was still in the UFC was--hilariously enough--also Cody Durden. It was a successful streak, but the level of competition wasn’t exactly impressive.
Which is fine! If anything, it’s actually smart, sensible matchmaking, bringing your desired fighters up gently. It lets you test them against progressively tougher opponents and learn how to compete with gradually rising levels of pressure, and sure, Van’s never been off the prelims, but eventually, when he’s earned his way there, you can give him a top contendership match that’s organic and even and makes sense.
Or, alternatively, you can throw him into a #1 contendership fight three weeks after the Silva win because Manel Kape dropped out.
That’s right, it’s another case of the UFC jetpacking someone into contendership half because they find him marketing-friendly and half because they can’t book their cards for shit anymore. Van vs Royval wound up being an incredible fight, and Royval might have gutted out a split decision were it not for Van dropping him in the last fifteen seconds of the bout and locking up the round. Once again, opportunity flies. Royval won two fights the UFC had told him were title eliminators, but instead of his shot they gave Van his spot.
But you can only get so mad. He won the fight fair and square. Did he deserve to get it? Probably not. Did he do everything he could with the chance anyway? Absolutely. Has Pantoja killed so much of the division that it’s tough not to be happy about new blood getting into the picture in some fashion? Completely!
Is Van gonna beat him?
I dunno, man. I’m not sure I’m feeling it. Van’s got some real good boxing and some real good leg kicks and he’s an enormous pain in the ass to keep off of you. He also gets taken down a lot. Maintaining top position on Van has proven to be real, real difficult for most people, but Alexandre Pantoja is not most people, and as good as Van’s striking is, he doesn’t actually finish people with it all that often, and Pantoja’s proven to have one of the toughest chins in the sport.
If Van can keep Pantoja off him and cross him up for five rounds, he’s gold. If Van’s been drilling nothing but wrestling defense and he can stuff Pantoja’s trips, he’s gold. If Van kicks Pantoja repeatedly in the head while Dana White holds his feet from the bottom of the cage like Bobby Heenan and Herb Dean pretends he can’t see it, he’s gold.
But ALEXANDRE PANTOJA BY SUBMISSION feels a lot more likely.
MAIN CARD: MARKETING’S IN CHARGE AGAIN
FLYWEIGHT: Brandon Moreno (23-8-2, #2) vs Tatsuro Taira (17-1, #5)
Wasn’t that a fun 1300ish words about the Flyweight division? Let’s do some more. After losing the Battle of the Brandons, Brandon Moreno, the lesser Brandon, got busted back down to lower contendership duty. It’s a tough position: He’s a former champion and one of the UFC’s most visible Flyweights, but the Royval loss on top of Moreno’s failed bid at Pantoja--especially in light of Pantoja having beaten him twice before--made it particularly hard for him to earn another crack at the top. So, instead, he’s been dealing with the dangling plot threads of our 125-pound life. Amir Albazi was a highly-ranked contender who hadn’t lost a fight in five years, but injuries kept him perpetually inactive and his only rank-justifying win was a real controversial decision over Kai Kara-France. They sent in Moreno: Moreno beat him with ease. Steve Erceg was a guy the UFC absolutely refused to stop pushing into title contendership despite losing both of his shots at the spotlight and they needed to either get him a signature win or get him out of the way. They sent in Moreno: Moreno beat him, too.
Now Tatsuro Taira, too, is a problem to be solved, which is unfortunate, because he was supposed to be the next big thing. The world has wanted a Japanese champion in the UFC ever since Kazushi Sakuraba won the 1997 Ultimate Japan tournament and Yuki Kondo almost knocked out Tito Ortiz, and every time someone gets close, they fall just short. Taira made it sixteen fights into his career and six fights into the UFC without a loss, and most of those wins were at worst impressive and at best devastating. He tapped Jesus Aguilar, he dropped Carlos Hernandez, and in one of the most horrifying finishes of 2024, he stopped Alex Perez not by knocking him out or submitting him, but by hopping into the backpack position, planting a foot in the back of Perez’s knee, and blowing the joint out while taking him down. It earned Taira a title eliminator--against Brandon Royval. It was close, too, but Royval outlasted him and Taira suffered the first setback of his career. He was supposed to get his own shot at Amir Albazi, but we instead wound up with an exceedingly silly fight where Taira completely destroyed the overmatched Hyun-sung Park, and now Taira needs his next crack at the top.
