CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 171: LOK DOGS & POLISHMEN
UFC Fight Night: Bautista vs Oliveira
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 7 FROM THE MORE-DAMNED-THAN-EVER UFCMETA APEX
PRELIMS 2 PM PST / 5 PM EST | MAIN CARD 5 PM / 8 PM
The first-ever UFC Apex card happened almost six years ago on May 30, 2020. As a sign of things to come, its main event was the genuinely important Gilbert Burns vs Tyron Woodley, its co-main event was the less important and deeply cursed Augusto Sakai vs Blagoy Ivanov, and its first televised, main-card fight was a tune-up match for Mackenzie Dern. It was strange and alienating and uncomfortable, and UFC brass had multiple interviews and press quotes about its unfortunate but thankfully temporary necessity thanks to the era of COVID.
That era never truly ended, but branding never sleeps. Three and a half years ago the Apex was closed off for an event because Mark Zuckerberg, the Innsmouth fishman at the head of Facebook, had bought it out for the night. One year ago, Dana White joined Facebook/Meta’s board of directors as part of the ongoing mid-life crisis capitalism is very publicly suffering. Last month, the UFC announced that a naming rights deal had been struck and, for the measly price of $100 million, the fight warehouse will be the Meta Apex for the next five years.
Before we move on to fights, I want you to really digest that. The propaganda shellgame of moneyed assholes swapping their riches around has reached the point where The Facebook Guy, whose platform has aided multiple acts of genocide around the entire world, gave one hundred million dollars to The UFC Guy, who has spent years impotently whining about accusations of politicizing the sport while serving as a front for Donald Trump, in exchange for UFC broadcasts showcasing Threads instead of Twitter and, above all, for the incredible honor of having their name on the empty building the UFC uses for the fight cards they care about the least.
Everything is as ridiculous as it can possibly be, and somehow, year after year, we find deeper trenches to fill.
MAIN EVENT: INTERCEPTION
BANTAMWEIGHT: Mario Bautista (16-3, #9) vs Vinicius Oliveira (23-3, #11)
I’m glad I got all of that out of my system in the intro, because for the first time in 2026, I really don’t have anything bad to say about a UFC main event.
It’s heartbreaking how exceptional that is now. Gaethje vs Pimblett was a cynical marketing ploy. Volkanovski vs Lopes was an unbelievably unnecessary rematch. Two weeks from now we get Sean Strickland; the week after that it’s Brandon Moreno fighting just 84 days after getting TKOed. March, as of now, is Max Holloway and Charles Oliveira fighting for a belt that doesn’t exist, Josh Emmett’s career skid running through Kevin Vallejos, Movsar Evloev vs Lerone Murphy in a battle of unwanted contenders, and the attempt to rub the last bits of Israel Adesanya’s relevance off on Joe Pyfer.
We’re fully stuck in a bad era of the sport. The legitimacy is violently surrounded by the bullshit these days and it looks like it will be for quite some time to come. But that’s all the more reason to celebrate the good stuff when we get it. For all the UFC wants big brawls and sloppy knockouts, to me, this is good stuff. This is an extremely sensible fight with a fascinating clash of styles that’s going to answer some very interesting questions about the future of the Bantamweight division.
Ordinarily, when it comes to gritty, grinding grapplers, I pen you essays about how the UFC has tried their best to shove them into the corner. Mario Bautista, somehow, has been an exception. His technique consists largely of one-twos and cage clinching, he hasn’t finished anyone in almost three years, he hasn’t knocked anyone out in six, and while they haven’t strapped the jetpack to him the same way they have some of their more desired contenders, they have, by and large, done right by him. After a seven-fight winning streak they were going to match him up in a top-ten fight against Chito Vera, and when Chito got injured they gave him Patchy Mix, who, at the time, was one of the biggest free agents in the sport.
When Bautista beat him? They gave the low-highlight grappler a top contendership fight. After three years and eight victories, after sharing the cage with out-of-the-company killers like Patchy and greatest-of-all-time candidates like José Aldo, Mario Alberto Bautista, lifelong grappler, was given his shot at the top of the sport. And all he had to do to get it was beat Umar Nurmagomedov, the massively talented Khabib-clan contender who’d come just one round shy of taking Merab Dvalishvili’s world championship.
