CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 169: A NEW DAY IN HELL
UFC 324: Gaethje vs Pimblett
SATURDAY, JANUARY 24 FROM THE T-MOBILE ARENA IN LAS VEGAS
EARLY PRELIMS 2 PM PST / 5 PM EST | PRELIMS 4 PM / 7 PM | MAIN CARD 6 PM / 9 PM
Every year I find myself wanting to use the annual December-to-January UFC void to think about the sport, its future and my perspective on it, and every year I make a bunch of notes on editorials I want to write before things come back, and every year I wind up not finishing any of them because taking a few precious weeks off from writing about newly signed Contender Series Winner Robert “Bob” McJohnson and his astonishing 3-0 professional record against people who coincidentally all came from the same boxercise class winds up being what keeps me sane.
But I do want to actually publish editorials this year, and I’m going to cheat-start by using this section to write a shortened version of one of my drafts, which is named “everyweightclasssucks.txt,” because as we officially begin the mixed martial year, this is how the UFC’s divisions look:
Heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall is out indefinitely awaiting eye surgery after the #1 contender gouged him, which the UFC has repeatedly publicly decreed was Tom’s fault, and barring a miracle we’re getting either our second title stripping in three years or our third interim title in four
Light Heavyweight champion Alex Pereira, who is 1-1 with the #1 contender, has been very public about his disinterest in defending his title vs fighting at Heavyweight, preferably against Jon Jones and at the White House, which is understandable because his other option is Carlos Ulberg, who earned his contendership after defeating hot young prospect Dominick Reyes
Middleweight champion Khamzat Chimaev doesn’t want to fight until after Ramadan, which means he’s on track to continue his once-per-nine-to-twelve-months fight schedule, except he, too, is perpetually calling out Alex Pereira, and his top contender, Nassourdine Imavov, can best be described as a man who, unquestionably, exists
Welterweight champion Islam Makhachev is great and presiding over indisputably the most exciting division in the UFC right now, which makes it real weird that the UFC seems to be real interested in having him fight Kamaru Usman instead, who is one of the best to ever do it and is also 1-3 in the last 4 years and about to turn 39
Lightweight champion Ilia Topuria is an absolutely generational star in mixed martial arts, which makes it real unfortunate that he’s on an indefinite hiatus while he deals with his divorce, wants to fight Islam more than his contenders, and wants to retire in a couple fights; in his stead we’re getting a Paddy Pimblett interim title fight because everything’s the worst
Featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski got crushed by Topuria, then went right back into the title picture after Topuria left the division and won back his belt beating Diego Lopes, which is great, because between Movsar Evloev and Lerone Murphy there are multiple great options; the UFC is ignoring both of them to have a Diego Lopes rematch instead
Bantamweight champion Petr Yan just upset the apple cart by winning his rematch with Merab Dvalishvili in one of the best contendership performances we’ve seen in years, but they will almost assuredly need to have a rubber match, and if Yan wins again his next contender will be the winner of Sean O’Malley vs Song Yadong, either of which would, also, be a rematch
Flyweight champion Joshua Van shocked the world by beating one of the best 125ers of all time in Alexandre Pantoja, but he did it after Pantoja busted his own arm 26 seconds in, meaning that, too, will need a rematch, which sure does suck for Manel Kape and Tatsuro Taira, who could really use a shot
Women’s Bantamweight champion Kayla Harrison was supposed to fight Amanda Nunes tonight, but instead she’s getting neck surgery and may be out another half-year, and the UFC was so disinterested in this division that they didn’t bother with a backup, and god dammit, we’re going to get another Julianna Peña title fight, aren’t we
Women’s Flyweight champion Valentina Shevchenko just cemented her status as a hall-of-famer by absolutely destroying Zhang Weili in a cross-class bout, but Val already beat #1 contender Manon Fiorot, and even though Natália Silva and Erin Blanchfield have both earned title shots the UFC is giving Rose Namajunas and Maycee Barber contendership shots instead, because fuck you, that’s why
Women’s Strawweight champion Mackenzie Dern got astroturfed all the way to the belt and is now an underdog to all of her top contenders, particularly the ones who already beat her in the recent past, and coincidentally, they’re fighting lower-class contenders while the UFC waits to see if Weili is coming back
The BMF title is not, has never been, and never will be real
That’s the picture we’re taking into 2026. With the possible exception of Welterweight, we are entering a year where the top of every single division is at best spinning its wheels and at worst openly busted. The matchmaking has metastasized to the point that multiple #1 contenders are being publicly shit on by the company and yet we’re about to spend an essay talking about a Paddy Pimblett championship match, and then next week we have to talk about the Diego Lopes rematch, and looming on the horizon, five months away, is the spectre of the UFC going to the White House, manifesting all of their sins at once, and disproving the existence of God when the Earth fails to swallow them whole.
