CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 182: THE CHECK CLEARED
UFC Fight Night: Maddalena vs Prates
SATURDAY, MAY 2 FROM THE RAC ARENA IN PERTH, AUSTRALIA
EARLY START TIME WARNING | PRELIMS 1 AM PDT / 4 AM EDT | MAIN CARD 4 AM / 7 AM | EARLY START TIME WARNING
Remember all those various comments over the last few years about the Australian government getting in on the bribe-the-UFC-for-shows game? Congratulations, Australians! Your tax dollars have finally convinced the UFC to program your shows for your own time zone. Welcome to a new era of fight cards that start at shitty times for the rest of the audience instead of you, for once, as well as a level of regional appeal so wide in its scope that for the first time ever we’re going to be using a new metric to track it. It’s going to be very subtle, so make sure you keep your eyes peeled.
MAIN EVENT: SWIFT RECOVERY
WELTERWEIGHT: Jack Della Maddalena (18-3, #1) vs Carlos Prates (23-7, #5)
Despite the UFC’s best attempts to drag everything down into the muck, the Welterweight division is still really fucking cool.
They’re working on dragging it down--look out for the rise of Make Malott--but for now, for however long anything good can last, this is one of the last bastions of quality in the UFC. Everyone’s good, everything’s fun, there isn’t a single bad fighter or outright hype job in the top ten. Hell, half of said top ten have held the championship, and out of the half that haven’t you’ve got a good three and a half guys that are right there orbiting the title picture.
Jack Della Maddalena is the half. For three straight years JDM was damn near everything the UFC could possibly want. A complete striker with some of the best boxing in the business and virtually no desire to wrestle, a career finisher with beautiful liver punches, a young man on a Contender Series contract with plenty of longevity and virtually no leverage, and he even had the courtesy to hail from Australia, the territory the UFC was actively trying to conquer. Had Jack also dabbled in using his free time to post about bigotry and libertarianism on the internet, he would have been their perfect starchild.
As it was, they had to simply settle for watching him punch everyone, and punch everyone he did. Between his Contender Series fight in 2021 and his title win in 2025 Jack fisting his way up the ladder made him one of Welterweight’s hottest prospects, and he was aided in no small part by the rare and welcome decision not to softball him. Ramazan Emeev is a hard draw for your second fight in the UFC. Randy Brown is a tall order at any point. Hell, the UFC wanted Jack in the cage with Sean Brady all the way back in 2023, and they should be thankful to this day that Brady had to pull out and Jack wound up dealing with a lesser grappling in Bassil Hafez, because Hafez damn near won and Brady would probably have tied 2023 Jack into a pretzel. Instead, watching him struggle to climb the ladder didn’t just him good will with the fanbase, it forced Jack to round out his gameplan and fix his weaknesses.
The Jack Della Maddalena that almost got wrestled to death by Bassil Hafez in 2023 was an entire league apart from the Jack Della Maddalena that shut down Belal Muhammad and won the Welterweight Championship in 2025.
Unfortunately, the Islam Makhachev that beat Jack six months later was an entire league apart from him, too.
This is the problem with being #2 with a bullet. You can punish prospects, you can crush contenders, you can win against world champions, but when you meet a man you can’t do a goddamn thing against, it kills your prospects. Islam didn’t just beat Jack, he shut him out. By the midway point of the match Jack looked visibly frustrated and he still had another twelve and a half minutes of getting outstruck and outwrestled to go. 4 for 4 on takedowns, 140 to 30 in the striking, 50-45 on every scorecard. When you lose a title that badly, you don’t get a second shot unless the man who beat you no longer has the belt or there’s no one left between the two of you, and that means holding onto your spot at the top of the division with every erg of strength in your fingertips.
Carlos Prates is an excellent example of how this can be inverted. When you get to the top and then you lose, it’s a big, big problem. When you lose on your way up, as long as you didn’t get smashed, no one really gives a shit.
Some part of that, I think, is the lesser toll associated with failing at jumping the line. By 2025, Carlos Prates was already a big fan favorite of a prospect. “Guy who knocks everyone out” is still the single most successful schtick in the sport, and in a single calendar year Prates went from his UFC debut to 4-0 with a perfect record of striking stoppages, and it’s damn near impossible not to get a great deal of hype from the fanbase when you keep flooring everyone you face.
