CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 184: HERALDING A QUICK NAP
UFC Fight Night: Allen vs Costa
SATURDAY, MAY 16 FROM THE MANDATED NECESSITY OF THE APEX
PRELIMS 2 PM PDT / 5 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 5 PM / 8 PM
Wasn’t that big double-championship plus title eliminator plus inexplicable Jeremy Stephens appearance last week fun? Isn’t it nice when things matter?
Well, I hope you enjoyed it while it lasted. This week we’re back in the Apex for a fight card with two ranked fights, multiple debuts, and Tuco Tokkos booked above a top-five women’s fight. Next week we’re off because everyone needs a goddamn break. The week after that the UFC’s in Macau, which means it’s another post-midnight special for the stateside audience and will go largely unwatched. The week after that? We’re back in the Apex for a card with the attempted deconstruction of Belal Muhammad featuring a Bryce Mitchell fight.
And after that it’s the White House, capping off a bad month in MMA with the single most cursed event ever to make air.
We are in the Apex. We never left the Apex. We will never leave the Apex, no matter where we go.
MAIN EVENT: PASSING TRAINS
FEATHERWEIGHT: Arnold Allen (20-4, #7) vs Melquizael Costa (26-7, #12)
This is not the future Arnold Allen was meant for.
Allen spent years as the Featherweight heir apparent. At the height of Conormania, when the UFC was so desperate for UK talent that for a terrible moment in time Paddy Holohan was in a main event, Arnold Allen was there. Top contender in Cage Warriors, regional champion in the lesser English circuit, nearly undefeated altogether--he was a perfect candidate for furthering the UFC’s international expansion, and audiences already bought him as a serious prospect after just his debut fight.
In 2015.
Eight months passed before the world saw him again. And he won! But it was another thirteen months before his third UFC appearance. Fourteen to the next one. Another year, after that. This became the patch on Allen’s career: He was unanimously agreed to be one of the best Featherweights in the world, he was well-rounded, iron-chinned and capable of imposing his gameplans on everyone he met, but he couldn’t stay healthy or active, and by the time 2021 rolled around he was about to enter the top ten and thanks to the odd span of his inactivity the best victory of his career was over Gilbert Melendez, who had been a top Lightweight a decade prior, hadn’t won a fight in six years, and retired immediately afterward.
It wasn’t Arnold, it was his timing, and he was as frustrated by it as anyone. By 2022 he managed to notch multiple fights in a year again--just the second time in his then-seven-year run in the UFC--and after obliterating Dan Hooker and psychically causing then-contender Calvin Kattar’s knee to collapse in midfight, he was finally ready to get the shot at the top he’d been meant for back in 2015.
As it turned out: Eight years wasn’t long enough to prepare for Max Holloway. That’s okay, though! That’s not the end of the world. It’s Max Holloway, he did that to goddamn near everyone, and Arnold put up a very good fight and even held Max to a one-round margin on one of the scorecards. Max was bound for Lightweight soon enough, the space would open, and Arnold would have his chance to shine again.
At least, he would have a few years prior. Lost opportunities were perceived as the curse of Allen’s strength of schedule, but that missed the true danger of how the division had changed around him. When Allen joined the UFC, Dennis Bermudez was a top ten Featherweight. By the time he broke into the single digits, Allen’s peers in the top ten had shifted, but they still included aging fighters like Chan Sung Jung and Edson Barboza.
By the turn of 2024, the new generation was on its way in. Ilia Topuria was about to be the champion. Killers like Movsar Evloev, Lerone Murphy, Diego Lopes and Jean Silva were beginning to churn through the rankings. The Brian Ortegas of the world were falling to pieces.
While no one was looking, Arnold Allen became the veteran standing in the middle of the tides of time, and they were no kinder to him than any of the hundreds who came before him. Between his professional debut in 2012 and his top contendership match in 2023, Arnold Allen went 19-1. In the last three years, he’s 1-3, and that sole victory came against Giga Chikadze, who is, himself, nearing 40 and seemingly on his way out. Allen couldn’t outgrapple Movsar, just like he couldn’t outgun Jean Silva.
