CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 174: A LIST OF CONCEPTS
UFC 326: Holloway vs Oliveira 2
SATURDAY, MARCH 7 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
(For the record, if you think my poster is overwrought you should look up the real one, which features the BMF title branding no less than three times on one page, including the main subject of the poster itself being the letters BMF with Max and Charles awkwardly shoved into them.)
There’s a lot to enjoy about this card. One of the greatest main events in UFC history! A big Middleweight prospect showdown! Drew Dober! Robocop is going to save us all! But there’s this really big stain that hangs over the show, and it drips more and more as you go down it, and I just can’t quite put my finger on what it is.
MAIN EVENT: LEGACY
LIGHTWEIGHT: Max Holloway (27-8, #4) vs Charles Oliveira (36-11 (1), #3)
There is only one way they could make me have even a moment of pause about this fight, and by god, they found it.
Because this is easily one of the single best fights the UFC is capable of promoting right now. Divisional importance, fan investment, personal legacy, outright action potential--it is a grand slam of a match and you only get a couple of those a year, and even by that very high bar, this is a standout.
When Max Holloway and Charles Oliveira fought for the first time, casual fans still existed. Normal people with varied interests would tune into the UFC by reputation alone. Barack Obama was still in office. And even then, damn near eleven years ago, the fight was a big deal. Max was a huge young Featherweight prospect who’d rattled off six straight wins since a decision loss to some dude named Conor McGregor who only had one fight with the company; Charles Oliveira was a former prospect who’d come out of the worst stretch of his career, taken almost a year off, and returned to a four-fight streak that made him look better than ever.
All eyes may have been on McGregor, but in 2015 Holloway/Oliveira was already a main event. Everyone knew it would be a great fight. Everyone knew it would crown a new contender. I went to an honest to god Buffalo Wild Wings with a couple friends who didn’t really watch the UFC but knew, reputationally, that it was a big deal.
And then the fight ended in ninety-nine seconds, and as it turns out, people still don’t really know why.
Oliveira comes out kicking, Holloway punches him a few times, Oliveira rushes for a takedown only for Holloway to spin him to the ground and walk away, and just as quickly as Oliveira stands up he finds himself sinking back down again, falling into the cage and folding to the mat with one hand clutching the side of his throat. The UFC reported it as a micro-tear in his esophagus, but Charles spoke with the New York Post in the press for this coming event, which we will gently forgive him for, and the story was a bit murkier:
Yeah, it really wasn't exactly that. I lost movement on my left side in there, in the fight, and I think a lot of people didn’t know how to explain what it was so they talked about the esophagus and all of that. But the reality of it, it was an injury to my neck. There were talks that I could have been paralyzed because of that. But the reality of it was I lost movement on my left side. (...) It was no joke. I was told that in the ambulance, the guys were trying to put an IV in my arm, and I wouldn’t even feel it because I couldn’t feel my left side, so I was scared my career was over in that moment.
In case you were wondering: No, shockingly, the UFC did not ever clarify what really happened. I can name all of the UFC champions in every weight class in order, I can tell you about streaming Pride events in the dark ages, I remember the smell of the UFC VHS tapes I rented from Blockbuster Video, but were it not for my need to obsessively research before I write I would’ve incorrectly told you one of the most-anticipated fights of 2015 ended with an esophageal tear because the UFC never disclosed what actually happened.
Thankfully, what actually happened since 2015 has, for both men, been mostly-unadulterated success. Charles Oliveira went through another couple years of perdition, he dropped most of his next fights, and then in mid-2018 he decided to simply stop losing and be one of the best Lightweights in the history of the sport. He won eleven straight fights, he finished damn near all of them, and in the best year of his entire career he won the UFC title by knocking out Michael Chandler, defended it by choking out Dustin Poirier, and smashed through Justin Gaethje, which is forgotten in the drama of his losing his belt on the scale over a half-pound weight miss.