But where the UFC brought Jack up the hard way, Carlos got the softer road. Trevin Giles was coming off a stoppage loss when Prates debuted and knocked him out. Charles Radtke was 2-0 when Prates got ahold of him, and neither of the two were world-beaters. Li Jingliang was coming off a loss, a spinal injury, and two years on the shelf when he walked into a Carlos Prates left hook. Neil Magny wasn’t just coming off a loss, he was coming off a TKO loss just 77 days before the UFC asked him to fight the scariest knockout puncher at Welterweight. Everyone knew Carlos was a big threat; everyone knew Carlos had been carefully cultivated.
Accordingly, when the UFC booked Ian Machado Garry, the #7 man in the division, against Carlos Prates, then stuck at #13, it was a surprise up until it wasn’t. Garry had just lost his undefeated streak to Shavkat Rakhmonov and the UFC wanted him to fight another striker; Prates was a much better finishing machine and the house likes to hedge its bets. Garry took Shavkat to the limit but still lost a decision, and Prates put up a solid fight and nearly finished Garry in the home stretch, but couldn’t stop Garry from grappling him for the first three and a half rounds.
Ian stumbled on his way up, then picked up a couple solid victories over difficult opponents and now he’s in title contention--because Shavkat’s out of the picture with an injury. Carlos stumbled against Ian, then took out his anger with back to back knockouts over Geoff Neal and Leon Edwards, and now he, too, is fighting to be in title contention, and he, too, would benefit deeply from the rumors of Islam’s next defense being against Garry, as if Garry loses, his victory over Carlos is no longer a roadblock.
It’s a great fight. It’s a great clash of styles, from Jack’s in-and-out up-close combination boxing to Carlos’ long-range nukes.
And it’s still just a little bit of an existential bummer, because it’s hard to imagine either of these guys beating Islam. If Jack wins, he’s orbiting a man who dominated him so badly a rematch would seem like a completely foregone conclusion. If Carlos wins, he has to deal with one of the best grapplers in mixed martial arts after getting outwrestled by Garry and nearly choked out by Edwards. In the vacuum of combat, this is an excellent match that could provide one of the most fascinating striking battles the UFC can currently offer. In the context of the difficulty cliff that currently looms over the Welterweight division, whoever wins, good fucking luck in your future endeavors.
I can’t help picking the underdog this time out. As much as I love Jack’s technique, he’s been using it at a perpetual advantage. Gilbert Burns isn’t going to outstrike him. Belal Muhammad isn’t going to outstrike him. Randy Brown has always been too loose to be as dangerous as his potential. The last time we saw Jack fight someone with a similar size, reach and power advantage it was Kevin Holland, and Jack won--more clearly than the split decision would lead one to believe--but he still struggled with the fire coming back his way. Prates burns a lot fucking hotter and with how unlikely Jack is to mix wrestling as effectively into his assault as Garry did, I see big left hands dancing in my head. CARLOS PRATES BY TKO.
CO-MAIN EVENT: CASHING OUT
LIGHTWEIGHT: Beneil Dariush (23-7-1, #12) vs Quillan Salkilld (11-1, NR)
LOCAL FIGHTER AGAINST A FOREIGNER COMING OFF A LOSS COUNTER: 1
Now this is just uncouth.
Let’s not beat around the bush on this one, either: This is an attempted execution. This is an attempt to jump Quillan Salkilld in line on the corpse of a former contender who appears to be on his way out. This is the theoretical end of the story of Beneil Dariush, a man who has looked 40 since 2018 and is only now closing in on it.
Until recently, that agelessness had defined him. We’re only a few years past when Beneil was supposed to fight Islam goddamn Makhachev, and we’re eleven years past Beneil’s first appearance as a top-ten ranked Lightweight. When Beneil hit #8, the top Lightweights in the UFC were Rafael dos Anjos, Anthony Pettis, Donald Cerrone, Eddie Alvarez, and Khabib Nurmagomedov. That’s how many generations of Lightweight hopefuls he’s hung on through. That’s just how long he’s been turning away prospects, from Charlie Brenneman to Mateusz Gamrot.
And sure, every once in awhile he’d get got. Michael Chiesa, Edson Barboza, Alexander Hernandez. When Beneil’s five-year undefeated streak finally ended at the hands of Charles Oliveira, no one really batted an eye, because it’s Charles fucking Oliveira. After Arman Tsarukyan knocked Beneil out in one minute, the world shrugged, because Arman’s quite possibly the best Lightweight in the world right now. Routing Renato Moicano last June made it even easier to believe the Dariush cycle was simply coming around all over again.
