CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 170: BEGIN AGAIN
UFC 325: Volkanovski vs Lopes 2
SATURDAY, JANUARY 31/SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 1 FROM THE QUDOS BANK ARENA IN SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
EARLY PRELIMS 2 PM PST / 5 PM EST | PRELIMS 4 PM / 7 PM | MAIN CARD 6 PM / 9 PM
Hey, remember when I said there was only one event this month? That’s because the UFC’s press material initially listed this as happening on February 1, because that’s true in Australia, where it is taking place, even though for 90% of the market it’s airing on the 31st of January. I thought about trying to clarify this at the time and decided I didn’t want to put more effort into it than the UFC does.
The year started with an attempt to substitute the old for the marketing-friendly new, and by god, we’re gonna do it again. The first three straight months of 2026 are essentially one great big attempt to let the new age roll over the old guard, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say the rest of the year isn’t going to be too different, and we’re starting with one of the worst examples in recent memory.
(If you do not recognize the recurring title joke on this card, you need to spend 300 hours playing Warframe.)
MAIN EVENT: BEGIN AGAIN
FEATHERWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Alexander Volkanovski (27-4, Champion) vs Diego Lopes (27-7, #2)
I wrote that about Merab Dvalishvili's rematch with Sean O'Malley this past June. But it wasn't the first self-quote I went looking for. That was a full year prior, when I had to talk about nihilistic rematches during Alex Pereira vs Jiří Procházka 2. While looking for that quote, though, I realized I'd already touched on it another year back, when I had to explain how Amanda Nunes vs Irene Aldana was actually supposed to be Julianna Peña getting a third bite at the apple.
And, hell, we could get an entire book's worth of impotent complaining out of Colby Covington getting three title shots across four years and just five fights.
The point is: Nothing about this is new. Not the shortchanging of standing champions, not the devaluing of contendership, not even the refusal to acknowledge top contenders. All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again. If there's a difference in the modern age, it's the incredible combination of the speed with which the UFC is currently doing it and the shamelessness with which they do--or don't--talk about it. Diego Lopes fought Alexander Volkanovski for the Featherweight championship nine months ago, he lost a clear, unanimous decision, and somehow he's here, again, and we're going to digress a moment in discussing why.
You may notice the "#2" next to Diego's name up there. The #1 contender is Movsar Evloev. He's an exceptionally talented grappler on a genuinely impressive nine-fight winning streak, which is hard to do in any division and damn near impossible at Featherweight, and that streak includes former top contender Arnold Allen, former world champion Aljamain Sterling, and, funnily enough, Diego Lopes. He also hasn't notched a finish since his days in Russia's M-1 back in 2018. The UFC has so much respect for Movsar that they spent most of 2025 trying to match him up against Aaron Pico, a former Bellator competitor who'd never fought in the UFC before, in what they swore would earn him a title shot with a victory.
Movsar, possibly unsurprisingly, didn't make it to the fight. Instead, the honor went to the now-#4-ranked Lerone Murphy. Murphy's the kind of guy the UFC spent years searching for: An undefeated Brit with a preference for striking and the ability to outwork anyone in front of him. Murphy sailed into the UFC in 2019, suffered a split draw, and spent the next five years never, ever losing again (with the possible exception of a hometown decision against Gabriel Santos). He beat lifetime gatekeepers like Edson Barboza and Dan Ige and even a former title contender in Josh Emmett. But he, too, hadn't notched a knockout in four years. So hey, the UFC said: Take the Aaron Pico fight. It'll get you a title shot if you win!
Murphy didn't just take the fight, he took Pico's head, knocking him cold in three and a half minutes. So there you fuckin' go! You've got two men on nine-fight winning streaks, and one of them already beat Diego Lopes and the other not only represents the nation you are constantly trying to win over and not only proved himself a good company man who'd take an unbelievably risky fight on short notice, but he even got one of those precious knockouts of yours in the process in a fight you already said would be for contendership. We're done now, right? One of these two men obviously gets the next shot, right?
Funny story: Alexander Volkanovski thought so, too. In multiple interviews and even a video on his own Youtube channel Volk's discussed his attempts to fight Evloev and Murphy and how, mysteriously, they kept not happening. He wanted Evloev last Summer: The UFC tried to book the Pico fight instead. He wanted Murphy in December: The UFC said it was a no-go. He wanted either of them here, in his home country, and the UFC made it clear that the only way they would book him on the Australia card was if he fought Diego Lopes again.