And Max? That weird win over Oliveira was the midpoint of a 13-fight streak that culminated in his becoming one of the best fighters of an entire generation. He trashed José Aldo twice in a row, man. He taught Brian Ortega how to block punches in mid-fight. In the vacuum left by McGregor’s disappearance Holloway became a star of the sport, and he probably would’ve racked up another title defense had he not tried his hand at Lightweight and faltered instead. And then he had the misfortune of running into the actual greatest Featherweight of the generation, Alexander Volkanovski, who managed to beat him three times and send him down the road that led back to 155 pounds.
All of it has been amazing to watch, and I cannot help feeling that just recounting it does both men a disservice by insufficiently explaining just how amazing they’ve both been. Sports careers are painfully short, and rarely moreso than in combat sports. Georges St-Pierre’s run as the greatest mixed martial artist on the planet was only six years long, and by the end of those six years he was barely holding on. Anderson Silva’s sport-defining title reign ended a few months before that, and the rest of his time in mixed martial arts was a slow-motion tragedy. José Aldo was only a UFC champion for five years and his career afterwards was one of constant struggle. Ronda Rousey’s days on top only barely made it past the three-year mark. Renan Barão won twenty-two fights in a row, got knocked out, and never managed back-to-back wins again. The space between “T.J. Dillashaw, top-class world champion” and “T.J. Dillashaw, man whose arm keeps falling out of its socket” was just three fights.
MMA is cruel. It eats the body, it eats the heart, and in the vast majority of cases, once you fall off the mountain, you never climb back up. There are too many other hands clawing at you for your worn-out fingers to keep you alive.
But in 2015 the UFC put on a top five fight between Max Holloway and Charles Oliveira, and eleven years later only 3 out of the 22 other fighters from that event are still actively participating in MMA at all, and Max and Charles are still in the top five, arguably better than they’ve ever been, and a hair’s breadth away from another crack at a world championship.
It’s an insane achievement. It’s an incredible rematch. It’s incredibly important to the future of the Lightweight division.
So how am I still, somehow, annoyed about it?
If you look closely at the header for this fight and you, like me, are a giant fucking weirdo about fine detail, you may have already noticed it. The UFC always bills their fights in order: Higher rank first, lower rank last. For once, you will notice, this isn’t the case. Max Holloway, #4, in pole position; Charles Oliveira, #3, behind him. This is because I am lying to you a teensy bit. The UFC isn’t promoting the #4 guy in the front spot, they’re doing something much more annoying.
Six and a half years ago the UFC accepted that it was never going to be able to get a belt on Jorge Masvidal or Nate Diaz, so they invented a fake one and they called it the Bad Motherfucker Championship, because you can only fight for it if you’re a Bad Motherfucker, and then they promptly started calling it the BMF Title instead because swearing makes advertisers unhappy and nothing makes you a bad motherfucker like going ‘oh you know what it means tee hee’ because you’re afraid Budweiser will get mad at you if someone cusses while standing on their logo. It was an aggressively silly idea that existed solely to trick fans into thinking fights were more important than they actually were and/or to help try to sell The Rock’s terrible shoes, but as a one-time gag, the sport has seen worse. Jorge won, the belt wasn’t really brought up afterward because I guess Kamaru Usman knocking him dead doesn’t make him a bad enough motherfucker to wear the PG-13 world championship, and then Jorge retired and we all agreed to forget it ever happened.
Except the UFC brought it back, because guess what, losers, we didn’t market this stupid bullshit just to give up on it. No, this is now a defended, UFC-ordained, totally legitimate championship, to the point that rather than billing Max Holloway as the #4-ranked man in one of the best weight classes in the history of mixed martial arts, it is more important to make sure you know he’s the defending champion of badly fucking mothers.