Belief in Beneil bottomed out in November. He got matched up with Benoît Saint Denis, the kind of big-swinging wrestleboxer he’d turned aside repeatedly in his career, but this time Beneil came in overweight, walked into the cage looking tired before the fight even began, and got knocked out in one punch. Ten years of contendership called into question in sixteen seconds.
Which means it’s open season on dying stars. Quillan wasn’t the UFC’s first choice--it was supposed to be fellow knockout artist Manuel Torres--but injuries cost Torres his shot, and by god, there’s Australian pandering to be done, and an Australian kickman to boost into the stratosphere.
I can’t say shit about Quillan Salkilld being bad. You do not destroy Nasrat Haqparast in two and a half minutes if you’re bad. You don’t outwrestle Yanal Ashmouz for three straight rounds or choke out Jamie Mullarkey if you aren’t really good at what you’re doing. Quillan’s skills are extremely legitimate and the UFC is not at all wrong to want him up the rankings sooner than later.
But, as always, it’s not the destination so much as the journey. We just discussed the joy of fighters working their way up the ranks organically; Quillan got here by dumpstering Nasrat Haqparast and then dumpstering a man who was, himself, dumpstered by Nasrat Haqparast. Like Prates, this is an attempt to jump the line on a hard-hitting knockout artist by surfing on the body of a fallen contender before his bones calcify completely.
And like Prates, I think it’s gonna work. I would love to see another vintage prospect-destroying performance, but I think that time has passed. Quillan seems like the real deal and Beneil’s career seems to finally be catching up with him, and that makes QUILLAN SAKILLD BY TKO seem almost academic.
MAIN CARD: JESUS CHRIST, HEAVYWEIGHT
FLYWEIGHT: Tim Elliott (21-13-1, #11) vs Steve Erceg (13-4, #12)
Despite how often the greater consciousness of the fanbase tends to overlook him, Tim Elliott is on a pretty solid run. Most folks don’t really perceive it, because Tim’s career is defined as much for being a huge weirdo who moonwalks in mid-fight as for losing all of his big fights. He almost choked out Demetrious Johnson, but then he lost. He got his shots at Deiveson Figueiredo and Brandon Royval, but he got choked out by both of them. He was supposed to prospect-check Muhammad Mokaev back in 2023, and Mokaev outgrappled and submitted him, too. His tendency to fall short in fights of consequence made everyone’s eyes glaze over when it came to his many midcard wins, which made it something of a jolt when the UFC picked him to rehabilitate former Rizin champion Kai Asakura after his failed attempt to challenge Alexandre Pantoja for the Flyweight title this past August, and instead of Kai fulfilling his odds as a massive favorite Tim outgrappled him with ease and guillotined him in two rounds, at which point the world went “oh, right, Tim Elliott, I remember that guy.”
Said world has been unable not to remember Steve Erceg, because the UFC ran him into the ground in their repeated attempts to make him a main event talent. There are two sides to the Steve story. In one, he is almost inarguably Australia’s best Flyweight, an extremely solid fighter with crisp boxing, underrated (if underutilized) wrestling, and tight enough defense that running up three UFC wins in under a year came as no surprise to anyone paying attention. In the other story, he’s maybe the most overpushed 125-pounder in the company. After knocking out a Matt Schnell with one win in three years and earning the #10 ranking in the division, the UFC shot Erceg straight to a title match. When he failed, they put him in a pay-per-view co-main event title eliminator with the returning Kai Kara-France. When Kai knocked him out in four minutes flat, they threw Erceg into a main event with the even higher-ranked former champion Brandon Moreno. It was only after his third consecutive loss that the company finally relented and let Erceg go back to fighting regular competition, and having beaten Ode’ Osbourne, a man who is currently 2 for his last 8, it’s time for Erceg to get the chance to climb the ladder again with the benefit of a home field advantage.
My head and heart are at war with this one and even as I write this sentence, I’m still not sure which I’m going to side with. On paper, it seems very hard for Erceg to lose this fight. The striking game is extremely clearly in his favor, and while Tim may be a better grappler, I don’t think he’s going to have a lot of luck submitting Erceg where Alexandre Pantoja failed. Tim’s also absurdly difficult to knock out, so there’s a good chance he’ll have multiple chances to get Steve where he wants him, but taking Tim over Steve here seems like the kind of decision that will serve only to sadden me by reminding me of my tendency to cling to false hope and try too often to live in the world I want rather than the one that is.