Remember that Dvalishvili/O'Malley quote from earlier? There's another half to it:
What else is there to discuss here other than the gross business of this fight? There's no Sean O'Malley redemption story, there's no intervening fight where he climbed back to the summit, there's no chance to show off how he's learned and changed his approach since their first fight. There isn't even much to talk about with Merab! He beat Umar Nurmagomedov, and it was very funny, and now he's doing this rematch because it's what the company wants and it's the way he'll make the most money.
This is all the way they'll make the most money.
And christ, that's boring.
As it was then, so it is now. Alexander Volkanovski hasn’t fought since the first Lopes match last April--the most there is to talk about with him is his having turned 37, which would mean a lot more if that first fight hadn’t been, y’know, nine months ago. I’m sure his kids have been precocious and I’m sure his garden has been turning out nicely.
Diego got his first shot for beating Brian Ortega, a former contender turned 1-for-his-last-5 tragedy who kept asking the UFC to let him leave the weight class and got denied right up until the fight where the weight cut put him in the hospital. Diego lost that shot. After that he had one fight, and it was with the #10-ranked Jean Silva, another massive promotional favorite, and it was, and this may shock you, a Diego Lopes fight. He grappled in the first round and did a great job and then he engaged in a big, fun, sloppy brawl and beat Jean to the knockout with a spinning elbow.
That’s it. That’s the whole story of the space between these bouts. Diego’s back in contendership thanks to beating on the lowest-ranked member of the top ten possible and, realistically, the UFC is pinning all of their hopes for this fight on the idea that Volk’s slowing down and Diego managed to drop him in the second round of their first matchup. Sure, Volk promptly took the fight over and won it, but what if, this time, he doesn’t? And if he does, well, sure, we’ve had second breakfast, but maybe he’ll get it done for fucking elevenses.
And what’s so goddamn galling about this is, if the UFC actually had faith in Lopes, there was an incredibly easy way to make this fight mean something: Have him fight Movsar.
Movsar’s the #1 contender and Diego’s only non-Volkanovski-shaped loss during his time with the company. If you’re going to make Movsar jump through more hoops--which you shouldn’t, but, obviously, that ship has sailed--make it the best, clearest jump possible. They fought once, Movsar beat him, and Diego jumped past him to a title match anyway. Now he wants another shot and, conveniently, he has a score to settle with the man in his way. It’s the simplest thing in the fucking world and it would solve four different problems at once.
Unless, of course, you’re deathly afraid the guy you want will just get grappled again.
But, of course, we are in the publicly-acknowledging-that-contendership-doesn’t-matter era of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, so we’re just here again. Diego’s the guy and if he loses they’ll let him fight Kevin Vallejos for another title shot, and if he loses that one he’ll have a barnburner of a title eliminator with David Onama to get back on top, and if he loses that one, then by god, Rob Font, it’s time to come up to Featherweight for your chance at gold. We will keep doing this until Alexander Volkanovski is finally old enough that he can no longer dodge punches.
I do not think that will be tonight. ALEXANDER VOLKANOVSKI BY DECISION.
CO-MAIN EVENT: BEGIN AGAIN
LIGHTWEIGHT: Dan Hooker (24-13, #6) vs Benoît Saint Denis (16-3 (1), #8)
Boy, if I’m mad at the way the UFC’s burning down its own contendership structure, I assure you, it’s got nothing on the disregard we have now for fighters.
Two matchups fell off last week’s card in the 24 hours leading up to showtime. The first was Ricky Turcios vs Cameron Smotherman, which got scratched when, seconds after stepping off the scale at the weigh-ins, Smotherman passed out in mid-stride and collapsed facefirst on the stage; the second was Alexander Hernandez vs Michael Johnson, which got pulled when someone on the inside leaked that Hernandez supposedly had a hand injury so bad the UFC had prepared a backup in case he pulled out, and the subsequent change in betting odds led to the match being hastily scrapped for fear of further regulatory attention after their last several years of betting scandals.
To be clear: They were perfectly fine with letting a badly injured fighter proceed to his fight, they just didn’t want the attention from the scandal when it got out.
And Dana White shook off the idea that the weight cut played a role in Smotherman’s collapse and said, and I swear to god this is a real quote,
If doctors don't know how it happened, how the fuck do I know how it happened, you know what I mean? Could be nerves. It could be a million things. People faint at weddings, you know.