But he’s never looked terrible. He hung in there with Movsar and even won the fight on a handful of media cards. He went toe to toe with Jean and won the first round. He isn’t dying in the cage, he isn’t humiliating himself, he just hasn’t quite been able to hang, and in some ways that’s so, so much worse. When a fighter is simply washed up, when BJ Penn is out there dropping decisions to Dennis Siver, it’s easy. It’s painful to watch, but it’s easy to recognize that someone is simply done. When a top fighter is still so, so very close to still being a top fighter and they just aren’t quite there anymore, you have to embark on the difficult journey of figuring out how much they have left and where they belong.
That’s where opportunity comes for the fighters who need it. Melquizael Costa needs it, because he was never supposed to get this far in the first place.
There was no deeply intentional marketing plan for Melk. The UFC had scouted him, they were well aware of his appearances in the Legacy Fighting Alliance and his wins in Mexico, but he wasn’t signed because they had big things in mind for him, he wasn’t plucked out of the ether as a special attraction, he wasn’t even contracted for the Contender Series. Lightweight veteran Thiago Moisés was supposed to fight top prospect Guram Kutateladze at the start of 2023, Guram had to pull out two weeks ahead of time, and Melk was conveniently available. Just another in the increasing army of short-notice contracts the company relies on these days to fill the holes in their schedule.
Which is a fucking shame, because Melk’s story is the kind modern dreams are made of. He was a poor kid in Brazil who grew up dealing with constant ostracization thanks to his vitiligo--though he’s noted that his fellow kids didn’t really give a shit, it was their parents who constantly pushed him away for fear that he was diseased, because no matter where you are in the world, parents just don’t understand--and he found his will to be out in public thanks to the combination of a love of martial arts and the only great mixed martial arts fighting game ever made, 2011’s UFC Undisputed 3. A fifteen year-old Melk saw WEC veteran and fellow vitiligo case Scott Jorgensen in digital form, and learning that someone like him could be a star in the sport helped Melk find both his confidence and his dream.
It’s a great background! It did not stop him from getting strangled by Thiago or pounded out by Steve Garcia a couple fights later, and by the turn of 2024 Costa was already 1-2, banished to the early prelims and being placed in fights that could easily have ended his contract. As it turns out, after the mile of crap he dealt with to get here, he was not prepared to let go that easily.
Melk turned his fortunes around and became the first person in the UFC to tap out Shayilan Nuerdanbieke, a name I deeply miss typing on a regular basis. He didn’t get another fight in 2024 (because the UFC, emphasizing their disinterest, didn’t actually offer him a new contract until the end of the fucking year) and he made up for it by scoring a ridiculous four wins in nine months over the course of 2025. If you were watching the sport, once every 73 days you saw him show up and batter progressively tougher opponents in progressively wilder ways. He out-gritted Christian Rodriguez, the man who slew Raul Rosas Jr. He out-crazied Julian Erosa, who throws more flying knees than jabs. He took on Morgan Charrière, owner of some of the heaviest kicks in the division, and put a shin upside his forehead in barely over a minute.
But he didn’t legitimize himself as a threat to the division until this past February. Dan Ige has been Featherweight’s gatekeeper for damn near a decade, and in that time he’s shared the cage with a laundry list of greats, from aforementioned contenders like Barboza and Kattar and Jung to the new guys like Lopes, Murphy and Evloev. Ige hadn’t always won, but he’d always made a solid accounting for himself, and in all of those ring-hours with all of those men he had been beaten, but never stopped. Not by Josh Emmett’s punching power, not by Bryce Mitchell’s grappling. In eight years and twenty fights, win or lose, Dan Ige always made it to the final bell.
Seconds before the first round could end, Melquizael Costa hit him square in the face with a spinning kick and pounded him out.
He wasn’t supposed to be a martial artist. He wasn’t supposed to be in the UFC. He was such an afterthought that the matchmakers let him dangle in the wind, unsigned, as a successful UFC veteran in the prime of his career. Now he’s the first man to ever kick the Featherweight door down, and he has a shot at becoming one of the top ten in the entire world. It’s a great addition to an already great story, and a great shot in the arm for one of the best divisions in the sport, and a great main event in a place that is often stuck with the dregs, and a great opportunity for an underserved fighter who has more than earned it.