Happy New Year. May we somehow collectively survive to the next.
MAIN EVENT: THAT’S RIGHT, THE SQUARE HOLE
INTERIM LIGHTWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Justin Gaethje (26-5, #4) vs Paddy Pimblett (23-3, #5)
I questioned my desire to write that whole long-ass introductory essay, and then I remembered this was the first fight we have to talk about this year and got mad all over again. But I also just finished complaining, at length, so we’re going to break with the format a bit and embrace the dark art of devil’s advocacy. Let me first present the case for Justin Gaethje vs. Paddy Pimblett.
Because, hey: It’s Justin Gaethje! He’s neat! He leg kicks real good and sometimes he punches people too! He’s fun to watch and he knocks people out! Remember when he beat Dustin Poirier? That was neat! He’s a trained wrestler but he’s only completed one takedown in almost a decade in the UFC because he’s just so dedicated to the brawling arts! He’s shared the cage with four separate world champions and sure, he lost to all of them, but by god, isn’t it time he got to be one himself?
And Paddy Pimblett! You can say what you will about the man, and his questionable opposition, and his robbery-of-the-year decision over Jared Gordon, and his ability to get repeatedly banned by pre-crisis Twitter by somehow being too bigoted for Twitter, and his capacity for talking endless rafts of shit only to cry foul when any of it is returned as though Michael Bisping himself had reincarnated into the body of a Millennial, but no one can deny that Paddy Pimblett is British and has a haircut.
Anytime the UFC fails to successfully market a fighter like Francis Ngannou or Sean Brady or Norma goddamn Dumont, please remember that Paddy Pimblett got pushed all the way to the top on the back of a pageboy.
Damn near everyone who writes, podcasts or complains to their friends about mixed martial arts has already done their two minutes on Paddy Pimblett’s road to the title, but as someone who does all three of those things, I’m obligated to do it, too. Here is the complete history of Paddy Pimblett, UFC contender:
Makes his debut by knocking out Luigi Vendramini, who was cut after the fight for being 1-3
Chokes out Rodrigo Vargas, who was cut right after the fight for being 1-3
Submits Jordan Leavitt, who was a much greater 2-2 thanks to a coinflip split over the 3-3 (1) Trey Ogden
Very clearly loses to the 9-7 (1) Jared Gordon, but inexplicably wins a unanimous decision anyway
Beats Tony Ferguson, a one-time contender who was now 7 fights into an unprecedented 8-fight losing streak; Pimblett distinguishes himself as the only man in the last three years of Ferguson’s UFC career who failed to finish him
Submits King Green, who is going on 40, 13-11-1 (1), and somehow ranked despite being on a one-fight win streak
Smashes Michael Chandler, who is going on 40, 2-5 in the UFC, and who has only one UFC win in the last 5 years, over, once again, Tony Ferguson
That’s Paddy. Here’s the thing, though: People love Justin Gaethje. His fighting style and his hard-nosed attitude had a sizable fanbase behind him all the way back in 2014 in the World Series of Fighting. He deserves it, right?
For sake of fairness, let’s give him the same window of evaluation we gave Pimblett. Here’s the Justin Gaethje story since 2021:
Came back from a 12-month layoff and almost got knocked out by Michael Chandler, but rallied back to win a great, all-action fight
Almost won the Lightweight title from Charles Oliveira, only for Oliveira to come back, outpunch him and choke him out in three and a half minutes
Took 10 months off, then scraped a close decision from Rafael Fiziev
Avenged a 2018 loss by knocking out Dustin Poirier, who was entering his retirement arc
Took 9 months off, then got dominated by Max Holloway and was famously faceplanted at the last second
Took 11 months off, then got another close decision off of Rafael Fiziev, again
See? He’s great! He’s amazing. Except for, y’know, the constant layoffs and the guys who beat him but aren’t here. None of them are here. Charles Oliveira and Max Holloway both destroyed Justin--recently!--and instead of fighting for the Lightweight championship of the world, they’re fighting each other in March for the BMF Championship, a totally legitimate belt that definitely wasn’t made up to try to sell The Rock’s shitty shoes.