This is also the one and only way to make the triangle of madness at the top of the Lightweight division even sillier. At the end of this fight there will be four men atop the rankings, and situationally, it will break down like this:
Ilia Topuria, who owns the undisputed Lightweight championship, knocked out Max Holloway just two fights ago, and wants to drop the title to go fight Islam Makhachev instead
Justin Gaethje, who owns the interim Lightweight championship and is thus required to be next in line for the big boy belt despite having been submitted by Oliveira and knocked out by Max within his last six fights
Either Max Holloway or Charles Oliveira, who will own the fake silver vanity belt that entitles them to nothing but a coupon for 10% off a pair of Toyo tires with the purchase of a second set of Toyo tires
Arman Tsarukyan, the actual, undisputed #1 contender who already beat Oliveira and has been told he is in no uncertain terms getting anywhere near the belt anytime soon
That’s three championship belts among four fighters, and the fight for the fakest one of them is the most legitimate one booked this year because the guy holding the interim belt already got the shit kicked out of him by both of the people in it and the guy who should be fighting for the belt isn’t allowed to and meanwhile the guy who does have the real belt doesn’t fucking want it.
I die, here. I am killed by this. There is an absolute shower of riches at the top of the Lightweight division and every single person in it is right on the precipice of tipping into the end of their career, and instead of trying to maximize it they’ve been wasting it on repeatedly trying to get Arman out of the top five, or desperately attempting to get a world championship on Paddy Pimblett, or having two of the best fighters of all time compete for the right to wear a belt that sounds like a sixth-grader trying not to get in trouble with his parents, because even after they win there’s still no guarantee they’re going to get a title shot because Justin Gaethje’s next in line, and even he isn’t a sure thing because Ilia’s got his eyes set elsewhere, and Justin’s already said he’s retiring in the next year, so his next fight could easily be his last, and then the proud BMF champion is stuck fighting Benoît Saint Denis for the vacant world title.
Just kidding, it’ll be Paddy Pimblett again.
People have already chimed in and said you should simply ignore the bullshit and focus on the fun, but the problem is the bullshit is rapidly outpacing the fun. There are three title belts in the top four. The UFC used to very publicly pride itself on how its logical weight classes and well-deserved title fights made its championships more prestigious than the eight thousand belts of boxing, and now it’s 2026 and we’re here and buddy, it’s gonna get a lot worse before it gets better.
I love this sport. I hate what this sport is. I love Charles and I hate that he gets repeatedly beaned by every single person he fights. Max is a better boxer than damn near all of them and he’s traditionally a lot harder to grapple. MAX HOLLOWAY BY TKO.
CO-MAIN EVENT: COLLAPSE
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Caio Borralho (17-2 (1), #7) vs Reinier de Ridder (21-3, #8)
If the story of the main event is the incredible achievement of staying vital as a contender across an entire generation of the sport, the story of our co-main event is the incredible achievement of becoming utterly overlooked in your athletic prime over a single loss.
Both of these guys were right there one goddamn fight ago. Caio Borralho had fourteen wins in a row, had never lost in the UFC, and was widely considered one of the most promising stars in the Middleweight division after outstriking former title contender Jared Cannonier. Reinier de Ridder was a two-division champion across the globe in ONE and rattled off four UFC victories in eight months, the last of them an incredibly tough split decision over former champion Robert Whittaker. The resumes were fantastic, the achievements were legitimate, and with their respective grappling chops both men were being widely discussed as potential title challengers for newly-crowned champion Khamzat Chimaev.
And then Caio Borralho flailed at Nassourdine Imavov for five rounds while looking progressively more lost on his feet.
And then Reinier de Ridder looked good for one round before Brendan Allen ate him alive and forced his corner to throw in the towel to save him.
And now they’re getting thrown against each other to see if one of them can be rehabilitated into contendership.
And in hindsight: You could kind of see it coming.
Caio Borralho has always been the kind of contender that makes you wonder about his ceiling. Strong technical grappling, solid chin; barely managed to scrape past Abus Magomedov. Great composure, solid cardio; even in victory got half of his face broken by Jared Cannonier. Getting completely flummoxed by a defensively sound guy like Nassourdine Imavov? Not actually that shocking.
Reinier’s fall was downright predictable, it was only shocking that Brendan Allen was the one who enjoyed it. Yes, Reinier was a double champion, but ONE’s weight classes barely exist, and his standup and stamina had both been consistent problems. As it turns out, if you are 6’4”, forcing yourself to cut almost 40 pounds five times in eleven months is a really bad idea, and someone you can’t abuse with your size and grappling can and will destroy your desiccated corpse.