But, like Popeye, I am what I am. TIM ELLIOTT BY DECISION.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Marwan Rahiki (8-0) vs Ollie Schmid (4-2)
Previously, in March’s locus of frustration:
What are we doing here, man? Marwan Rahiki was just on the Contender Series in October, where he got nearly knocked the fuck out twice in one round by Ananias Mulumba, who got his shot at the show by defeating a man who is 10-12 with those victories all coming over fighters with no more than one win, and after Mulumba gassed out from beating the absolute shit out of Rahiki he got stopped in the second round, because 23 year-olds are better at recovering than you are.
(...)
This is a UFC fight. This is a fight in the UFC. This isn’t even a random prelim, this is a main card UFC fight. The 0-0 guy who barely survived his DWCS appearance is fighting the 0-1 guy who had his legs smashed to bits by a man who couldn’t get past Marc Diakiese, and Charles Johnson and Chris Curtis and Brad Tavares and Bia Mesquita and even Eryk Anders are all stuck on the prelims.
Marwan Rahiki was supposed to fight Jack Jenkins on this card in one of those 'technically both fighters are at least semi-local but one of them is ethnically White and the other isn't and that's definitely not going to lead to an awkward crowd reaction' specials the UFC loves so much, but Jack got hurt and I sat there with "Marwan Rahiki vs TBA" on my template because I knew, inside, that they would not be so kind to my sanity as to simply cancel the fight. Four days before the event, they proved me right.
I have seen people react to Ollie Schmid's signing with excitement. With respect: Ollie Schmid has been fighting professionally for three years, he is 4-2, three of those victories were against men with zero wins, two of them were men with zero fights, and his most recent win, the only exception, was a fifteen-second knockout over the 5-6-3 Jeffrey "JRock" Mesa. Ollie isn't here because he's amazing, he's here because he's part of the Adesanya/Ulberg/Hooker City Kickboxing team and he's conveniently Australian and he never takes anyone down. This isn't a feelgood story about a good prospect getting his chance--it barely has anything to do with Ollie. It's the progressively lowering bar of admission meeting the needs of regional marketing.
Splitting the difference between being happy for fighters getting what they want and being sad for the sport on the whole is uncomfortable and exhausting. OLLIE SCHMID BY TKO.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Shamil Gaziev (14-2, #15) vs Brando Peričić (6-1, NR)
LOCAL FIGHTER AGAINST A FOREIGNER COMING OFF A LOSS COUNTER: 2
You know, I didn’t intend for Every Week Heavyweight Strays Further From God’s Light to be an ongoing, recurring segment in these write-ups. I really didn’t! But as it turns out, there is, indeed, always more, and it is, in fact, always worse.
Not only are we doing this all over again this week, it is a two-parter told across back to back fights. In your first Heavyweight bout of the night you've got Shamil Gaziev, who was competing in a main event for a spot in the top fifteen after just one fight in the UFC, and Jairzinho Rozenstruik, the man that beat him so badly Shamil had to quit between rounds because he could no longer see, was deemed no longer relevant to the UFC's interests two fights later and released. Shamil proceeded to reach incredible heights like 'beating Don'Tale Mayes' and 'knocking out Thomas Petersen,' and then the company spent half a year trying and failing to get him in the cage with Serghei Spivac, and when that failed they gave him a last-minute replacement bout with Waldo Cortes-Acosta, who dropped him in a minute and a half.
Which is how he is now defending his spot as a ranked Heavyweight against "The Balkan Beast" Brando Peričić, a man who made it into the UFC on the back of two straight victories over men with zero professional fights, but he knocked out no less than Muckleshoot Fight Night veteran Elisha Ellison and the now 0-2 Louie Sutherland, which means he's ready for fucking primetime. We have fully regressed to the point that the Heavyweight division is now openly auditioning ranked men whose primary skillsets are Is Large and Has Enough Gas To Punch For One Round, and if there are Heavyweights better than these men out there but they do things other than knock people out and/or cost more to employ than the lowest possible professional salary, fuck 'em, we don't need 'em.
It's painful and we somehow haven't even gotten to the actual pain yet. SHAMIL GAZIEV BY TKO.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Tai Tuivasa (14-9) vs Louie Sutherland (10-5)
LOCAL FIGHTER AGAINST A FOREIGNER COMING OFF A LOSS COUNTER: 3
Oh, yeah. This is where the pain lives. Tai Tuivasa is on a fucking six fight losing streak. The last time he scored a win was a month and a half into 2022. The last time he fought at all it was a gas-out with Tallison Teixeira so deeply tragic it made Teixeira look worse even in victory, and now a man who was one fight away from meeting Jon Jones is unranked and on possibly the worst slump in UFC Heavyweight history. Funny story: Tai Tuivasa also lost against Jairzinho Rozenstruik just two fights ago, and somehow, Tai is the one who is still here. They were going to try to get him back on track, too--he was supposed to fight Sean Sharaf, the 0-2 man who's gotten knocked out in both of his UFC bouts thus far. But Sean broke his nose, and the UFC had to ask itself if they had any other 0-2 guys in their pocket that Tai could hopefully knock out.