And, hey: How about Arman Tsarukyan? You know, the #1 contender? The guy who beat Charles Oliveira and then got put on the UFC’s shitlist for fucking up a pay-per-view to the point that Dana White openly insults him at press conferences and talks about how the rankings don’t matter?
Because, y’know. They don’t. They super, super don’t.
When Paddy fought King Green, Green was ranked #15 and Paddy wasn’t ranked at all. Nine months later, Paddy fought Michael Chandler, who was somehow ranked #7 despite having only beaten the ghost of Tony Ferguson in the last two presidential terms, and Paddy was #12. It’s been nine more months, Paddy hasn’t fought again, and now he’s #5 and fighting for an interim title and de facto top contender status, while Arman Tsarukyan, who’s taken out world champions and just demolished Dan Hooker, is laughed at during media events.
I have so many friends who’ve fallen off watching the UFC, and while much of it comes down to their odious nature as a company and a fully-functioning force for evil, a solid part of it is the degree to which absolutely nothing matters anymore. There’s an entire generation of MMA fans who grew up watching a sport sold entirely around the idea that technique matters more than force, wins matter more than press, and fighters were well-rounded people instead of the asshole caricatures cagefighting brought to mind. And, obviously, the UFC fell short of all of those goals on a number of occasions, but that was still The Brand.
It’s 2026, the UFC is so mainstream it’s trying to hold an event at the fucking White House, there are now multiple fighters who praise the Nazis, the commentary team has a moment in nearly every event where they discuss how technique is less important to mixed martial arts than being fun, and the president of the company uses its press events to discuss how totally unimportant the rankings are as opposed to what really matters: Whether or not the executives like you.
And all of this comes on the heels of the biggest media deal the UFC’s ever gotten, and the best prices its consumers have ever seen. No more cable, no more pay-per-view, just give the Ellison family $90-140 a year and you can watch all the UFC you want.
Which we’re inaugurating with a Paddy Pimblett title fight.
Look: Paddy isn’t a bad fighter. He’s got a chin, he’s a big pain in the ass on the floor, and most fascinatingly, he’s managed to manifest the long-forgotten Diaz Brothers hypnosis that makes everyone fight you like an idiot. Are you King Green and your entire career has been built on evasive, defensively-sound striking? Better dive headfirst at the submission artist. Are you Michael Chandler and your entire career is owed to swinging haymakers? What if, instead of trying to punch the grappler with pressure issues, you spent the whole fight trying to take him down?
As much as the objective facts of their careers, that’s why people focus on Paddy’s strength of schedule. Laughing off Tony, Mikey and The King is easy enough as it stands, but aging fighters on losing streaks tend to, y’know, fall the fuck apart on their own merits. Did Paddy Pimblett disarm Michael Chandler and force him away from his own strengths?
Or was it his 39th birthday being a week and a half away?
I hate that we’re here. I hate that if Paddy destroys Justin Gaethje we can have this conversation all over again in eight more months. He, too, is turning 38 this year; he, too, is considering retirement; he, too, is winless over non-retired fighters not named Rafael Fiziev across almost five full years. We could do it again. We could make the argument that 24-3 interim Lightweight champion Paddy Pimblett still doesn’t have a great test in the octagon.
Except for, y’know, the time he lost.
JUSTIN GAETHJE BY TKO. We need you to pull this one out, buddy. 2026 is already a shitshow and we aren’t even done with January yet. I am choosing to believe you can start this one out on the right foot by not getting taken down by Paddy goddamn Pimblett.
CO-MAIN EVENT: OPPORTUNITY COST
BANTAMWEIGHT: Sean O’Malley (18-3, #3) vs Song Yadong (22-8-1 (1), #5)
God, cast me back to a week ago when this was still Kayla Harrison vs Amanda Nunes so all I had to complain about was the hilarity of Kayla Harrison vs Amanda Nunes co-main eventing under Paddy Pimblett.
Okay. We’re fine. Hey, everyone, you wanna read another essay about favoritism?