As you may have surmised: Mario did not win. He put up a good fight and damn near knocked Umar out with a knee in the second round, but Mario couldn’t keep him from recovering, nor could he stop the wrestling. To some extent, I was expecting a full demotion from the loss. Send him down to fight Kyler Phillips or Montel Jackson or whichever Contender Series guy they’ve decided deserves the full power of the UFC’s death star advertising laser this year.
Instead he has Vinicius Oliveira, and that’s kind of perfect.
“Lok Dog” was the kind of guy the UFC wanted to test the waters with before they committed. Unlike a lot of Contender Series folks he’d already established himself on the international stage, having gone from success in Brazil to fighting through Combate in Mexico and somehow wound up holding the bantamweight title out in Abu Dhabi’s UAE Warriors. He threw big punches, he slung fast headkicks, he was a solid counter-grappler and he looked all to hell like a top guy in the making.
But he’d never been undefeated. He lost that Combate fight, he lost back home in Brazil and two fights before the UFC came calling, he lost that UAE championship after a back-and-forth war with Ali Taleb ended with Oliveira unconscious on the canvas. There was no aura of invincibility, no unproven-20-year-old energy--he was a solid fighter with a solid background who’d already experienced the ups and downs of the game. The UFC brought him in hoping he’d be a highlight-reel knockout machine, and in his first appearance he dutifully kneed Bernardo Sopaj’s face off and the company excitedly prepared for years of Twitter clips.
Instead, Vinicius has turned into something much better: A solid goddamn stylist. He’s still unmistakably a wide-swinging striker, he’s still unmistakably hunting for a finish every time he fights, but after getting his bell rung by Taleb he committed to shoring up his game. He’s a wild fighter, but he outlasted a cardio machine in Ricky Simón. He’s a striking stylist, but he outgrappled Said Nurmagomedov. The last time we saw him he overcame a near-knockout in the first round and spent the last ten minutes overpowering and overpressuring Kyler Phillips, gatekeeper to the stars.
Thus: A bidirectional test. Mario Bautista worked his way to the top and fell back down, and the sport needs to see if he can right himself and retain his place in the pack. Vinicius Oliveira’s been punching his way up the ranks, but his last win was the biggest struggle he’s had in the UFC and the world needs to make sure he can hang with the top of the heap. It is simple, it is logical, it is harmonious and beautiful.
Which is probably why it’s in the Apex.
I’ve always been a Bautista booster and I’m trying to balance that a bit here, because an awful lot of his success comes from his ability to pace people with his punches and that’s probably a terrible idea here. It’s been a very long time since Bautista’s last knockout loss, but if Trevin Jones can do it, Vinicius most definitely can. He’s proven himself hard as hell to keep on the mat, though, which means Bautista’s best bet is probably to grind him out in the clinch and deny him the opportunity to use those headkicks he somehow manages to fit into very tiny spaces.
MARIO BAUTISTA BY DECISION because I still think he can do it, but Oliveira’s a very live dog.
CO-MAIN EVENT: DISPLAYING TREASURE IN A BROOM CLOSET
FLYWEIGHT: Amir Albazi (17-2, #6) vs Kyoji Horiguchi (35-5 (1), #8)
Whatever energy I saved by not launching into a moral crusade in the main event will be expended on the offense to heaven itself that is putting Kyoji Horiguchi in the Apex.
C’mon, man. The Apex? We’re in the Apex. You signed Kyoji goddamn Horiguchi last year and just two fights into a new era for the greatest human being to ever live you have him in the Apex. Sean Strickland is in the Toyota Center on the 21st and Lone’er Kavanagh is main eventing the Arena CDMX at the end of the month and Kyoji Horiguchi is in the god damned Apex.
It’s like buying a panther and putting it in a dog crate. It’s like hanging a Basquiat in your bathroom. It’s like signing Kyoji Horiguchi so you can have him fight in the Apex jesus christ what happened to you that you would unapologetically do the things you do to the world.