If you read the last fight, you already know the answer. Louie Sutherland's two-fight UFC career just barely exceeds three minutes. Valter Walker tore his knee up, Brando Peričić punched his face in, and now he's fighting a man who was, a few eyeblinks ago, one of the top Heavyweight contenders in the world. And I mocked Heavyweight then, because Tai climbed the mountain on the backs of names like Greg Hardy and Harry Hunsucker, but by god, at least he climbed it. I don't know what to call this. I don't have words for the current state of the division, where Things just Happen and we rebuild our homes in the craters left behind by the madness. If Louie wins, is he now borderline-ranked by beating a man who's been losing so badly it led to public calls for the division to be shut down? If Tai wins, do we have to do this all over again?
I hope not, but I do think, even now, he's a better brawler than Louie. TAI TUIVASA BY TKO.
PRELIMS: THE SHOWROOM
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Cam Rowston (14-3) vs Robert Bryczek (18-6)
There's a certain level of casual disrespect that goes into breaking a fighter down to a single loss, but it's important not to dodge reality just because reality feels unkind. Robert Bryczek has been around the globe, he's won regional championships, he's beaten some solid fighters and he was, at one point, one of the best Middleweights in Oktagon, the Czech Republic's biggest league and one of the best Eurofight organizations there is. He also lost a UFC fight to Ihor Potieria. In eight trips to the cage, Iggy Pots beat exactly two men: The four hundred and seventeen year-old Shogun Rua, who was finally prepared to retire just ten years too late, and Robert Bryczek, who wants us to focus on his subsequent knockout over Brad Tavares instead, but Brad Tavares was also, according to my notes, at least ninety-one years into his combat sports career when Robert knocked him out, and I think that should probably be illegal.
In any case, Cam Rowston is an Australian who knocks everyone out on an Australian card against a guy who is smaller, older and slower, and the intention is not in doubt, nor the likelihood. CAM ROWSTON BY TKO.
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Junior Tafa (6-5) vs Kevin Christian (9-3)
LOCAL FIGHTER AGAINST A FOREIGNER COMING OFF A LOSS COUNTER: 4
Words cannot properly express how hard it was not to make this paragraph even more self-quoting, but I've overindulged this week as it is. Four months ago I wrote about the way my desire not to root for fighters to lose their jobs was called into question by Junior Tafa's 2-5 UFC record and love of post-fight assaults, but the company was in Australia, so he showed up and got choked out by Billy Elekana in two rounds. Three months before that, I wrote about the impending debut of Kevin Christian, a Contender Series winner with a record that looked good on paper but was questionable in practice and my belief that his predominant fighting ability might simply be He's Very Tall, and he dutifully filed into the Apex, where he was choked out by Billy Elekana in one round. This fight is predicated on a) both men coming off the same loss to the same man, b) one man being booked every goddamn time they go to Australia, and c) how far being tall can take you in combat sports.
This place is not a place of honor. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. JUNIOR TAFA BY TKO.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Jacob Malkoun (9-3) vs Gerald Meerschaert (37-21)
LOCAL FIGHTER AGAINST A FOREIGNER COMING OFF A LOSS COUNTER: 5
Jacob Malkoun is serving penance for his perceived sins. Malkoun was another potential Australian contender a few years back in Izzy's heyday--the streets remember how dangerously close he came to beating the currently #4-ranked Brendan Allen--but he was, damningly, a wrestler, and for his sins he was persistently underbooked, and when Malkoun got disqualified for clocking Cody Brundage with an elbow to the brainstem, he went from a promising prospect to the UFC's double agent, dispatched to stop other wrestlers before they, too, can become problems. They used him to beat Andre Petroski, they used him to beat Torrez Finney, and now, they want him to put Gerald Meerschaert out to pasture. GM3 has long been one of my favorite flavors of wrestleboxer, the kind of fighter who looks exhausted in a round and a half and often throws punches like he's walking underwater but wins anyway because he's just so dang scrappy, and we had one more hurrah when he beat persistent marketing darling Edmen Shahbazyan in mid-2024, but the subsequent two years have been cold, dark, and brutal. He got his shot at the rankings and Reinier de Ridder; he failed. He had a contest of classic veterans with Brad Tavares; he failed. He's coming off two straight stoppage losses, a thing that hasn't happened since 2020, but unfortunately, there's a world of difference between being a fresh-faced 32 year-old getting knocked out by some new guy named Khamzat and a grizzled 38 year-old veteran getting blown out of the water by Kyle Daukaus.