Sean O’Malley, man. At this point I feel like everyone knows the Sean O’Malley story: Hand-picked off the Contender Series as The Future Of The Sport, marketed more heavily than goddamn near anyone in the UFC, given matchmaking so favorable that his break into ranked fights came against a career Flyweight, earned a title eliminator by eye-gouging his way to a No Contest, won a robbery decision in said eliminator and got to sit out almost an entire year while Aljamain Sterling fought championship fights every four months so O’Malley could feast on his injured corpse, passed on #1 contender Merab Dvalishvili to instead defend his belt against Marlon Vera, who was on a one-fight win streak and probably should’ve lost that one too, defended against Merab and got torn apart, got an immediate rematch with Merab anyway and got choked the fuck out.
So: It’s 2026. Your chosen fighter is on the first losing streak of his life. He hasn’t won a fight in two years and he hasn’t beaten a top contender in almost three. Merab, the bane of his existence, is at least temporarily out of the title picture. Do you give Sean a rebuilding fight? Do you finally run the Cory Sandhagen match people have wanted for years? Do you risk putting him against Umar Nurmagomedov?
Why the Hell would you do that when you have a shorter, stockier fighter he can outrange all night?
Song Yadong has crawled through several miles of crap to get this opportunity. Divisions tend to build strong filters by way of genuinely tough, talented gatekeepers who are distinctly unlikely to make it to the top, but weed out all the fighters who aren’t even good enough to get past them. Song Yadong fought them all. He knocked out the painfully underrated Julio Arce, he punched Marlon Moraes out of the UFC, he stopped Ricky Simón, he dominated Chris Gutierrez. Song stayed competitive with Cory Sandhagen until his eyebrow was falling off of his skull. Song took a round off Petr Yan.
And then, last February, he fought Henry Cejudo and it got real, real weird.
It wasn’t a bad fight. It was, if anything, turning into a real good one, with Song busting Cejudo up and stuffing his wrestling while Cejudo snuck right hands in quite a bit more than Song would’ve liked. But Song managed to give him the full Moe by poking him in both eyes at once (after kicking him in the balls a minute earlier!), and in one of the weirdest rule snaggles I’ve ever seen, despite Cejudo telling his corner, the referee and a ring doctor that he couldn’t see, the fight was allowed to progress to a fourth round--and the second the round started the referee waved off the fight, allowing it to go to a technical decision instead of a No Contest, because, obviously, that’s the important thing.
Song won, and beating Henry Cejudo isn’t nothing, but beating him by what was essentially a referee’s call--especially after getting away with a cup check and an eyepoke without a point deduction--feels like shit. Speaking as someone who’s wanted to see Song get another shot at the top for years, I cannot help resenting that he’s getting it because mixed martial arts doesn’t know or care what its own rules are.
But then, that’s the way this goes. Raoni Barcelos beat Payton Talbott only for Talbott to get a ranked fight, Umar Nurmagomedov got a title eliminator for beating a debuting Bekzat Almakhan, Aiemann Zahabi is on a seven-fight winning streak and has yet to even sniff a rebooking, and Marlon Vera is in the top ten because he knocked out a retiring Dominick Cruz three and a half years ago. When you live in an age of rancid opportunism it’s hard to keep complaining about the smell.
That nihilism might be fueled by my suspicion that we’re gonna see SEAN O’MALLEY BY DECISION here. I would love it if Song managed to cut the distance, pressure O’Malley into the cage and just rough him up for three straight rounds, and I do think that’s his best path to victory, but as much as I enjoy him, as big a fan as I am, I just watched him go 60/40 in a striking match with Henry Cejudo, who is a) not a great boxer and b) had the shortest reach on the entire male UFC roster. I am not a fan of O’Malley, but he’s very, very good at using his range and crossing motherfuckers up. It’s mostly pressure games and heavy counterstriking that have given him trouble, and as much as I want Song to find a big right counter out of nowhere, I just don’t see it happening.