Across multiple decades and entire eras of the sport Kyoji, somehow, has just five losses, and they are, in order,
Masakatsu Ueda, a veteran and unsung star of the sport who, at the time, had three times Kyoji’s experience
Demetrious Johnson, one of a tiny handful of humans in the greatest-mixed-martial-artist-of-all-time conversation
Kai Asakura, who thumped a Kyoji with a knee injury and who got thumped right back as soon as Kyoji was healthy
Sergio Pettis, who Kyoji spent eighteen minutes handling until a spinning backfist destroyed him out of nowhere, because Sergio’s really good at that
Patchy Mix, who, I swear, was once really, really good at fighting
Kyoji was one fight away from being a UFC champion, and in his time away from the company he became a two-division, multi-time champion in both Rizin and Bellator. After finally returning to the UFC last year he drew a genuinely challenging re-debut against Tagir Ulanbekov, a nail-tough fighter who’d made it through all twelve of his years in the sport without ever being stopped, and then he got in the cage with Kyoji Horiguchi and got fuckin’ thrashed. Outstruck, outwrestled, busted open, choked unconscious. It was as solid a return to the spotlight as anyone could have hoped for, and when Kyoji called for a title fight, it felt utterly plausible.
AND NOW WE’RE IN THE APEX.
Amir, I’m sorry, but you are very much the afterthought in this equation, and at this point that feels like a pretty fair assessment of where things are at. Once upon a time you seemed like you had potential as a contender, but then your body, scheduling and fighting style all just kind of fell apart, and if we’re being honest, there wasn’t a lot holding your place in the Flyweight world together in the first place.
That’s not to say Amir Albazi was never good. He was! He hit hard and he had a crushing top game and he was fast to leap on submissions, and that’s a hell of a danger triangle, especially in a division that’s always hurting for punching power. But Amir’s the #6 Flyweight in the world, and that’s based on a sum total of one (1) ranked victory, ever, and that was a split decision over Kai Kara-France almost three years ago, and that decision was widely considered one of the absolute worst of said year, and then Albazi was gone again anyway because his body just cannot handle fighting anymore.
I don’t mean that as an insult, just a statement of unfortunate fact. In recent history Amir Albazi has been making it to the octagon once every 422 days; if you go back to the far more active days of his debut it comes down to a hale and hearty 338. For more than half a decade, Amir has struggled and most often failed to fight more than once a year. The only time he managed to break that streak was 2022. Since then? Six months off before fighting Kara-France, 16 months off before facing Brandon Moreno, and then Amir was booked against Tatsuro Taira last August and had to pull out again. We haven’t seen him since before the last Presidential election, and the Amir Albazi who showed up to fight Brandon Moreno that night looked worn, confused and tired.
And that was already fifteen months ago. That Taira fight he had to pull out of last year? That wasn’t just an injury, that was the UFC and the Nevada State Athletic Commission refusing to medically clear him. This is a man who’s had a broken neck and an irregular heartbeat, and this is a company that regularly lets fighters with visibly broken hands compete on international broadcasts, and they looked at Albazi and said ‘no, this is not worth keeping our main event’ and refused to ever publicly clarify why, and now it’s 2026 and we’re going to let him back in the cage to fight a man that could punch out a horse.
The last time we talked about Amir I discussed the inspirational nature of his return to the sport and the hope that he’d look like his old self. The Amir we got looked visibly compromised, and that was an entire medical crisis ago. There’s a part of me that’s unconvinced this fight is happening at all, but if we make it to the cage, KYOJI HORIGUCHI BY TKO feels almost academic.