And as much as I love Taira, as much as I would love to see him get to the top and break the curse, I just don’t think this is a great matchup for him. Moreno’s striking isn’t as easy for Taira’s accurate but stiff straights to crack and his grappling is incredibly scrambly and quick, which poses a real problem for Taira’s top control game. BRANDON MORENO BY DECISION gives us another two years of Brandon-based contendership woes.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Henry Cejudo (16-5, #10) vs Payton Talbott (10-1, NR)
If the previous fight was an extension of the Flyweight topic, this, here, is an extension of the conversation about opportunity. Seven years ago, Henry Cejudo became the only Flyweight to beat Demetrious Johnson. It was a split decision, and it was awful close, and it just happened to favor Cejudo. He etched his place into history by beating Marlon Moraes for the Bantamweight title and in doing so becoming one of the only simultaneous double-champions in UFC history, but it was a vacant Bantamweight belt, and Cejudo dropped the Flyweight title as soon as he got it, and then he retired one fight later anyway. When he came back three years later, it was into an instant title shot at Aljamain Sterling, because the UFC didn’t like Aljamain Sterling. When he came back from that loss almost a year later it was into a top contendership bout with Merab Dvalishvili, because the UFC didn’t like Merab Dvalishvili. And when Jason Herzog cost Cejudo a No Contest this past February after Song Yadong poked him in the eyes, it was because the UFC didn’t like rules.
But you know who the UFC loves? Payton Talbott. Payton rolled right off the Contender Series and onto televised main cards and pay-per-view prelims, because they knew, immediately, that this hard-punching soft-spoken 20something was their next Sean O’Malley. And then, like O’Malley, he lost at an incredibly inopportune time. Talbott headlined the prelims of UFC 311 against Raoni Barcelos, an aging, overlooked veteran who came in as an impossibly huge underdog, and Raoni just dogwalked him. Total shut-out, 10-8 first round, complete repudiation of the odds. Raoni slew the huge, fast-rising prospect and reminded the sport just who the fuck he was. And the UFC, as they do, just moved on and pretended it didn’t happen. Raoni’s next two fights were Fight Nights--the most recent was all the way back on the prelims, stuck under Jamall Emmers vs Hyder Amil--while Payton was on an Ilia Topuria pay-per-view’s main card immediately after his loss. Raoni Barcelos is 2-0 since beating Payton and he is nowhere close to the rankings: Payton is 1-0 since his loss and he’s about to fight a 5’4” 38 year-old on a three-fight, five-year losing streak for the #10 spot in the world.
The world is not fair. Payton’s good. He’s really good! But we just saw Raoni and Felipe Lima both wrestle the shit out of him, and Henry Cejudo is Henry Cejudo. That said: Henry’s also done and retiring after this fight, so this is, clearly, an attempt to pass the torch. HENRY CEJUDO BY DECISION if there’s any meat left on his bones.
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Jan Błachowicz (29-11-1, #5) vs Bogdan Guskov (18-3, #11)
The years have been unkind to the institution of Polish Power. It feels like an entire era ago, but when Jon Jones flew the coop back in 2020 out of the deathly fear of a Dominick Reyes rematch, Jan Błachowicz was the man that picked up the battered pieces of the Light Heavyweight division. He beat Dom, he beat Israel Adesanya at the apex of his fame, and then he got absolutely crushed by Glover Teixeira and nothing ever quite went right for him again. He beat Aleksandar Rakić, but only after Rakić’s leg exploded. He infamously drew with Magomed Ankalaev for the vacant belt. He almost beat Alex Pereira! But he didn’t. He almost beat Carlos Ulberg! But he didn’t do that, either. It’s the end of 2025, and Jan’s last wholly intentional victory is almost five years old, and the winter is only getting colder.
The villagers whisper about the bogmen who appear in the morning frost. They say they take the children, and ten seasons later, they return as, themselves, bogmen. I do not know when Bogdan crept forth as the wrecking machine he has become. I do not know if choking out Billy Elekana counts as savaging a child. I do think it’s very, very funny that when Bogdan debuted in the UFC he got fucked all the way up by Volkan Oezdemir, and now Oezdemir is somehow stuck at the edge of the top ten while Bogdan has a fight with a former world champion that could put him a single win away from the title, if, indeed, the Light Heavyweight title can be proven to still exist. Bogdan does big punches. Bogdan does big chokes. Does Bogdan do big wins?