All of which makes me really sad that I’m picking ARNOLD ALLEN BY DECISION. I would love to be wrong about this one. I’ve been rooting for Costa since that first matchup with Moisés, but a lot of his success comes from the looseness of his style. He’s mobile and lanky and he keeps himself open so he can jump on guillotines or swing wild kicks into tight spaces, and that works really well on competitors that don’t can’t take advantage of it. Allen does not have this problem. He boxed with Max Holloway, wrestled with Movsar Evloev, and brawled with Jean Silva. He’s extremely composed and extremely adaptable, and as much as I’d like to see Melk pull another spinning kick out of his ass and shock the world again, I don’t think Allen’s time in the top five is done yet.
CO-MAIN EVENT: GETTING KIND OF UNCOMFORTABLE
FEATHERWEIGHT: Dooho Choi (16-4-1) vs Daniel Santos (13-2)
So this is weird, right? This is really fucking weird?
I don’t mean Dooho Choi. Nothing is weird about Dooho Choi. He was the second-most-promoted South Korean fighter next to Chan Sung Jung himself, he had one of the best fights in UFC history with Cub Swanson, he had a bad streak of knockout losses afterward that included somehow getting knocked out by Jeremy Stephens, he went off for his mandatory national military service, came back after four and a half years and had his grand return spoiled by a point-deduction draw with Kyle Nelson, a man best known for Having A Beard and Getting Knocked Out Regularly, and he’s only back to his winning ways thanks to a knockout over a man who makes train noises and a white guy from Pennsylvania who calls himself Señor Perfecto.
See? Completely normal. By the standards of mixed martial arts this is breakfast at an IHOP. Dooho Choi is not the problem.
Daniel Santos isn’t the problem, either. At least, not intentionally. It’s a little weird that he’s only managed five UFC fights in five years, and it’s a little weird that he went from losing to Julio Arce to breaking John Castañeda’s face, and it’s a little weird that he’s a Brazilian fighter nicknamed after the creepy fucking cat-children from Thundercats except they spelled it “Willycat” for what I assume are please-don’t-sue-us reasons because god only knows how vicious the lawyers in charge of Thundercats are, but he shares a division with a guy named Nate Wood, so honestly, who’s throwing stones. All of that? That’s fine. That’s all just fine.
As of now, there are about one hundred Featherweights signed to the UFC. There’s a bit of number-fudging there, as it’s counting some Contender Series folks and some only semi-active folks and the like, but 100 is a lot more satisfying than “ninety-something” so we’re gonna stick with it. Out of those one hundred fighters, exactly three hail from South Korea: Dooho Choi, Jeongyeong Lee, and JooSang Yoo.
And it’s very easy to put all of their names together, because as of this weekend, Daniel Santos will have fought all three of them in consecutive bouts.
That’s weird! That’s fucking weird, right? This fight was supposed to happen back in September and it was already weird then because Santos had just fought and beat Lee, after Choi got injured the UFC made it even weirder by rebooking Santos into a fight with Yoo on the following weekend, and now, seven months later, they’re finishing the job by rebooking this fight. South Koreans make up roughly 3% of the Featherweight roster and in just a few days Daniel Santos will have fought all of them in a row.
I don’t know what kind of 2026 Alex Stiebling shit we’re onto, here, but boy, it’s a series of weird choices. Both of these men could use fights to push them up the ladder after their long periods of inactivity, but you probably didn’t need to have them do it against each other, especially with the possibility that, should he win, Santos will have defeated 33% of the entire South Korean contingent in the UFC.
Save us from the sweep, Superboy. DOOHO CHOI BY TKO.
MAIN CARD: KETLEN VIEIRA VS JACQUELINE CAVALCANTI IS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PRELIMS
BANTAMWEIGHT: Malcolm Wellmaker (10-1) vs Juan Díaz (15-1-1)
Living by hype means dying by hype. Malcolm Wellmaker was one of the UFC’s big breakout prospects of 2025, an undefeated man with a near-total finishing rate who kept getting big right hook knockout finishes that inevitably got reposted by the 60-70% bot population of social media, which is, as we know, the best possible route for success. It was impressive, it was exciting, and it was also thoroughly astroturfed. His first opponent was Cameron Saaiman, a fellow former Contender Series prospect now stuck on a losing streak, and his second, even more hilariously, was Kris Moutinho, who was 0-2 in the UFC and known solely for catching hideous beatings. They intended to step him up a little with Serhiy Sidey, who did, at least, have a couple wins, and when he pulled out it was going to be Cody Haddon, a veteran of one UFC fight, and when he couldn’t make it either they threw up their hands and pulled out the old matchmaking special: Picking up a regional guy who fights at a lower weight class with less than a week to prepare so the marketing guy can still get his win. Unfortunately for them, they picked out Ethyn Ewing, who turned out to be really fucking good at fighting.