All of which leads to this fight kind of making sense. Caio couldn’t handle Imavov’s striking defense: Outside of the clinch Reinier’s striking is the least dangerous part of his game. Reinier struggled with Allen’s aggression: Caio’s inability to dictate fight pace has been a persistent hole in his style. Will Borralho and the Fighting Nerds have come up with a better gameplan than the freeform-jazz nature of his last couple outings? Will Reinier de Ridder be in any better condition now that he’s had more than two and a half months between fight camps?
Is there any hope whatsoever that a fight between two really good grapplers could be a really good grappling match instead of a tepid kickboxing affair where Caio lands some extra jabs while Reinier repeatedly tries to clinch him so he can gangle some knees into his stomach?
Probably not. CAIO BORRALHO BY DECISION.
MAIN CARD: FIAT
BANTAMWEIGHT: Rob Font (22-9, #13) vs Raul Rosas Jr. (11-1, NR)
They want this fight to happen so badly that, in a way, this is the third time they’ve tried to do it. Rob Font has kept the Bantamweight gate for a decade, allowing only the best and brightest to slip past him and into the upper echelons of the division, thanks to his powerful combination of crisp boxing, fantastic recovery, and a haircut that is perpetually somewhere between a mohawk, a pompadour and an early-oughts emo cut with no sign of clarity on the horizon. But if half the point of a gatekeeper is guarding against sub-par competition, the other half is existing to justify marketing’s favorite prospects. Last September, Rob Font was called upon to let David Martínez into the top ten in the hopes that Noche UFC 3 could give the world a new Mexican contender, and Font was dutifully beaten. But David was the second choice.
They wanted Raul Rosas Jr. They still want Raul Rosas Jr. He’s their child soldier in the marketing wars and they cannot let him fail. When he got absolutely mauled by Christian Rodriguez back in 2023 they had Raul back in the cage a few months later with Terrence Mitchell, a regional fighter from Alaska they’d picked up for lost-minute job duty, and after he got trounced in three minutes they realized he was perfect for making Raul look good again. If the UFC succeeds in getting him into the rankings with this fight they’ll have guided him to the top fifteen on the strength of a five-fight winning streak that includes only one fighter coming off a win, and that was Ricky Turcios thanks to his split decision over “Quicksand” Kevin Natividad, whom you do not remember because he got cut after going 0-3, nor do you likely remember Ricky, because the Rosas fight was his only one in almost two and a half years.
In fairness: They tried to book Raul against Rob back when he was on a whole two-fight winning streak! But they picked Rob for a reason: He gets taken down constantly. Cory Sandhagen and Deiveson Figueiredo both beat him with their wrestling, and Kyler Phillips and Jean Matsumoto came razor-close to doing it too. Wrestling is Raul’s ken. It is what he’s best at. He may have gotten outstruck 83 to 2 (to be clear that’s not a joke, it was 83 to 2) against Rodriguez, but that didn’t stop him from trying to take him down over and over and over. He never gave up on the wrestling. He can’t. It’s what he does. It’s who he is.
And it’s indicative of the UFC’s faith in his ability to do it that even though a win over Rob doesn’t get Raul into the top ten anymore they just rebooked this fight, because there’s a darned good chance anyone above him stuffs him and turns him into paste. For now, though? RAUL ROSAS JR. BY DECISION.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Drew Dober (28-15 (1)) vs Michael Johnson (24-19)
At a certain point there’s nowhere to go but the teeming morass of violence. Both of these men have been doing this since the dawn of time. Drew Dober is 37 and his first amateur fight happened one month before the UFC’s Lightweight Championship was reinstated after four and a half years spent lost in the void of combat. He fought on television networks that don’t exist anymore. The two best wins of Michael Johnson’s career were Tony Ferguson and Dustin Poirier, both of whom are now retired from mixed martial arts. The first non-exhibition appearance Michael Johnson had in UFC was twenty-two seasons of The Ultimate Fighter ago and half of the headlining fight on the event has been dead since 2022.