MAIN CARD: HEAVY OPPORTUNITIES
HEAVYWEIGHT: Jailton Almeida (22-4, #6) vs Rizvan Kuniev (13-3-1 (1), NR)
We’ve spilled a lot of ink on the Heavyweight division’s ongoing war with the very concept of meaning, and this feels like the struggle finding its logical extreme. Jailton Almeida has been a UFC project for three years. Despite his dogged insistence on committing the cardinal sin of grappling, his background in the Contender Series and his willingness to do more or less whatever the UFC wanted made him a company favorite. But their first attempt at getting him in the top three ended when Curtis Blaydes punched his temple through his opposite ear, and their second attempt this past October ended with Almeida largely outgrappling Volkov and still losing a decision when, despite almost eleven minutes of control time, he managed zero submission attempts and got outstruck 123 to 27. It left him in a tough position: Too good to ignore, but not good enough to make it into contention, and too inactive as a grappler to provide the company the highlights they crave. It’s hard to figure out where you take a fighter from there.
But, boy, it sure wasn’t supposed to be here. Rizvan Kuniev’s had one of the oddest UFC entries I’ve ever seen. He was the champion in Eagle FC back in Russia, he traded the belt for a shot at the Contender Series, he pounded out his opponent but didn’t get a contract, he went to the PFL, beat one of their best Heavyweights in Renan Ferreira only to have it expunged for a failed drug test, and he went right back to the Contender Series, knocked out another man, finally got signed to the UFC proper, and promptly sat on the shelf for half a year. They wanted him to fight Martin Buday, an unranked man on a one-fight winning streak, and when Buday had to pull out they instead booked Kuniev to debut against our last-paragraph partner Curtis Blaydes, the #5 Heavyweight in the company. They wanted that fight so badly they rescheduled it twice to make sure it happened. When Blaydes won a close decision, the UFC decided to sit on Kuniev for another eight months before booking him against Ryan Spann--an unranked man on a one-fight winning streak.
And when Spann pulled out they replaced him with Jailton Almeida, the #6 Heavyweight in the company.
Everything about this feels like the embodiment of the heat death of Heavyweight. They’ve pushed Jailton to the moon for years and now he’s a random replacement fighter. Rizvan’s grinding, low-volume style is everything the UFC hates, and they keep giving him shots at the top of the division anyway. This is a fight that could easily crown a contender one fight away from the Heavyweight championship, and it’s three slots from the top and it’s in the Apex and it’s only happening because Ryan Spann couldn’t make it to the show and we’ve arrived at the point that an unranked man and the #6 Heavyweight in the company are functionally interchangeable.
It’s all fucked, man. Jailton’s striking is still way too loose and I’m not convinced he’s going to be able to stifle a human brick like Kuniev for three rounds. RIZVAN KUNIEV BY DECISION.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Michał Oleksiejczuk (21-9 (1)) vs Marc-André Barriault (17-10 (1))
Some fights are built to bring order to the middle of the pack. Michał Oleksiejczuk is on his best UFC streak in almost five years, by which I mean he has two wins in a row and neither of them were against Sam Alvey. Before that? 1 for 5. Some of those haven’t aged too badly--getting choked out by Caio Borralho is fine and making it to the final bell against Shara Magomedov is better than most have managed--but getting run through in two and a half combined minutes by Michel Pereira and Kevin Holland ain’t so great these days. Oleksiejczuk’s joined his former destroyer by training alongside Caio over at the Fighting Nerds for his last couple fights, and on one hand he’s looked better than he has in years and sent both of his opponents to the dumpster, but on the other hand, those opponents were Sedriques Dumas and Gerald Meerschaert, neither of whom are exactly big striking threats.
So it’s time to test him against someone durable. I said few men made it to a decision against Shara, but as of his last appearance in July, Marc-André Barriault is one of them. It was his highest-profile fight in years, which is probably cold comfort for, like the Oleksiejczuks of seasons past, it still left Barriault 1 for 5. In fact, in 16 total UFC bouts, Barriault has the honor of possessing only one victory over someone who’s still employed by the company, and that man is Eryk Anders, the living avatar of entropy waiting to consume us all when we die. If Michał’s notable for the adjustments and improvements he’s made, Barriault’s notable for his constancy. He joined this company as a gritty pocket brawler with the barest sprinkle of clinch grappling who relied on his chin and his gas tank to outlast his opponents and it’s almost seven years later and by god, he’s still that.