MAIN CARD: LET’S TRY THIS AGAIN
HEAVYWEIGHT: Waldo Cortes-Acosta (16-2, #5) vs Derrick Lewis (29-12 (1), #8)
Salsa Boy is getting the fastest do-over in UFC history. Waldo’s been one of the UFC’s heirs apparent for some time now, but it’s easy to forget that he was supposed to be in the main event already. After a five-fight winning streak that included Heavyweight all-timers like Łukasz Brzeski, Robelis Despaigne, Ryan Spann and a 45 year-old Andrei Arlovski, the UFC tried to pull the trigger on Waldo by giving him a showdown with knockout machine and #3-ranked Sergei Pavlovich this past August. On the plus side: Waldo took a bunch of punches to the face from one of the hardest hitters in the company and made it to a decision. On the minus: He was never remotely close to winning said decision. But then Waldo knocked out Ante Delija--after getting poked in the eye--and came back three weeks later to take out Shamil Gaziev, and now they’re talking about a title shot for him if he wins here, because beating the #9, #11 and #8 people means you deserve it more than the #3 guy who already easily defeated you.
Derrick Lewis is almost 41, he’s already quasi-retired twice, he hyped up fight week by saying the UFC has been giving him peptide PEDs and he hasn’t beaten a top ten opponent in almost five years. He’s slow and he gets tired and the UFC has been feeding him to younger, hungrier contenders for years. Before Tai Tuivasa started his historically relevant five-fight losing streak, he knocked out Derrick Lewis. He got picked apart by Ciryl Gane, he got flatlined by Sergei Pavlovich, he got ragdolled by Serghei Spivac and Jailton Almeida. Every part of the Derrick Lewis career arc leads to him losing this fight. All of which is moot, because Derrick Lewis is going to win. Waldo’s younger, hungrier, bigger and faster, and Derrick Lewis is going to win. Waldo spent his last three fights showing off his durability, his hand speed and his ability to fuck people up before they can touch him, and Derrick Lewis is going to win.
Waldo is going to hit him, and he’s going to hurt him, and then DERRICK LEWIS IS GOING TO WIN. Call it a TKO.
WOMEN’S FLYWEIGHT: Natália Silva (19-5-1, #2) vs Rose Namajunas (14-7, #6)
It’s amazing how opportunities can also be the absolute definition of a fighter getting done dirty. Natália Silva is, unquestionably, the top contender at Women’s Flyweight. She hasn’t lost since her regional years back in 2017, she’s 7-0 in the UFC, she’s got really well-timed kicks that frustrate the shit out of everyone she fights and her long path to the title means she’s knocked off multiple former world champions. It was already stretching credibility when Natália, then on a five-fight streak, got matched up with Jéssica Andrade, who had just finished four straight fights at Strawweight, but whatever: Andrade was the known quantity and she was the lesser-known contender, and beating Andrade got her in the conversation. This past May the UFC gave her both the biggest opportunity and the biggest test of her career as the woman picked to welcome Alexa Grasso back down to Earth after her title trilogy with Valentina Shevchenko, arguably the best woman in mixed martial arts. Natália passed with flying colors. Absolutely dominated a woman who’d been holding the world championship just one fight ago. So we’re done, right? Seeing as Manon Fiorot already lost, there’s no person BUT Natália to put at the top, right?
Funny story: I went through my back catalog of Rose Namajunas fights looking for a quote to use about the UFC’s dogged refusal to stop trying to trampoline her to the top at 125 pounds, and I gave up because there were too many to pick from. We’re goddamn near two and a half years into this experiment. After Rose’s disastrous title loss to Carla Esparza and subsequent move up to Flyweight the UFC threw her into an immediate bout with Manon, who was, at the time, #2. When Rose lost she got one rebuilding fight, and then they tried to book a top prospect fight against Maycee Barber, and when that fell apart and Rose beat up Tracy Cortez instead, they gave her another shot at the top against the #3-ranked Erin Blanchfield. When she lost--again--they gave her another rebuilding fight with the not-even-top-ten Miranda Maverick, and having won that fight? Congratulations, Rose Namajunas, welcome to your third top contendership fight. They absolutely will not stop. Erin Blanchfield has beaten everyone in the division other than Manon Fiorot, including Rose Namajunas, and her last fight was against the #8 woman in the division, and Rose is 3 for her last 6 and on a one-fight winning streak and she’s fighting in a de facto title eliminator.
NATÁLIA SILVA BY DECISION. This entire card is one big attempt to jetpack previously tarnished fighters the UFC really wants to give another chance.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Arnold Allen (20-3, #6) vs Jean Silva (16-3, #10)
WHAT DID I JUST SAY. FUCK.