Not this time, I hope. JAN BŁACHOWICZ BY TKO.
PRELIMS: RETRY, ABORT, FAIL
LIGHTWEIGHT: Grant Dawson (23-2-1, #13) vs Manuel Torres (16-3, NR)
The whole ‘uneven opportunities’ topic really looms large over this whole-ass card. Grant Dawson is six years deep into his UFC career and over those six years he’s 11-1-1. At Lightweight. He’s an absurdly successful fighter in arguably the hardest division in the sport. In that entire run, he has only been given the chance to fight someone above him in the rankings once. And for beating him, Dawson was given his first and only UFC main event--against King Green, who was unranked. Green infamously clocked him in half a minute and they’ve spent the two years since keeping Dawson buried. He outwrestled Joe Solecki, he pounded Rafa García flat, eleven months ago they had him fighting Diego Ferreira, and now, as a fighter with one loss in the company on a three-fight winning streak, he is, of course, fighting an unranked guy the UFC likes better. Manuel Torres is a less successful fighter. He’s a less well-rounded fighter. He’s mostly beaten guys coming off losses, and he, himself, is just one win removed from having been knocked silly by Ignacio Bahamondes. But he’s a guy the UFC would like to market as part of their ongoing attempt to break international markets and, unlike Dawson, he hasn’t shot a single takedown in the last twenty-one months, so why not give him a shot at the rankings while Dawson is forced to defend his spot on the ladder for the fourth or eighth time.
They really want Torres to pull a Green and nuke Dawson again. I am not seeing it. I, of course, do not want to see it. But I think we get a wrestling clinic. GRANT DAWSON BY DECISION.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Terrance McKinney (17-7) vs Chris Duncan (14-2)
There is no man who embodies the nothing-matters-but-the-finish spirit of the modern age like Terrance McKinney. You’re tall! You’re big! You could throw jabs and teeps and experience the myriad joys of intelligent defense and somewhere, Semmy Schilt would be happier knowing the lessons he left for rangy motherfuckers weren’t lost on the world. But that’s not who Terrance McKinney is. He wants to hit you with flying knees and big haymakers and he wants to choke you out, and for daring to grapple Viacheslav Borshchev, he is my enemy for life. Chris Duncan tried to wrestle Borshchev once, back on the Contender Series in 2021, and Borshchev responded by punching him until his bones turned to jelly. Duncan, in turn, adopted a smarter, more measured approach to his style, and it got him through DWCS on his second try, and it was all well and good until our last-paragraph buddy Manuel Torres counter-grappled him and handed him the first submission loss of his life, after which Duncan decided to get kind of crazy again and go back to jumping on shit where he could. And it’s worked! He’s back on a winning streak and he’s got a high-profile fight here.
But boy, he can’t afford to make any mistakes against McKinney. All it takes is leaving your neck out for a couple extra seconds and this’ll be over. At this point I have a bit more faith in Duncan to outlast the six minute-minute timer that tends to follow McKinney around, but it’ll be a nailbiter. Still, CHRIS DUNCAN BY SUBMISSION.
WOMEN’S FLYWEIGHT: Maycee Barber (14-2, #5) vs Karine Silva (19-5, #9)
Yet again on the topic of opportunities: Hi, Maycee Barber. The last time we saw Maycee, we didn’t. She very visibly and infamously pulled out of a main event with Erin Blanchfield seconds before it was set to begin back in May, a fight the UFC was not-so-subtly hoping would get her into title contention after their multiple attempts to previously do so were derailed by either poorly-timed injuries or terribly underestimating Roxanne motherfuckin’ Modafferi. Apparently someone got a little mad at her, though, because just a few weeks ago this was headlining the prelims and now it’s busted down to the midway. Still, for someone who hasn’t fought in almost two years and torpedoed a main event, which they still have yet to forgive multiple other fighters for, sticking around for a top ten fight against Karine Silva is a pretty solid deal. Karine, too, looked like an heir apparent to contendership after stomping a four-fight path through the world of Women’s Flyweight, and her habit of submitting damn near everyone she fought made the brass take notice. But you can never count out the canny veterans, and as has happened so often the UFC tried to roll the dice one times too many by booking Karine into what seemed like a fifth assured win against a Viviane Araujo who was just 1 for her last 4, and Araujo was possessed by the spirit of justice and won an extremely close fight, forcing Karine to go so far back the UFC actually booked her against Dione Barbosa, the woman who’d beaten her on the regional scene all the way back in 2019. Karine won, but now they need more.