Thank you for your place as an iceberg in the ocean of combat sports. May your thawing be gentle. MICHAŁ OLEKSIEJCZUK BY TKO.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Jean Matsumoto (17-1) vs Farid Basharat (14-0)
Prospect clashes are some of the best fights you can put on. For how often matchmaking is done to specifically raise, lower or test one fighter over another, some of the best moments in the sport come from taking two people on their way up and letting them prove who really belongs in conversations about the future of their weight class. Jean Matsumoto was an undefeated hotshot of a prospect right up until one year ago when he took a short-notice bout with the gatekeeper of gatekeepers, Rob Font, and fell just short of victory. By virtue of a bunch of flying knees and a lot of leg kicks Jean got back to his winning ways last Summer after scraping past Miles Johns, and he wants back in the mix as soon as is humanly possible.
Beating Farid Basharat is an awfully good way to get there. We’ve used the phrase ‘the Basharat brothers’ so many times that it feels as though it’s lost meaning, but as ever, they are sibling prospects, and as ever, you will find Javid another three or four fights down from here because they roll in packs, and unfortunately for him, Farid’s still the only brother left unscathed. It’s been five straight wins and zero career defeats since Farid came off the Contender Series in 2022, and the extremely well-rounded gameplans and exceptionally well-timed wrestling assaults have been good enough that Farid would probably be in the top fifteen already were it not for his problem with persistently existing. As good as Farid is, he’s lost a lot of momentum after fighting just twice in the last two years, and in a division as lively as Bantamweight, you need that speed if you want to succeed.
Matsumoto’s a very live threat to just about anyone in the division and if Farid doesn’t work to neutralize the kicks he’s going to be in for a very long night, but at this point I have faith in the way he uses his weapons. FARID BASHARAT BY DECISION.
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Dustin Jacoby (21-9-1) vs Julius Walker (7-1)
Whatever things I say about the nonsensicality of Heavyweight can be doubled for Light Heavyweight, which is funny, because there is, still, more talent in the division. You still have a good five or six fighters that could, at any given moment, become a world champion. But the wild swings and the vacations and the sheer desperation of the whole thing make for some really fucking funny booking. Dustin Jacoby beat a future title contender in Khalil Rountree Jr. back in 2022 and got screwed out of a decision, which sent him down a slump that concluded in being responsible for the Dominick Reyes Resurgence Of 2025 after getting flatlined by 2019’s best prospect in two minutes flat. But now Jacoby’s back on a winning streak, because he knocked out Vitor Petrino, who had just become the only man to get finished by Anthony Smith in the last four years of his career, and Bruno Lopes, who’d only fought in the UFC once.
As his reward, Dustin now gets to fight someone who’s been here twice. Julius “Juice Box” Walker fought an amazing mixture of regional men with losing records and regional contenders with a history of being knocked out by Welterweights and then he got called up to the UFC for an immediate shot at the top 15 as a late replacement against Alonzo Menifield, whom he took to a split decision anyway because this division is only barely real. His second test in the UFC? Raffael Cerqueira, a man who had three separate Contender Series fights fall through before the UFC simply brought him up to the big show where he immediately lost four straight fights and, somehow, he has not yet been released. Julius Walker is the only man in the UFC that failed to finish him, and now he has a shot at the borderline of the rankings.
Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. DUSTIN JACOBY BY DECISION.
PRELIMS: IN HINDSIGHT I FEEL LIKE THE PHRASE ‘POLISHMEN’ IS INSENSITIVE
WELTERWEIGHT: Alex Morono (24-12 (1)) vs Daniil Donchenko (12-2)
Alex Morono is like a bridge to a past era of mixed martial arts. Morono, himself, isn’t that old--despite feeling as though he’s been around for decades he’s only 35--but god, his record sure is. Donald Cerrone had his first professional combat sports fight in 2003. Anthony Pettis was in World Extreme Cagefighting before Morono ever set foot in a cage. Josh Burkman was ruled out of the second round of The Ultimate Fighter 2 (jesus christ) back in 2005. Morono fought them all, and that history is still his present. He’s 2 for his last 7, and those two victories were over Tim Means, whose first UFC fight dates all the way back to the company’s debut on Fuel TV, the extreme sports channel that brought you the best of programming based around Australian surfing, and Court McGee, who has always existed and will, always, exist. Everyone else has beaten Morono. Ten months ago, Carlos Leal absolutely crushed him. And now he’s a link to the future, as he is here to be dutifully dispatched by Daniil Donchenko, the TUF 33 (jesus christ) winner who’s damn near a -600 favorite because he’s good at punching stuff and Alex Morono is made of dust and dreams.