So now Ewing’s knocking on the door of the rankings and Wellmaker’s stuck fighting debutants in the Apex. As Wellmaker and Saaiman before him, Juan Díaz is this year’s model of Contender Series Guy. He’s relatively young at 27, he’s kicked around Mexico’s regional circuit for the last few years with a bunch of success--the only man to beat him, Rodrigo Vera, is making his own UFC debut at the end of the month--and, as a sign of just what the exchange rate is like out there these days, Juan holding the Bantamweight Championship of the Lux Fight League, which regularly runs intentionally mismatched record-padding cards out of gymnasiums built for 3,000 people, entitled him to a shot at the Contender Series opposite Kwon Won-il, who spent six years in ONE Championship and unsuccessfully fought for their 145-pound title last year. Whatever the economics of the fight, from a skill perspective, it was apparently entirely apt as Juan crushed him. He outjabbed him, outkicked him, stumbled him with several big right hands and knocked him out with that spinning back elbow that’s quickly becoming a part of the overall MMA meta the same way calf kicks did a decade ago.
Great performance, solid offense, Juan’s got a lot of promise as a fighter, MALCOLM WELLMAKER BY KO. For all of his offensive prowess, Juan also keeps his head on a stick and takes punches to land them. All it’s gonna take is one.
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Modestas Bukauskas (19-7) vs Rodolfo Bellato (13-3-1) Christian Edwards (8-4)
The Modestas Moment came and went. Khalil Rountree Jr. kicking his kneecap out back in 2021 took away both a year of his career and his UFC contract, but by 2023 the UFC needed a warm body to keep Tyson Pedro on an Australian card, and Modestas came back fully recovered, better than ever, and prepared to take the entire world by storm. Up until half a year later, when Vitor Petrino knocked him right the fuck out again. But two more years and four more victories and not only was Modestas right back in the mix, he was fighting for a long-awaited spot in the top fifteen! Which was denied to him when Nikita Krylov knocked him out just three seconds before the final bell. 2021 is 2023 is 2026, and like so many who’ve known trauma, Modestas is stuck in the cycle of reliving his pain.
Rodolfo Bellato is on the opposite end of the philosophical spectrum, existing in a persistent cycle of comedy. Seven years ago Bellato was a big, promising prospect out of São Paulo’s regional scene, but his run came to an end when our last-paragraph buddy Vitor Petrino knocked him cold. Three years and three wins later, Rodolfo got his shot at the Contender Series and found himself fighting for a UFC contract against, of all possible people, Vitor Petrino, who knocked him out again. Three more fights later Bellato finally made it to the big show, and got a nice soft target in comedy jobber Ihor Potieria for his debut, after which everything got real weird. A majority draw with Jimmy Crute. A No Contest with Paul Craig after Craig landed an illegal upkick that had the audience (unfairly) questioning Bellato’s heart. A loss to Navajo Stirling, the most featureless of Light Heavyweight prospects. And there, at the end of all things, Bellato saved his contract by knocking out Luke Fernandez, which happened two months ago and I will bet everything in my pockets that you already forgot it happened.