I say all of this because 70 days ago Dan Hooker fought Arman Tsarukyan and got completely mauled and after being hit 69 times he left the fight looking like this.
70 days. Arguably the best Lightweight on the planet punched half his face shut and he’s fighting in a top ten bout 70 days later.
I am old enough to remember the long, long-ago days of mid-2023, when the UFC contracted Jesse Butler for a fight 63 days after he was completely flatlined by Jim Miller, which was so egregious that, despite the fight taking place 1,830 miles away in Nashville, the Nevada State Athletic Commission had to call the UFC and say “dude what the fuck are you doing can you please at least try to be subtle” until management begrudgingly sighed and returned Butler’s gurney to the TBI ward of his local hospital.
I miss 90-day no-contact policies. I miss pretending fighters get to be people. I am especially nervy about it because there’s a good chance Dan Hooker is about to get brutally fucked up for the second time in three months.
Dan is a very accomplished fighter with a lot of good wins, but he’s established himself for two particular specialties: Violent brawling and getting taken down a bunch. Dustin Poirier took Hooker down. Yair Rodríguez took Hooker down. Jalin Turner took Hooker down. None of these men are wrestlers. Hooker excels when he can keep people brawling at range or scrambling instead of controlling him on the floor, and we have repeatedly seen that if you’re an Arnold Allen or an Arman Tsarukyan or even a Mateusz Gamrot who can swarm him, he’s going to have a very, very hard time with you.
Benoît Saint Denis is not quite in that upper echelon of fighters, but the UFC wants him to be, and that’s particularly funny because we’re barely a year removed from the attempt to end the Saint Denis experiment. At the start of 2024 BSD was one of their favorite prospects: A heavy-punching, power-grappling finishing machine that had torn his way up the Lightweight ladder. He strangled Ismael Bonfim, he smashed Thiago Moisés, he kicked Matt Frevola’s head off. He was in the top fifteen, he was growing as a crowd favorite, he’d earned his way there holistically and it seemed like a sure thing that, by the end of the year, he’d be in title contention.
But the UFC didn’t want to wait. They threw him ten slots up into a title eliminator with Dustin Poirier, one of the best Lightweights in the sport’s history, and Poirier stopped him in a round and a half. Eager to reclaim his glory, they had Benoît main event a Fight Night in Paris in September against Renato Moicano, and Moicano mauled him so badly the fight had to be stopped after the second round because he couldn’t see anymore. His coronation year turned into his trip to the back of the line, and instead of a welcoming hero, Paris got a terminally blackpilled too-online guy ranting about von Mises and the need to kill Democracy.
And the company knew it, because they immediately flipped around and prepared to use him to prop up their new toy. Joel Álvarez was the hot new prospect and they wanted Benoît to legitimize him before he fell out of the ranks completely. But Joel broke his hand, so instead, BSD got no less than Kyle “Killshot” Prepolec, an 18-8 regional fighter and former UFC washout who happened to be available, whom he unsurprisingly demolished. They tried again a few months later, pitting BSD against the next big Lightweight striking monster, Mauricio Ruffy, who was a sizable favorite, and, somewhat more surprisingly, Benoît exposed his complete lack of grappling defense by mauling him on the floor in two rounds.
So management decided to roll the dice again and give BSD another shot at the top ten against the living enigma of inconsistent contendership that is Beneil Dariush, a man who can dominate Mateusz Gamrot or Renato Moicano one minute and get lit up by Alexander Hernandez the next.
Benoît knocked him out with one punch in sixteen seconds.
Hey! We got our prospect back. And we just tried to get Dan Hooker to rid us of the top Lightweight contender we completely fucking loathe and he failed, so fuck him. Hey, Dan, do you want to fight without having to fly across the world again? Good! Get back in the cage with one of maybe three people in the entire Lightweight division who can out-brawl you and pray he doesn’t decide to just shoot power doubles and bust open the stuff on your face that hasn’t even fully healed yet.
If it was not clear: BENOÎT SAINT DENIS BY TKO. Even if Hooker hadn’t been run over by a truck five fortnights ago I would still think this is a bad matchup for him. Saint Denis is good at a lot of the things Hooker’s bad at and he’s shown a real resistance to getting overwhelmed the way Hooker does to people when he’s at his best. Dan’s one of the toughest motherfuckers I’ve ever seen in the sport, but sometimes that costs more than it earns.