I’m sorry, brother. I hope you prove them wrong again somehow, but the wind weeps for you. DANIIL DONCHENKO BY TKO.
WELTERWEIGHT: Nikolay Veretennikov (13-7) vs Niko Price (16-9)
This fight was not supposed to happen. It was not meant to be. It exists as an evolutionary mistake. In 2023 the UFC signed José Henrique Souza despite his a) getting knocked out by Yusaku Kinoshita on the Contender Series and b) pissing hot for steroids and getting suspended for two years. Souza went off and fought in Brazil and Malta instead of honoring his suspension, so it wasn’t until now that he was legally able to compete in America. The UFC wanted him to fight Eric Nolan, a one-timer who got choked out by Baisangur Susurkaev last August, but Nolan pulled out and was replaced by Nikolay Veretennikov, who’s 1 for 4 in the company and that 1 was a split decision that 75% of the media scored against him. This was still too rich for Souza’s blood so he pulled out and left Nikolay on the card alone, which is how Niko Price, a man who is 3 for his last 10, stepped in, and how José Henrique Souza vs Eric Nolan somehow became Nikolay Veretennikov vs Niko Price. We live in Hell. We live in a soup of meaningless strife and terror. Cars crash every day and sometimes fights come out of the wreckage.
Throw one of your belongings at the floor and decide based on the way it lands. NIKO PRICE BY DECISION.
WOMEN’S STRAWWEIGHT: Bruna Brasil (11-5-1) vs Ketlen Souza (15-6)
We were just discussing the middle-of-the-pack issues during Oleksiejczuk/Barriault, but as dark as the tides of Middleweight can be, there’s an unavoidable sort of tragedy about being stuck in the middle of the pack in a division like Women’s Strawweight, where there are barely thirty active fighters at any given time and you can’t actually get to the end of the list without having to deal with folks like Shauna Bannon, Marnic Mann or Shi Ming who are all visibly pretty bad at this, and coincidentally, the women that comprise all of Bruna Brasil’s UFC victories. Ketlen Souza came in with a fair bit of hype as Invicta’s Flyweight champion, but she got her knee torn to shreds by Karine Silva and came back against--hey, Marnic Mann, what’re the odds--and despite a big upset victory over Yazmin Jauregui, Ketlen spent all of 2025 losing split decisions, one to Angela Hill that could have easily gone the other way, one to Piera Rodriguez that should really have been unanimous.
I like Ketlen. I really do. She’s also just pretty small for the division, and doesn’t have the killer grappling or power to overcome the disadvantage. I also, in all fairness, do not think Bruna is great at any of this. As much as I want Ketlen to take it, I am, still, going with BRUNA BRASIL BY DECISION.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Said Nurmagomedov (18-5) vs Javid Basharat (14-2 (1))
Time has not been kind to Said Nurmagomedov. The one and only notable bearer of the name to not be related to the greater clan of wrestlemen, Said was still a fairly solid, borderline-ranked Bantamweight prospect at the end of 2023. He may not have been an undefeated marvel, but 7-2 in the UFC doesn’t suck, and becoming the first man to ever stop Muin Gafurov was a hell of a feather in his cap. But injuries and scheduling issues saw Said sit out the entirety of 2024, and then he spent all of 2025 getting battered about by Vinicius Oliveira and Bryce Mitchell, and now he’s 27 months away from his last win and the silence has become deafening. Javid Basharat isn’t doing much better. He was an undefeated Marvel, and then, like so many others, he hit the skids hard. He had the first non-win of his career after kicking Victor Henry in the dick so hard the fight had to be stopped, for which he blamed Henry and called him a coward who wanted out, and as if punished by the universe itself, Javid spent the next two years getting handily outboxed by Aiemann Zahabi and eyes-rolled-back-in-his-head levels of knocked out by Ricky Simón.