Their current states are immaterial. Drew Dober just got his first victory since 2023 and it was over Kyle Prepolec, who is now 0-4 in the UFC; Michael Johnson is on a three-fight winning streak that includes Daniel Zellhuber, whom the UFC was still trying to push just last weekend; their paths still led them to each other because that is all that is left. Drew has lost to too many contenders to be trusted with a run at the rankings despite his reliability as a knockout artist and Johnson has beaten too many desirable prospects to be trusted with any more careers they’d prefer to protect. The old guns must wipe each other from the map so the new can be fertilized by their bodies.
Johnson’s faster and longer and Drew likes to walk into punches, but I trust his hooks more than I trust Johnson’s reliability. DREW DOBER BY KO.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Gregory Rodrigues (18-6, #13) vs Brunno Ferreira (15-2, #15)
The swings of matchmaking have taken a real toll on Gregory Rodrigues. Ol’ Robocop got a bunch of hype for being so absurdly durable that he knocked out Chidi Njokuani in 2022 despite having his supratrochlear artery hanging out of a hole in his face, and then Brunno Ferreira knocked him dead in a single round and the hype went away. After three winsi the UFC suddenly tried to jump Old Gregg from unranked to top ten with an abrupt main event against Jared Cannonier, but a promising start didn’t stop Rodrigues from getting crushed in the fourth round. But Rowdy Roddy Greggy knocked out Jack Hermansson--which is a lot better than Joe Pyfer did--and outfought Roman Kopylov, and got himself ranked the hard way. So he gets his shot at ascension, right? After all, again, he crushed the guy who beat Pyfer and Pyfer’s ranked below him and Pyfer’s fighting Israel fucking Adesanya at the end of the month, so they have big plans for Gregor Mandel, right?
Of course not! He gets a rematch with the lower-ranked guy who knocked him out. Which I can only mock so much because, in total fairness, Brunno Ferreira did absolutely knock him the fuck out. No one really remembers it because the now-missing Nursulton Ruziboev knocked Brunno out even faster in his next fight. Everything since then has been the very familiar story of the protected prospect. Brunno’s had six more fights, and exactly two of them were against fighters coming off wins in the UFC, and one of them, Abus Magomedov, strangled him violently. Most of the rest were on losing streaks. Hell, Brunno is only here in the rankings thanks to a decision over Marvin Vettori, who has one win in the last four and a half years. (Ferreira also dramatically blew his weight cut, but that only matters if they don’t like you.) He punches hard, he gets stoppages, and he came from the Contender Series, and that’s all that matters.
It is aggressively silly to pick Rodrigues here. We saw this fight. It was pretty definitive. I do not care. GREGORY RODRIGUES BY TKO.
PRELIMS: DEPRECIATION
BANTAMWEIGHT: Cody Garbrandt (14-7) vs Xiao Long (27-10)
They’re cashing in on you, Cody. Everyone knows the Cody Garbrandt story--the undefeated wunderkind who slew Dominick Cruz only to immediately implode and spend the rest of his career getting knocked out a bunch--but despite the outright ending of the tale having been written multiple times, at this point, he’s still here. Getting crushed by Kai Kara-France was supposed to be the end, but after a year and a half on the shelf he returned. Getting choked out by Deiveson Figueiredo in 2024 and dominated by Raoni Barcelos last June were supposed to mark the end of his contract, but in an era where Jailtons Almeida and Muhammad Mokaevi are being cut left and right, Cody Garbrandt is still here at 3 for his last 10, which should serve as an example to the entire industry that cultivating leverage is good for you. That said: He’s still around specifically because they’re trying to spread that leverage to as many favored fighters as they can. Deiveson was a contender in training, Raoni’s a borderline-ranked guy they want to get more mileage out of, and god above, they want Xiao Long to be a thing. He failed on the Contender Series and they still brought him to Road to UFC. He fell out of the tournament due to injuries, so they brought him back for Road to UFC 2. He got injured again, so they pushed the tournament finals back half a year to accommodate him. He lost, and they signed him anyway. He’s 1-1 since that signing and coming off a loss, and Xiao is still here facing a star of the sport headlining the prelims on a numbered show while SuYoung You, the man who beat him, is fighting in the prelims in the Apex next week.