MAIN CARD: BEGIN AGAIN
LIGHTWEIGHT Rafael Fiziev (13-4, #9) vs Mauricio Ruffy (12-2, #14)
Rafael Fiziev is having a real tough time shaking his luck. 2023 was supposed to be the year he went from an exciting kickboxing prospect to a top five contender: Instead he got narrowly defeated by Justin Gaethje and blew out his knee fighting Mateusz Gamrot. After a year and a half on the shelf he got to come back--as a short-notice replacement against, once again, Justin Gaethje. Another, even clearer loss got him sent down into the prospect-testing mines, but the UFC’s attempt to trade him out for Ignacio Bahamondes this past June failed when Fiziev reminded everyone that there are, in fact, levels to this shit. Despite giving up half a foot in height and nearly as much in reach, Fiziev bullied Bahamondes and shut him out. And he got a top contendership match for it, and was scheduled to face Charles Oliveira in what could easily have gotten him to the title or at least a title eliminator--except his hand was busted and he couldn’t make it to the fight.
So now he’s defending his spot halfway down in the rankings against a bigger, younger, more-hyped striker again. Sorry, Fizzy. Mauricio Ruffy was one of the four big threats of the Fighting Nerds superteam, and arguably the most-composed knockout machine they had to offer. After smashing Jamie Mullarkey and wheelkicking King Green to death (and having a surprisingly gritty brawl with James Llontop inbetween that no one really talks about), the world saw him as a big favorite against Benoît Saint Denis back in September. Instead, the Nerds collapsed. Carlos Prates got eaten up by Ian Machado Garry, Caio Borralho couldn’t handle Nassourdine Imavov, Jean Silva lost a war with Diego Lopes, and Mauricio Ruffy got taken down and tapped out by BSD. The answer? Get him another top ten-ranked fight and for the love of god, make it someone who doesn’t wrestle quite so much. He’s bigger, he’s stronger, he’s scarier and takedowns have always been more of a side dish for Fiziev so by all rights Ruffy should rout him and marketing should celebrate and everything should go back where they wanted it to be.
Anyway, RAFAEL FIZIEV BY DECISION because I think he’s just better at this.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Tai Tuivasa (14-8, #12) vs Tallison Teixeira (8-1, #15)
There’s a specific sort of tragic romanticism that comes from a fighter’s complete collapse, and it’s rare that you get to see it truly happen. Lots of fighters lose, lots of fighters slide, but very few are permitted to fall apart at length within the spotlight of the sport. You only get a BJ Penn or a Tony Ferguson every once in a blue moon--someone who snaps over from hanging in there with the best in the world to getting demolished, over and over, by progressively worse opponents. Tai Tuivasa is in that conversation. At the start of 2022 he was a successful Heavyweight knockout machine fighting for the division’s #1 spot. He’s lost all five of his subsequent fights, and each time the opponent has been a bit worse than the last, and each time Tai’s only looked more depressing. Getting squashed by Sergei Pavlovich is understandable. Getting squashed by Marcin Tybura is a bit rough. Getting outstruck 3:1 by Jairzinho Rozenstruik (and escaping with a split decision because of a scorecard so astonishingly terrible that judge Howie Booth got fired in mid-card) means you can’t even do the one thing you’re good at anymore. Tai’s been off the grid for a year and a half trying to figure out how to right his ship.
And the UFC wants to steer it into prospect testing, and honestly, as much as I complain about the company’s desire to feed marketable names to their more affordable stars, this is an extremely rational fight for Tai’s return. Make no mistake, this is still one of Those kinds of fights. Tallison Teixeira is a UFC marketing project through and through. They had him on the Contender Series in his sixth professional fight, they were trying to book him again just a few months later, they fed him an easily digestible dinner in Justin Tafa for his debut, and having gotten him one single UFC win, they had him main eventing for the first time against Derrick Lewis in an attempt to rocketpack him into both the top ten and the public consciousness. And it failed. Miserably. Lewis walked through him and blasted him to the floor in thirty-five seconds. Tallison says it was an early stoppage, but he also only got back to his feet by climbing the cage wall like a mid-nineties child in a Discovery Zone, so I can only sympathize so much. Is this an only slightly lessened attempt to get Teixeira a leg up again like they wanted to six months ago? Totally.