It’s a tough call, but a big part of that is just--y’know, what the hell do you make of Maycee? Two fights ago she looked the best she’d ever been, and then she was gone for a year, one fight later she had a great struggle with Katlyn Cerminara, and one fight after that she failed to make her cagewalk after apparent seizures that still haven’t been explained. Is she healthy? Will the fight happen? If she’s having fucking seizures and they still don’t know why, should the fight happen? Will she look like her old self again if it does, and if so, will her tendency to physically impose herself on her opponents leave her open to Karine’s leglock game? I’m going with MAYCEE BARBER BY DECISION, but this entire fight is a black box.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Nazim Sadykhov (11-1-1) vs Farès Ziam (17-4)
I’m not sure if this will necessarily be a great fight, but it is going to be an interesting one for the division. Both of these guys are dark horse prospects in the Lightweight division and both are held back in the eyes of the fans by the memory of their worst moments. Nazim Sadykhov is the new fighting pride of Ray Longo’s legendary fight camp, and he’s looked real, real good in all of his UFC fights--except the one where he couldn’t get past Slava Claus despite repeatedly almost finishing him and had to settle for a draw, which is a bad look when the guy you’re drawing with is now 8-7-1. Farès Ziam is on a three-year, five-fight winning streak thanks to a newfound appreciation for defense and some very smart gameplanning, but killing Matt Frevola can only do so much to erase the time Terrance McKinney rolled him in two minutes flat. The same McKinney that Sadykhov choked out a year later.
Nazim’s offense vs Ziam’s defense makes for a real intriguing mix. I’m sticking with NAZIM SADYKHOV BY SUBMISSION but Ziam could kite him if he stays on his feet.
EARLY PRELIMS: YOU CAN’T HAVE YOUR MERAB IF YOU DON’T FINISH YOUR TROCOLI
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Marvin Vettori (19-8-1, #14) vs Brunno Ferreira (14-2, NR)
This is what it’s come down to, Marvin. Four years ago you were a top contender fighting the biggest star in the sport for the world championship. You were a title contender and you carried the hopes and dreams of an Italian fanbase that hasn’t had a Middleweight to cheer for since Alessio Sakara walked the Earth and the worst thing anyone could say about you is you wore your shorts backwards. Now it’s 2025 and you have one victory since 2021 and all anyone knows you for anymore is losing fights and posting bigoted shit on Twitter and you’ve fallen so far that you’re defending being ranked at all against a guy who was fighting Jackson McVey a few months ago. Half of the people reading this won’t even remember who Jackson McVey is and he fought in November. That is where you are now, Marvin. That is what you have become.
MARVIN VETTORI BY DECISION. Just please stop tweeting about the evils of queer people and Jews and go take a class in the humanities or something before you fight again, I am begging you.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Edson Barboza (24-13) vs Jalin Turner (14-9)
I am fascinated by this matchup. Edson Barboza is and will always be one of the almost-greats of mixed martial arts. Brutal striker, fantastic kicks, owner of some of the best knockouts in combat sports and the beating he put on Dan Hooker will live forever in legend. But once upon a time he played hardball with the UFC on contract negotiations, and in a thing that really should spawn more conspiracy theories, he proceeded to lose multiple extremely dodgy split decisions and found himself all the way at the back of the line. Unfortunately, every time he’s brushed the top of the card he’s also lost legitimately, so you can only get so mad. Jalin Turner was almost a top contender. Between 2020 and 2022 he went on an incredible tear and established himself as a serious prospect, aided in part by being a fucking 6’3” Lightweight. But in 2023, much like Edson, he dropped two splits in a row and it put him at the back of the line. Unlike Edson, neither was a robbery--just close, competitive bouts. He turned it around by destroying the zombified corpse of King Green at the end of the year, but mileage, weariness and failing confidence led to another two-fight losing streak, and after Ignacio Bahamondes choked him out this past March, Jalin called it a day and retired.