The UFC was invested in Arnold Allen once upon a time. He ticks the boxes: British, pretty funny, good at fighting, never goddamn loses. The only thing holding him back was his schedule, which saw him appearing so painfully infrequently that if you go just eight fights back from the present he was sharing the cage with Gilbert Melendez, who won his first championship belt twenty-two years ago. But quality is quality, and Allen proved himself so worthy of a shot at the top of the division that, even if it took him ten fights to get there, he got a contendership bout with Max Holloway himself. Allen lost. It was not close. But that’s okay: Losing to Max Holloway is pretty fuckin’ normal, and with Max leaving the division anyway, the doors were wide open for Allen. And then he lost his next fight to Movsar Evloev, and for the UFC, that is unforgivable. For failing to stop their most-hated wrestler, Allen has been busted down to rehab duty. First it was Giga Chikadze, who, coincidentally, was also the #10-ranked man. What does Allen get for his victory?
He gets to give Jean Silva another shot at contendership. The UFC wants Jean. They need Jean. They’re so fucking invested in Jean and his crazy-man striking and his knockout power that after he destroyed Holocaust enthusiast Bryce Mitchell, who was just barely borderline ranked, they shot Jean all the way up to main eventing their annual marketing clusterfuck, Noche UFC, against the #2-ranked Diego Lopes. It was a real win-win situation for the company: The fight was guaranteed to be full of fireworks, both men were well-loved by the audience, and either eventuality would give the UFC a solid contender. What they didn’t count on was Lopes just fucking crushing him. He spent almost the entire first round one-sidedly mauling Jean on the mat, and when Jean tried to chase Lopes down in the second round, his addiction to the brawling arts caught up with him in the form of a spinning elbow upside the dome. For the first time in his career, Silva got stopped. You could go a lot of directions from there. Steve Garcia, Josh Emmett, Patrício Pitbull--there are a bunch of big-swinging fighters adjacent to Jean in the rankings.
But none of those would satisfy the UFC’s desire to leapfrog him to the top again. There’s a commonality in all of Jean’s big knockouts: He gets people to break from their gameplans. He hurts them and plays with them and then either they get into his range and get picked off or he swarms them until a big hit gets through. His faith in his capacity to produce panic cost him against Lopes, and I think it’ll cost him here. Allen isn’t the biggest puncher or the best wrestler, but he’s got the kind of composure that saw him through five rounds with Max Holloway without cracking, and while Jean’s always going to be the kind of guy that can turn things around with one big punch, I think ARNOLD ALLEN BY DECISION is the call here.
PRELIMS: LESS IMPORTANT THAN JEAN SILVA, I GUESS
BANTAMWEIGHT: Umar Nurmagomedov (19-1, #2) vs Deiveson Figueiredo (25-5-1, #6)
That’s right, baby. This is a prelim fight. Umar Nurmagomedov is a top contender whose only career loss was in a title fight against Merab Dvalishvili--whom he took two rounds from--and Deiveson Figueiredo is a former Flyweight champion, and they’re less worthy of a main card slot than Jean Silva and Waldo Cortes-Acosta. It’s funny how you have to change the math on this, too. Up to this point in UFC history the counter-argument regarding card placement complaints has always centered around the need to get people through the door on the prelims so they shell out cash for the pay-per-view. Well, guess what, fuckers: We live in the future now. It’s all just one bucket, which is also how we’re going to end up with numbered events headlined by DWCS guys pretty goddamn soon. For now? We have Umar, who just recovered from the Merab loss by dominating a strong contender in Mario Bautista, and we have Deiveson, who just recovered from Cory Sandhagen shredding his knee to pieces by winning one of the most uneventful, everyone-sucks-here fights of the year against Montel Jackson. For how similar their situations were, it’s hard to ignore the difference in the resolutions. Umar flagged against an aggressive grappler and proved in his comeback that he could handle another one without losing his composure. Deiveson got torn apart by two bigger, stronger, younger fighters, and then he fought someone who barely engaged with him and beat him by, somehow, hitting him even less.