But it’s also a good choice. Heavyweight’s bad, y’all. I complained about Tallison getting to #15 after beating Justin goddamn Tafa, but here’s the thing: Who the hell else is there? Marcus Buchecha? Sean Sharaf? Rizvan Kuniev is 0-1 in the company and he’s fighting Jailton goddamn Almeida next week. There are barely even thirty active Heavyweights in the entire company. Things have fallen far enough that Teixeira fighting here is practical, and if Tai still wants to stick around, Teixeira is the kind of guy he needs to be capable of beating. I’m not convinced he has the gas, and I think this is almost certainly going to be an execution, but I’m gonna let my heart have this one anyway. TAI TUIVASA BY TKO when he, too, walks through fire and separates Teixeira’s jaw from his face.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Quillan Salkilld (10-1) vs Jamie Mullarkey (18-8)
Speaking of marketing prospects: Hi, Quillan. The UFC thinks they’ve got something in Mr. Salkilld, and I was initially skeptical, but after watching him flatline the genuinely tough Nasrat Haqparast with a headkick last October, I’m coming around. Quillan’s big, he’s tough, he’s very good at making his punches and kicks flow together, and most importantly, the UFC has carefully swerved him around all of the good grapplers on the southern end of the Lightweight division, which means they want him up top, and by god, they might get it. Would I like to see him fight a Grant Dawson or Rafa García or, at least, a Chase Hooper? Sure. Is it fun to watch him style on guys? Completely.
Jamie Mullarkey, I’m sorry, but you are here for the styling. In numerous prior writeups we’ve talked about how “tough” is one of the worst reputations to have as a fighter, because if people have had multiple occasions to witness your toughness, it means you’ve gotten your ass kicked enough for it to be notable. What’s in second place? Being Fun. “They’re so fun to watch!” is one of the biggest backhanded compliments in the sport, because it means you don’t have enough wins for anyone to remember them, you don’t have enough career highlights for anyone to bear them in mind, and you aren’t dominant enough in your fights to keep your opponents out of them. Your career is a succession of opportunities to make other people look good.
Quillan’s a -850 favorite. Nasrat Haqparast, the man Quillan destroyed in his last fight, obliterated Mullarkey in a minute and a half just three fights ago. The math on the UFC’s expectations is not hard to parse, and they’re probably going to get what they want. QUILLAN SALKILLD BY TKO.
PRELIMS: BEGIN AGAIN
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Junior Tafa (6-4) vs Billy Elekana (9-2)
Outside of acts of bigotry or an interest in their longterm health, I am very, very rarely the kind of person that calls for fighters to no longer be employed. Opportunities are few and farbetween, this sport is cruel, cold and uncaring, and I want people to be able to make a living doing it. All of that being said: It’s fucking hilarious that Junior Tafa is still here. His only wins in three years of attempts came over Parker Porter and Sean Sharaf, who have a combined UFC record of 1-5 in just as long. Marcos Rogério de Lima destroyed him and got fired for it. Valter Walker destroyed him and Junior strode across the ring and slapped him in the fucking face and, somehow, didn’t get fired for it. Junior dropped to 205 last July in an attempt to reinvigorate his career and promptly got dogwalked by Tuco Tokkos, which was Tuco’s only win under a UFC banner in four attempts. But he’s a local, so by god, we can’t go to Australia and not include a Tafa brother. Billy Elekana, by contrast, is just here. He was a short-notice fill-in so Bogdan Guskov could kill a man at the start of 2025, and since then he’s gotten to beat no less than the 0-for-his-last-3 Ibo Aslan and Contender Series winner Kevin Christian, whose defining feature is being very tall.
Elekana’s boilerplate as hell and that’s probably enough. BILLY ELEKANA BY SUBMISSION.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Cam Rowston (13-3) vs Cody Brundage (11-7-1 (1))
There's no mystery about this. Cody Brundage is one of the UFC's reliable hands for losing fights. They didn't really want him in the first place--he got picked up on a late-replacement contract back in 2021--and since then he's been their personal Barry Horowitz. Rodolfo Vieira lost again? Call Cody Brundage. Sedriques Dumas fucked up his debut? Call Cody Brundage. Bo Nickal needs an opponent? Cody god damned Brundage.