Clearly, it didn’t take. I’m just not sure how to feel about this one. I have always had an overconfidence in Edson’s capabilities, but Jalin’s power, size and grappling would all seem to make this a really bad matchup for him. That said, there’s also an adage in MMA: If you think you should retire, you’re probably right. Jalin’s one for five over the last three and a half years and now he’s fighting back from quitting the sport altogether. Everything about his current state is a question mark. Maybe he’s about to come back refreshed and renewed and he’s going to blow Edson out of the water and look amazing; maybe he should’ve stayed away and he’s going to get his calves kicked into veal. The logical bet is still Jalin flattening Edson in the first round, but as long as I can convince myself there’s some aspect of mystery, I’m gonna dance with the lady who brought me here. EDSON BARBOZA BY TKO.
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Iwo Baraniewski (6-0) vs Ibo Aslan (14-3)
Level with me, Hunter Campbell. Be honest, Sean Shelby. You didn’t put this fight together because it’s fitting to the high-intensity, best-of-the-best super bowl of mixed martial arts competition the UFC purports to be; Ibo Aslan is 0-2 this year and Iwo Baraniewski barely has a professional career. You put this fight together because their names are Iwo and Ibo. You put this fight together because some part of you remembers when David Letterman hosted the Academy Awards in 1994 and did this:
The good news is: You’re right! That was very funny and no one appreciated it enough. The bad news is you’re booking Light Heavyweight fights and there’s nothing funny about that. From watching Baraniewski’s tape, I do think, by the standards of the division, he’s pretty fast and he’s quite good at ducking and rolling into his lunging right hands. I also think he’s 6’ flat and, like most fighters at his level of experience, he really doesn’t have a lot of defensive awareness and he’s learned that offensive rushing is enough to win, which it always is right up until the moment it very abruptly isn’t.
But it’s also Ibo Aslan, and boy, my faith in him is not high. I’m still gonna say IBO ASLAN BY TKO, but know that my belief in either of these men is low and I am hoping to be pleasantly surprised.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Mansur Abdul-Malik (8-0-1) vs Antonio Trócoli (12-5 (1))
Mansur: This fight was made specifically for you. I want you to be very, very aware of that. They had plans for you. They had you on the Contender Series when you only had five fights. They put you on the main card in your debut match. They gave you soft targets all the way up. They pitched you Cody Brundage, the same perpetually disrespected punching bag they try to feed to all of their Middleweight prospects. And you not only didn’t finish Brundage, you smacked him with a headbutt so bad it wound up getting the fight overturned entirely. You were supposed to be their big new knockout machine and instead you fell into the Brundmuda Triangle with all the rest of his weird fight endings. And they still love you enough that they’re giving you Antonio Trócoli. It isn’t even the first time they’ve tried to give you Antonio Trócoli. You were supposed to fight him this past February when he was on a two-fight losing streak and he got too injured to make it. And now he’s back, and he’s still on that losing streak, and they have no sympathy for him, because his fate was to be destroyed at your hands and now you need that goddamn win.
Savor their love while it lasts and demolish the meat mountain with your lunchbox hands. MANSUR ABDUL-MALIK BY TKO.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Muhammad Naimov (13-3) vs Mairon Santos (16-1)
At the end of all things, as we always knew it would be, there is The Ultimate Fighter (jesus christ). Mairon Santos is the last hope for martial arts-based reality television. He won TUF 32 by knocking out Kaan Ofli, he rode his success into the UFC proper, and he, uh, immediately and very clearly lost to Francis Marshall but somehow won a decision anyway in a fight that’s more or less a lock for robbery-of-the-year awards. But Santos moved up to 155 for a night and met the legitimately good Sodiq Yusuff, and Lightweight seemed to agree with him, and Santos much more convincingly won a competitive fight and in doing so scored by far the best victory of his career. And now he’s back at 145 pounds to fight Muhammad Naimov, the stocky wrestleboxer that also fucked up Kaan Ofli earlier this year. This is just a big Kaan circle and we’re all stuck in it.
MUHAMMAD NAIMOV BY DECISION. I kind of hope Mairon’s turn towards success is real, but I’m just not yet a believer.