It wasn’t a great look and it would’ve been an even worse sign if people hadn’t been so distracted by whatever the fuck Montel was doing. UMAR NURMAGOMEDOV BY DECISION.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Ateba Gautier (9-1) vs Andrey Pulyaev (10-3)
Sometimes, when a fight gets booked that’s so seemingly obvious that its betting lines are in the quadruple digits, I feel like my write-up should just be pictures of cows frolicking in a meadow. My assembled friends: This is not difficult. The UFC has plans for Ateba Gautier. He’s their big new knockout guy and they know he’s barely fought real competition, which is why they’re slow-rolling the shit out of him. José Medina was an unproven rookie-crusher on a losing streak. Robert Valentin was a TUF runner-up--on a losing streak. The repeatedly knocked-out Ozzy Diaz was next in line, and when he got injured, instead of pulling any of the roster’s more experienced fighters, they brought in regional fighter Tre’ston Vines. And after all of that? After three straight UFC knockout victories? Ateba gets Andrey Pulyaev, who is 1-1 in the company, got thoroughly dominated by Christian Leroy Duncan just one fight ago, and scored his first victory over the winless Nick Klein back in August.
It’s not subtle and it’s not sneaky. ATEBA GAUTIER BY TKO.
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Nikita Krylov (30-11, #13) vs Modestas Bukauskas (19-6, NR)
Times are tough for Nikita Krylov. Once upon a time, this man was considered a future champion. He had all the tools: Long kicks and punches, good bread-and-butter grappling, a solid chin and, most importantly, enough of a good head on his shoulders to voluntarily step away from the UFC back in 2016 to go home, mature as both a person and a fighter, and come back ready to take over the world. By the standards of professional fighters, that’s downright brilliant. It also failed miserably. Since his return to the spotlight he’s 5-6. He spent the entirety of 2025 getting knocked out twice--and the second time was barely three months after the first, which is just irresponsible. By contrast: The mainstream MMA audience has never expected shit from Modestas Bukauskas, which is pretty cruel. He was a Cage Warriors champion, he was a solid prospect, and to this day, 3/4 of the people who recognize his name will probably know it from seeing Khalil Rountree Jr. kick his kneecap in half. Now, somehow, Modestas is not only back, he’s 6-1 in his new run at the top. Sure, some of those 6 are Tyson Pedro and Raffael Cerqueira and the biggest feather in the Bukauskas cap is retiring a Paul Craig who was 1 for his last 8 dating back to a submission over, hilariously enough, Nikita Krylov, but Light Heavyweight ain’t what it used to be and a streak is a streak.
I don’t think Modestas has the power or grappling to put Nikita in danger the way a lot of his other opponents have. I do think Nikita’s deteriorated enough that he won’t be able to stop him from pecking away for three rounds. MODESTAS BUKAUSKAS BY DECISION.
EARLY PRELIMS: SUMMON UP YOUR INNERG
FLYWEIGHT: Alex Perez (25-10, #11) vs Charles Johnson (18-7, #13)
This might well be the single most foregone conclusion pick of my entire writing tenure. I’ve written more about Alex Perez’s tendency to miss fights than compete in them, with a still-record-setting twelve cancellations in the last five and a half years. The good news is, starting in 2024, Perez finally fixed his luck and stated showing up semi-regularly again! The bad news is he’s lost in almost every one of those appearances. Perez is now a very rough 1-5 over the past half-decade, and over the last year and a half he’s managed to get his knee destroyed by Tatsuro Taira and his throat throttled by Asu Almabayev. Charles Johnson’s entire 13-fight UFC career has taken place in the time it took Perez to record five fights. It’s been up and down, but Johnson’s highs have been very high, and while destroying Lone’er Kavanagh in his last jaunt has a place of honor in that conversation, nothing has aged as well as his mid-2024 knockout over now-champ Joshua Van. He’s got a window of opportunity to make a claim at the top of the division, and he wants to make the most of it before it gets drowned in the contendership conversation.