Cam “Battle Giraffe” Rowston is yet another 6’3” Australian knockout machine, he just had a solid debut destroying a fellow burly wrestleboxer in Andre Petroski, and the UFC wants him to pick up another win for his hometown fans, so guess what, motherfuckers: It’s Brundage time again. The last two years of Cody’s fights are now a beautiful 1-1-1 (1), his only victory in that time was a knockout over the what-am-I-still-doing-here Julian Marquez, and the UFC wants him back here so he can get violently faceplanted for everyone’s collective amusement.
If Brundage can get in on Rowston and just wrestle him at length, he’s got a chance. He’s almost certainly not going to do that. CAM ROWSTON BY TKO.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Jacob Malkoun (8-3) vs Torrez Finney (11-0)
Now, this right here? This fight is magic. Absolute magic. I have devoted so many words over so many events to the UFC’s tendency to put together fights for the benefit of someone they care about, but this is the incredibly rare case of a fight put together specifically because the UFC just doesn’t give a shit about either of these guys. This is a “go play in the corner” fight. Jacob Malkoun is a nondescript Australian wrestler whose only finish in the last six years came after Andre Petroski knocked himself out headbutting Malkoun’s hip. Torrez Finney had to win two Contender Series matches (one of which was against Cam Rowston!) because the UFC was insufficiently excited by him, and when he finally got to the big show he beat Robert Valentin by decision in a fight that saw Torrez land four significant strikes, which maths out to roughly one-quarter of a strike per minute. These men are the platonic ideal of everything the company hates, and they have been sent out to this island to die.
It’s beautiful and I love everything about it. TORREZ FINNEY BY DECISION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Jonathan Micallef (8-1) vs Oban Elliott (12-3)
Guess what: It’s a rerun! This fight was supposed to take place back in September, but Oban Elliott got sick during fight week. Rather than rebooking either man into new fights they just waited to give this another shot, so enjoy a writeup from yesteryear.
It's nice to have little things I'm looking forward to. The last time we saw Jonathan Miccallef he was kicking the absolute shit out of Kevin Jousset's legs, ribs and head at varying rhythms and patterns, and ultimately bruised him up enough that the UFC, as they are wont to do, let Jousset go despite being a perfectly solid talent. Oban Elliott has long been one of the better Cage Warriors prospects in the UFC, but a combination of bad luck and a bunch of decision victories souring the matchmakers on him led to his being stuck treading water and awaiting a matchup that could move him somewhere. Unfortunately, he got it in the form of a preliminary headliner against Seokhyeon Ko at UFC Baku this past June, and it ended with Ko shutting him out in both striking and wrestling. Oban's eight-fight streak is gone, and he's fighting off a loss for the first time in four years.
It's secretly one of the most interesting fights on the card. Miccallef's sharp as hell and the beating he put on Jousset was very fun, but he also flagged by the third round. Elliott doesn't get all that tired and he's a better wrestler than Jousset was. I'm still leaning towards JONATHAN MICCALLEF BY DECISION but this could be close.
EARLY PRELIMS: DID YOU EVEN KNOW ROAD TO UFC 4 HAPPENED
FEATHERWEIGHT: Kaan Ofli (12-4-1) vs Yizha (26-5)
I chose to believe in Kaan Ofli, despite coming in second on The Ultimate Fighter 32 (jesus christ) and getting bullied by Muhammad Naimov when they signed him anyway, and my foolishly unwavering faith was rewarded. Once upon a time Ricardo Ramos looked like a serious prospect, but that time was at least six years before his meeting with Kaan last October, which saw Ofli nab him, backpack him, and choke him out in under a round. You’re on the board, buddy, which means you’re now doing better than half your graduating class. Yizha, admittedly, slightly less so. The UFC had him in their sights for years, but he lost the first Road to UFC tournament, repeatedly postponed his victory in the second, and celebrated by getting completely dominated in his promotional debut with Gabriel Santos. But he came back with a knockout win over no less than Westin Wilson, the guy known mainly for dealing with Jean Silva punching him by just bending over, covering his head and not moving, which, in fairness, buddy, I probably would’ve done that too.
This is a tough one. Yizha’s got a big reach advantage, but Ofli’s just as tall and probably stronger; Ofli’s got better chokes, but he’s had a lot of trouble controlling people. So we’re sticking with faith. KAAN OFLI BY DECISION.