Both of these men were potential contenders and it’s feasible they’re both fighting to keep their jobs. I know the odds are on Javid’s side, but I’m going with SAID NURMAGOMEDOV BY DECISION.
WOMEN’S FLYWEIGHT: Wang Cong (8-1, #12) vs Eduarda Moura (12-1, #13)
I’ll be honest, this one took me by surprise. The UFC has been carefully managing Wang Cong as a future star since day one. They signed her off the back of her regional victory over Wu Yanan, one of the least successful UFC fighters in history, they got her two extremely favorable fights right off the bat, and for her actual debut as a UFC representative in her native China they matched her up with Gabriella Fernandes, who was 1-2 and arguably should’ve been 0-3. When Fernandes shockingly choked her out, they buried her in the Apex while continuing to put Cong on pay-per-view prelims as though nothing ever happened, and they even got her in the top fifteen by feeding Ariane da Silva to her on a losing streak. They’ve been very, very careful to keep her both thoroughly advantaged and constantly in the spotlight. So it’s really fuckin’ weird that she’s fighting down in the rankings against a decent threat and it’s buried in the Apex. Eduarda Moura’s actually fairly solid. She’s decent at wrestling, she’s got a tough chin, she’s good at slinging the overhand right into small spaces and she isn’t afraid to sit down on her punches. The worst thing she’s done is lose a fight to Denise Gomes, and that was at Strawweight, a class Moura had no business staying in, as evidenced by her getting kicked out of it after missing weight twice in a row.
This probably won’t be a fireworks-factory affair, but it will be legitimately interesting. If Wang’s going to be the postergirl the UFC wants her to be, she has to be able to win fights like these. I think she’s solid enough for it, I’m going with WANG CONG BY DECISION, but this is a legitimate test for her and I’m very curious to see just how it ends.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Muin Gafurov (20-6) vs Jakub Wikłacz (17-3-2)
In this card’s ongoing theme of bafflingly-placed fights, we have this. Muin Gafurov was a fairly exciting signing. He was supposed to join the UFC back in 2019 after jumping ship as a top contender in ONE Championship only to get contract-lawyered right back to Indonesia, he finally made it back in 2023 after a stint as a champion in the Legacy Fighting Alliance, and he then promptly got stomped in his first two UFC bouts and the world kind of forgot about him. He was understandably upset about this, and he took it out on retiring longtime veteran Kang Kyung-ho and ending the undefeated streak of superprospect Rinya Nakamura. Jakub Wikłacz has only been here for about four months, having traded in his Konfrontacja Sztuk Walki championship from his native Poland to fight former best-fighter-outside-the-UFC candidate Patchy Mix, and to the surprise of many, he beat the Bellator champion and sent him packing from the company entirely.
In other words, you’ve got one international contender coming off his biggest win in seven years and one international champion coming off his biggest win of all time, and they’re using that momentum to book them into the second fight from the bottom in the Apex. You are a promotional juggernaut, UFC. MUIN GAFUROV BY TKO.
WOMEN’S BANTAMWEIGHT: Priscila Cachoeira (13-7) vs Klaudia Syguła (7-2)
KLAUDIA SYGUŁA BY DECISION. The details of this fight are irrelevant. I ask so very little from this sport. I have given up my hopes of mixed martial arts not being an endless font of right-wing propaganda. I have abandoned my dreams of fighters being treated fairly or given acceptable wages. Bit by bit, I am losing the war on simple concepts like ‘it’s actually bad if the rankings don’t matter’ and ‘stop booking people who got knocked out a few weeks ago.’ I live with many terrible things in combat spots, as we do in the world as a whole. I asked for one thing: A beautiful, shining future for Josiane Nunes, the crazy 5’2” Featherweight.
Priscila defeated her.
Priscila must pay.