So I need you to get one more big right hand into this one, Cody. I know you’ve got one left in the tank. Fuck ‘em. CODY GARBRANDT BY KO.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Donte Johnson (7-0) vs Cody Brundage (11-8-1 (1))
Our congratulations here at The Punchsport Report to Donte Johnson for being the incredibly rare fighter to win Favored Prospect status from both us and the UFC. I should, for consistency, have a bone to pick with Donte. He is the precise picture of what the Contender Series wants the sport to look like: One year of experience, only one fight against an opponent with more wins than losses (that lofty record: 3-0), signed to the UFC to be used as an interchangeable late-replacement cog. But this particular cog choked out Sedriques Dumas, so by golly, I’m a fan. More importantly, though, it’s a fucking crime that Cody Brundage is here. We talk about Brundage’s reputation as the UFC’s favorite enhancement talent a lot around these parts, but Brundage just got battered to a TKO by Cam Rowston at the end of January. That is thirty-five fucking days between falling over after getting punched in the head 41 times and being booked to fight again. It should really matter that the UFC, which has 81 active Middleweights, three separate talent farms and free reign over essentially the entire regional circuit, is now so apathetic about fighter health that it can and will book someone with a TKO on their record more recent than the last time I put gas in my car.
It’s a small miracle and a genuine testament to the UFC’s medical practices that no one in their history has died or become (immediately) disabled from their fights in a sport built around brain trauma, but as the company cares progressively less about the quality of its product it has also begun to care less about the health of its fighters, and on a long enough timeframe, you can only book so many people into multiple short-term concussions before disaster strikes. DONTE JOHNSON BY TKO and fuck you for doing it.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Alberto Montes (10-1) vs Ricky Turcios (12-5)
The bell tolls for you, Ricky. You were The Ultimate Fighter once upon a time, and now, going on five years later, you are the man they put in front of fighters they want to thrive. Cruel masters sacrificed you on the altar of Raul Rosas Jr. and Bernardo Sopaj managed to best you and they really wanted to follow up by having you rehabilitate Cameron Smotherman for them back in January and you were saved by Cameron fucking fainting and faceplanting in the middle of weigh-ins, which really feels like it still should’ve been a bigger deal. That rescheduling could have led to Turcios getting matched up with another fighter in a similar place of struggle, but that’s just not how they feel about ol’ Ricky, so instead it’s Alberto Montes, who won his Contender Series contract a full year and a half ago and is only now getting around to his promotional debut after his previous life of choking people out in Combate and getting knocked out by dudes named Ira.
I keep picking Ricky out of some insane urge to root for him and he keeps losing. I am going to do it again. RICKY TURCIOS BY DECISION.
FLYWEIGHT: Cody Durden (17-9-1) vs Nyamjargal Tumendemberel (9-1)
Guess what, folks: It’s a package deal this week. You get THREE Codies. Three whole Codies. There are six men named Cody currently signed to the UFC, and by god, half of them will be assembled here in Las Vegas for this one-night blowout on the Cody supply in the combat sports world. If a plane crashes into the T-Mobile Arena they’ll have to activate the Chain of Codymand and reactivate McKenzie, Law, Pfister and Stamann just to fill the gap. Also, unrelatedly, Cody Durden has lost five of his last six fights and been stopped in four of them and Nyamjargal Tumendemberel is a finishing machine and a Road to UFC special attraction they’d really love to make something out of.
No idea why I’d bring that up. NYAMJARGAL TUMENDEMBEREL BY TKO.