There is nothing in my pockets, just as there is nothing keeping the Light Heavyweight division from falling into the lake of fire. MODESTAS BUKAUSKAS BY DECISION. UPDATE: Rodolfo got pulled from the fight on Tuesday and replaced by Christian Edwards, who is debuting for the company despite being 50/50 in the last five years and being one fight removed from losing to Luke Fernandez, the man Bellato destroyed, so we’re trading up to MODESTAS BUKAUSKAS BY TKO.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Timmy Cuamba (10-3) vs Bernardo Sopaj (12-3)
One of the most pernicious aspects of the modern UFC is the way damn near every fighter goes through the same Play-Doh press. I would love to tell you about Timmy Cuamba’s long history in the B-leagues, or Bernardo Sopaj’s time with Bahrain’s BRAVE Combat Federation, but they resolve in exactly the same way. Both men got brought up in 2024 as short-notice replacement signings to keep one of marketing’s players on an event--in Cuamba’s case it was Bolaji Oki and in Sopaj’s it was Vinicius Oliveira, so one of those straws was decidedly shorter than the other--both men dutifully lost, and both have been spinning their wheels ever since. Cuamba lost another fight before winning two, Sopaj sat on the sidelines for a year before winning his next fight and this time he’s been out of action for sixteen months.
“Why don’t people care about the UFC like they used to” is one of those recurring questions that’s very easily answered by the most sparing glance at its sociopolitical perspective, but this, here, is maybe the best example of its fundamental issues as a functional organization. Both of these men were signed and booked as afterthoughts, and now Cuamba’s on a two-fight winning streak and Sopaj has only managed one cagewalk in the last two years, and these two things are considered sufficiently equal enough that they’re putting them together, and they’re doing it in the Apex where they know half of the audience won’t be watching, and all of that is, itself, still being booked more notably than a top five fight at Women’s Bantamweight.
I hate the UFC’s politics, and I hate the era of favoritism we’re stuck in, but as tempting as it would be to blame all of the sport’s woes on its crippling addictions to fascism and bigotry, it’s a lot simpler: You cannot ask the audience to care when the company itself very visibly could not care less. No one is buying that the matchmakers are in any way invested in Cuamba/Sopaj, nor that there’s any hope it will lead anywhere. BERNADO SOPAJ BY DECISION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Nikolay Veretennikov (14-7) vs Khaos Williams (15-5)
I actually didn’t do this on purpose, it’s a fun kind of serendipity, but on the extremely appropriate topic of the UFC’s complete lack of giving a shit we have this fight. Nikolay Veretennikov is a five-fight UFC veteran who just came off his best performance in the company, having punched and elbowed the shit out of poor Niko Price this past February. Khaos Williams is a former prospect who has fallen into the danger zone, having taken two consecutive losses for the first time in his entire career. This is a battle of legitimate veterans with fifteen UFC bouts between them.
As I write this, it is 10:34 PM EDT on Monday, meaning this event takes place in about four and a half days. This fight has not been officially posted. It wasn’t on their TV breakdown, it’s not on their social media, and it’s not on the UFC’s official card, which, coincidentally, still lists multiple fights that have been publicly scratched by injuries. Several databases list this happening, but they have it as a prelim. I am relying on Marcel Dorff, a Dutch journalist, whose twitter account is, inexplicably, the most consistently accurate source for card news on the entire internet. Not the UFC, the canonical organization in the annals of mixed martial arts, but one load-bearing reporter everyone relies on.
I wish this was a real sport. KHAOS WILLIAMS BY DECISION.
PRELIMS: FUCK YOU, DUDE
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Tuco Tokkos (11-5) vs Ivan Erslan (14-6 (1))
With the greatest of sadness, I must announce that this is, officially, the end of our streak of weekly updates on the ongoing humiliation of the Heavyweight division. For the first time since March 7 we have zero Heavyweight fights on the docket. We’ll pick it back up for Sergei Pavlovich vs Tallison Teixeira out in Macau, but for this one tragic moment in time, we must content ourselves with Heavyweight Junior, which is nearly as bad. Tuco Tokkos is 1-2 in the UFC and that one victory came against Junior Tafa, which is almost worse than having never won. Ivan Erslan can attest: He’s 0-3. I know my particular neurodivergent obsession with fight records can get grating because fighters aren’t always reducible to numbers, but two fights before he was in the UFC Tuco was beating up the 1-13 Brian “Stone Handz” Jackson, a man who mysteriously loses almost all of his fights by TKO within 90 seconds. Ivan was, at least, fighting and competing with slightly credible folks out in KSW.