Alex is still real hard to knock out, though. CHARLES JOHNSON BY DECISION feels more likely.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Michael Johnson (24-19) vs Alexander Hernandez (18-8)
God, this combination of names. This fight could have happened damn near a decade ago, and coincidentally, that’s the last time Michael Johnson was on the kind of winning streak he’s currently enjoying. Even in his prime he could be a hot-and-cold fighter--the kind of dude that could beat Tony Ferguson or knock out Dustin Poirier one day and lose to Artem Lobov the next--but you cannot fault the man for persistence. For nine years, Johnson went 5 for 16. He got knocked out, he got submitted, and he went from sharing the cage with guys like Khabib Nurmagomedov to scraping by Marc Diakiese. But he hung the fuck in there, and now he’s staring down 40 and the Contender Series has definitely not had any kind of chilling effect on the overall roster and suddenly Michael Johnson’s on a three-fight winning streak for the first time since Obama was in office. And, hell, Alexander Hernandez isn’t too far behind. He was the most exciting Lighweight prospect of 2018, he was on the fast track to title contention, and then he spent six years getting repeatedly stopped while failing to ever record a single back-to-back victory. Now he, too, is riding four straight wins and knocking on the edge of the rankings, and all he has to do to justify his resurgence is beat up another deeply unpredictable veteran.
It’s so hard to predict Michael Johnson’s fights. He still shows flashes of brilliance and his two good rounds against Daniel Zellhuber last July were two of the best he’s put on in years, and by contrast, Hernandez’s last appearance against Diego Ferreira saw Diego exchanging pretty cleanly with him right until Hernandez dropped him, but I just don’t think Johnson’s going to be able to threaten Hernandez with speed and range the way he needs to. ALEXANDER HERNANDEZ BY TKO.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Josh Hokit (7-0) vs Denzel Freeman (7-1)
Fun fact: Josh Hokit’s debut opponent hasn’t been booked again and Denzel Freeman’s debut opponent was cut four days later. But it wasn’t for losing! No, better: After Marek Bujło lost against Freeman the UFC wanted him to sign a contract for this fight against Hokit, and when Bujło said no on account of his foot was broken and he couldn’t even spar yet let alone agree to a fight 8 weeks away, the UFC fired him. If you’re keeping score, threatening to violently assault women is a net positive, but asking not to be booked when you only have one functioning foot is a promotional red line they simply dare not cross.
Hokit’s athletic and talented and he’ll probably storm this fight too. I am not yet so forced to emotionally invest myself in his role in the Heavyweight division’s future that I have to stop myself from picking against him on emotional principle and the hope that constantly winning fights in 6 minutes is bad for your future. DENZEL FREEMAN BY DECISION.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Ricky Turcios (12-5) vs Cameron Smotherman (12-6)
I believed in Ricky Turcios once. I saw him win The Ultimate Fighter 29 (jesus christ), by which I mean I did not watch a second of the show but did see him take the final, and hey, Brady Hiestand was pretty good, beating him was a solid accomplishment, there’s a lot of promise in them there hills. It’s been four and a half years, Ricky is 1-3, his only win came against the 0-3 Kevin Natividad, and it was a razor-close split decision that almost doomed him. Now, three years later, he’s right back in the shit and fighting in the legally obligatory first loser-leaves-town matchup of the year. Cameron Smotherman was a late replacement signing for the company--coincidentally because the aforementioned Hiestand couldn’t make it--and outside of that upset victory over Jake Hadley in his debut, his tenure has been equally unfortunate. Serhey Sidey outpowered and outwrestled him last May, Ricky Simón outclassed him in June, and just like that, in the space of six weeks, Smotherman took two straight losses and has to consider the threat of getting cut off a third.
That said: I think he’ll be fine here. I still want to believe in Ricky. I still want to pick him. But my faith cannot endure. CAMERON SMOTHERMAN BY DECISION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Adam Fugitt (10-5) vs Ty Miller (6-0 (1))
Ty Miller is getting a solid amount of hype after his Contender Series win, and it makes me wonder if someday we’ll excavate the wreckage of modern civilization and find out half of social media was just people getting paid minimum wage to pretend to care about things. I understand why the UFC wants him: He doesn’t worry a lot about his defense, he doesn’t really try to grapple, he just walks either forward or backward while throwing 1-2s and as a Welterweight with a 77.5” reach, which is more than about half the Heavyweight roster, that works just fine. Sure, that DWCS fight saw him getting repeatedly lit up by a man he had half a foot of range on, but that’s not a problem until it becomes one, and Adam Fugitt, whose UFC history is dotted with persistent struggles with smaller strikers, seems real unlikely to be the man who’ll make it count.
But I’m pretty sure I’ve picked 90% favorites on this card and that’s fucking boring, so what the hell. ADAM FUGITT BY TKO. Welcome to 2026. We’re gonna make it, somehow.