EARLY PRELIMS: SILENCE
FLYWEIGHT: Sumudaerji (18-7) vs Jesus Aguilar (12-3)
Thank you for joining us on the annual trip to the alternate Flyweight reality that contains Sumudaerji. Across years of effort, somehow, his path through the division keeps swerving away from the rest of the roster. He was supposed to fight Bruno Silva and Manel Kape once upon a time! He wound up with Malcolm Gordon and Matt Schnell. He brushed the prime continuity when he met Charles Johnson in 2024, but he lost and found himself banished back to his pocket dimension. He’s on a two-fight winning streak right now over Mitch Raposo and Kevin Borjas and somehow, Raposo is fighting the borderline-ranked Allan Nascimento next month, and Borjas just got a main-card spotlight so he could lose to Imanol Rodriguez, and Sumudaerji is here on the early prelims fighting Jesus Aguilar, who is notable mostly for a) missing weight and b) beating Luis Gurule, who is 0-3 in the company.
Left hand paths need left hand solutions. SUMUDAERJI BY DECISION.
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Rafael Tobias (14-1) vs Diyar Nurgozhay (10-2)
We’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel on these early prelims, man. Rafael Tobias comes from the path you and I have traveled together hundreds of times: Regional finishing artist built on jobbers and journeymen who only has a couple wins over people who even approach credibility until you look at their records and see that their competition was even worse and then he went on the Contender Series and choked out a guy with less than half his experience who got there by beating a man who was 3-5 in a company that asks hard questions like ‘what if the undefeated guy fights the 3-6 guy’ because no one else dares to answer them. Diyar Nurghozhay was Basically Also That Guy but last year’s model, and then he came into his UFC debut badly overweight and got submitted in a round and a half and then he came back vowing a better performance and got submitted in under three minutes and now they have him fighting their new guy who submits everyone but hasn’t yet abandoned all hope for the future.
Welcome to the circle of life, Diyar. RAFAEL TOBIAS BY SUBMISSION.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Gaston Bolaños (8-5) vs JeongYeong Lee (11-3)
I am not saying the UFC is an inherently cynical organization that sees fighters under a certain threshold as identical parts based on marketable attributes such as, say, nationality. I would NEVER say the UFC would be so crass and obvious as to racially profile their own fighters for ease of advertising. That would be crazy. I am simply pointing out that Gaston Bolaños is a 2-2 fighter of very little importance who hasn’t won a match in a year and a half, and he was supposed to meet JooSang Yoo here, and when Yoo withdrew, out of the 100+ Featherweights they currently have on the roster, they chose one of the exactly two other South Korean fighters in the division to replace him. You know! For reasons.
Probably a total coincidence. JEONGYEONG LEE BY DECISION.
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Luke Fernandez (6-0) vs Rodolfo Bellato (12-3-1 (1))
God, I could just paste the entire Tobias/Nurgozhay section here and do a find-and-replace for their names and it would be the same fucking shit, but then we’d miss out on the chance to talk about the comical tragedy of Rodolfo Bellato. Luke Fernandez is your newly-minted Contender Series winner, and like most of them he’s barely started in the sport, he had a regional title (in this case, the 205-pound Cage Fury Fighting Championships belt) three fights into his career, and the guy he beat for his UFC contract is essentially a palette swap of the same shit and Luke dropped him in fifteen seconds. The wrinkle is Luke’s role as a Jiu-Jitsu guy, to the point of also being the lineal holder of the 225-pound Cage Fury Fighting Championships Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu World Championship, a title so prestigious that he won it against Phil Hawes, and if you remember him you just winced, and I assure you, that is correct. Rodolfo Bellato, though? He was supposed to be a thing. They gave him two shots at DWCS in 13 months when the first didn’t work out, and for his debut they fed him no less than poor old Ihor Potieria himself, and when Bellato did his job and beat Iggy Pots they sent him straight to a pay-per-view main card to become their special new large tattooed boy. And then he went to a draw with Jimmy Crute, who hadn’t won a fight in almost five years. And then he got a No Contest against Paul Craig after an illegal upkick the UFC itself accused him of taking a dive on. And then they put him back on the prelims to lose to Navajo Stirling.
And now he’s here, curtain jerking the show against their shiny new large tattooed boy. Sorry, buddy. LUKE FERNANDEZ BY TKO.