ROAD TO UFC 4 LIGHTWEIGHT FINAL: Dom Mar Fan (8-2) vs Sangwook Kim (13-3)
It’s kind of amazing that Road to UFC is still happening, and if you asked, I’d bet there are people within the UFC that are completely unaware of it. The technically-global-but-90%-pan-Asian talent tournament started in 2022 as a not-so-subtle attempt to challenge ONE Championship’s growing influence in the market, and not even four years later the experiment has outlasted ONE bothering to promote MMA at all, and the UFC seems a little tired of it, too. This used to be a bigger deal, and now they barely even advertise that it’s happening, and then you get to the bottom of an Australian card and you have four tournament finals because, coincidentally, there’s someone representing Australia or New Zealand in every final. At 155 pounds, that man is Dom “Street Buddha” Mar Fan, a grappling stylist whose two career losses somehow both came to Quillan Salkilld, and his opponent Sangwook Kim is the former Welterweight champion of South Korea’s Angel’s Fighting Championship who’s getting his second chance after coming up short in Road to UFC 2. They’re both far more likely to work on the floor, but Kim’s a bit grittier and willing to take punishment.
But he takes that punishment because he has pretty porous defense. Also, he pushes his punches way too much. Gonna call it DOM MAR FAN BY DECISION.
ROAD TO UFC 4 FEATHERWEIGHT FINAL: Keiichiro Nakamura (7-1) vs Sebastian Szalay (10-1)
I have watched a fair bit of tape on both of these men, and I can say, without a doubt, that they definitively exist. Sebastian Szalay throws punches and, sometimes, kicks. Keiichiro Nakamura has been hit by strikes, and has, on occasion, landed his own. They’ve both gotten some attention for success in their regional homes, but Szalay’s was over guys like Dimps Gillies, who lost to no less than Blood Diamond, if you remember him, and Keiichiro was winning brawls with the 21-19-3 Yusuke Kagiyama, a man with a no-shit, honest-to-god loss to the icon of perseverance himself, the 16-112 Jay Ellis. Both men got a little attention for getting knockouts during the tournament, but Nakamura’s was a tough back-and-forth affair and Szalay’s was a forty-seven-second lamping against a man who ran facefirst into his hand.
Neither competitor is setting my world on fire, but I’ll say KEIICHIRO NAKAMURA BY TKO because my decisionmaking coin came up heads.
ROAD TO UFC 4 BANTAMWEIGHT FINAL: Sulangrangbo (10-3) vs Lawrence Lui (7-1)
This is the only one of these four finals with lopsided betting odds, and after studying up, that’s probably real, real accurate. Sulangrangbo is the living ideal of a marketing prospect: Striking stylist above all, tall for the class, already decently established in his native China, and a dozen-plus deep into his career despite just turning 20 last year. Lawrence Lui is more of a family hire, as yet another prospect from Auckland’s City Kickboxing team, the same one that gave us Israel Adesanya, Kai Kara-France and Dan Hooker, but he was stuck fighting 2-2 guys in his small pond until the shot at this tournament came along. Lui’s style, like a lot of his fellow City Kickboxers, is controlled striking that veers too deeply into brawling, and even with his successes it’s gotten him smacked upside the head a lot; Sulangrangbo’s talents lay in staying right at the end of punching range, actually using head movement (imagine that!) to dip in and out of danger, and being really, really good at sneaking right hands into small windows of opportunity.
SULANGRANGBO BY TKO when one of those hands gets the job done.
ROAD TO UFC 4 FLYWEIGHT FINAL: Aaron Tau (11-1) vs Namsrai Batbayar (9-1)
Aaron Tau, like Lawrence Lui, is another CKB trainee, and the UFC’s already tried to get him once. He traded in his undefeated streak for a shot at the Contender Series in 2024, but he couldn’t get past Elijah Smith, who’s now a pretty respectable 2-0 in the company. Tau instead dropped from Bantamweight to Flyweight, went back to work, and wound up winning two fun brawls to make it to this final. Namsrai Batbayar, on the other hand, is this year’s underdog story. He was an unknown and generally unrated wrestler before getting picked as an opponent for Shooto standout Wataru Yamauchi in the tournament’s first round, and, surprisingly, Batbayar smashed him in six minutes. This made him an even bigger underdog to his semifinal opponent, the 13-1 Chinese prodigy Agulali, which made it very satisfying when Batbayar choked him out in one round.
I’m too big a fan of the story to let it go, and as tough as Tau’s pocket brawling is, I think it’s going to cost him. NAMSRAI BATBAYAR BY SUBMISSION.