I have loved you for years, Gerald. I have treasured every moment of our time together. I hope against hope that there are more yet to come. But the carriage is leaving and I have lost your shoe. JACOB MALKOUN BY DECISION.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Colby Thicknesse (8-1) vs Vince Morales (16-10)
LOCAL FIGHTER AGAINST A FOREIGNER COMING OFF A LOSS COUNTER: 6
See if you can figure out the algebra on this fight. In one corner: Colby Thicknesse, a young 26 year-old wrestler from Wollongong with a 1-1 record in the UFC who's finished half of his wins and has only fallen short against Ilia Topuria's brother, Aleksandre, who appears to be pretty solid. In the other: Vince Morales, a 35 year-old veteran who is 3-8 in the UFC after two tenures across eight years, coming off three consecutive losses, and has a career-long problem with getting regularly outwrestled to the point that, just one fight ago, the company booked him against a -480 favorite Raul Rosas Jr. to put more hype behind his marketing.
COLBY THICKNESSE BY DECISION.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Ben Johnston (5-1) vs Wes Schultz (8-3)
LOCAL FIGHTER AGAINST A FOREIGNER COMING OFF A LOSS COUNTER: 7
Welcome to your other UFC debut of the evening. Ben Johnston is, and this may shock you, Australian, he's been fighting for 16 years but he took twelve of those off so he's only got six bouts, and this may shock you, but most of them were against people with rookie, losing, or 50/50 records, and now despite having a middling fight career and already being in his mid-thirties he's made it to the big show because, and this may shock you, he trains part-time with City Kickboxing. Wes Schultz is smaller and American and just got repeatedly dropped and ultimately knocked out in one round in his first and only UFC fight, and that was just 63 days ago, so, and this may shock you, this fight should be illegal as hell and everyone involved should be brought up on charges and god dammit I miss fighter safety mattering so much.
But Schultz did a Suloev stretch on the Contender Series, so I am honorbound to root for him. WES SCHULTZ BY SUBMISSION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Jonathan Micallef (9-1) vs Themba Gorimbo (14-6)
LOCAL FIGHTER AGAINST A FOREIGNER COMING OFF A LOSS COUNTER: 8
It's an opportune time to trade one prospect for another. The UFC had some real hopes for Themba Gorimbo--we're only two fights and a year and a half away from the attempt to get him ranked at Welterweight over Vicente Luque's aging bones--but after he got stomped in less than a minute the shine wore off, and after losing to the on-the-bubble Jeremiah Wells in what was supposed to be a rehabilitation fight, the clock has officially run all the way down. Now Themba's on local job duty, and Jonathan Micallef is the Australian here to look good in front of his countrymen. He beat Kevin Jousset and he choked Oban Elliott unconscious, and that's already a better pair of wins in just two shots in the UFC than Themba's managed in seven. Drawing one of France's best fighters for your debut is a touch tougher than Pete "Dead Game" Rodriguez.
I think the chips are getting cashed in. JONATHAN MICALLEF BY SUBMISSION.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Dom Mar Fan (9-2) vs Kody Steele (7-1)
LOCAL FIGHTER AGAINST A FOREIGNER COMING OFF A LOSS COUNTER: 9
I have beef with Kody Steele. I have Steele beef. When Kody made his debut all the way back in February of 2025 I cited him as one of those rare Contender Series prospects I was actually a fan of: Young in the sport but already well-rounded and well-proven and ready for a shot at the big show. He proceeded to lose his debut to Rongzhu. Rongzhu's a good fighter! Hell, Rongzhu was supposed to fight Quillan Salkilld this past January. But a loss is a loss, and every loss hurts, and dropping your debut is how you go from a marginally hyped prospect with a spot as a big favorite on the pay-per-view prelims to fighting Road to UFC 4 winner Dom Mar Fan as, uh, still a slight favorite. Man, how much must it suck to be the Australian on the Australian card who just won a big Australian fighting tournament in Australia and you're still an underdog against the random Contender Series guy who lost his only UFC fight more than a year ago?
Make it count, Kody. KODY STEELE BY DECISION.