That does not mean that they should, necessarily, be here, but you go to war with the Light Heavyweight division you have, not the Light Heavyweight division you want. IVAN ERSLAN BY DECISION.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Artur Minev (7-0) vs Tommy Gantt (11-0 (1))
On the ongoing topic of short-notice replacement signings and the way the Contender Series is running the shape of mixed martial arts through the Amigara Fault hole, we have this fight. Tommy Gantt is one of those ideal things DWCS lives on: Guys who look great if you aren’t fully paying attention. An undefeated 11-0, 10 of them finishes, and at Lightweight, the best division in the game? Surely, that’s a future star and if you look at the records of the men he fought absolutely nothing weird will jump out at you.
Ah. Right. Obviously. Was one of those guys 10-40? Jesus fucking christ.
The first time I put Tommy Gantt’s name into my high-tech tape research machine it fed me a video of him going almost two and a half rounds with Josh Henry. Josh Henry is the 11-7 in that long string of numbers and he fights at Lightweight despite being 5’4”. Do you remember Kyle Prepolec, the late replacement signing the UFC made last year who got destroyed repeatedly during their trips to Canada? Prepolec knocked Henry out in two minutes. Gantt took eleven. He was supposed to fight Trey Ogden tonight, and Ogden couldn’t make it, so instead the UFC went out and hired Fury FC prospect Artur Minev, who is also undefeated, also finishes almost everyone he fights, and also has fought nothing but jobbers and rookies and only in the last year has moved up in the world to dealing with competitors with double-digit loss counts.
I focus so much on the numbers because I still believe in the idea that the UFC should, in theory, be a place for people who have already proven they belong here, and the closer it comes to being the same kind of talent training ground the regional scene represents, the closer it comes to no longer having a reason to exist at all. TOMMY GANTT BY DECISION.
WOMEN’S BANTAMWEIGHT: Ketlen Vieira (15-5, #5) vs Jacqueline Cavalcanti (10-1, #11)
I don’t think Women’s Bantamweight is going to survive Kayla Harrison’s retirement. We’ve been talking about the UFC’s sheer disregard for the division for what feels like eons, there’s barely thirty women signed to the class and that includes a couple retirees and folks that haven’t fought in years and the Mayra Bueno Silvas and Hailey Cowans of the world that are almost assuredly on their way out, so realistically it’s closer to 25. The next title fight is built around a champion who’s ready to leave the sport and a hall of famer coming out of retirement for what could easily be a Georges St-Pierre one-night-only special. The closest thing the UFC has to a woman getting a push at 135 is Joselyne Edwards, and even that is in the form of a five-fight winning streak that’s only gotten off the prelims once. Ketlen Vieira is one of the best women in the weight class, it’s been five years since she lost to someone who wasn’t either a world champion or a top contender; Jacqueline Cavalcanti is a perfect 5-0 in the UFC , which leaves her tied with Edwards for the second-longest winning streak in the division.
But both women combine for a grand total of one stoppage victory in the UFC. So this top five fight is buried in the prelims of an Apex card between Cody Brundage and Tommy Gantt. This is how inherently worthless Women’s Bantamweight is to management, and once Kayla’s gone and Amanda’s back in the history books, I fear they’ll put it in the same potter’s field Women’s Featherweight got dumped in. JACQUELINE CAVALCANTI BY DECISION.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Andre Petroski (13-5) vs Cody Brundage (11-9-1 (1))
Cody Brundage may not be long for this MMA world, being on a three-fight losing streak and a sizable (and sensible) underdog here, so I want to take this moment to give him his laurels for what might be one of the funniest UFC careers of all time. Fifteen fights. Hell, fifteen fights in just under five years. That’s silly, and that silliness was pretty defining for our man Cody. In all, in order:
After getting knocked out in a 2020 Contender Series fight against William Knight, one of the UFC’s other funniest men, Cody gets signed in September 2021 as a short-notice replacement to keep Nick Maximov’s UFC debut alive; Maximov wins and is cut a year later after going 2-2
Brundage rebounds in March and July with two upset stoppages, the first against Dalcha Lungiambula, who is cut at the end of the year after going 2-5, and the second over Tresean Gore, who is still around and kicking today at 3-4
Cody proceeds to lose his next three fights, getting knocked out in one round by Michał Oleksiejczuk and choked out in two by Rodolfo Vieira, and is served up as a victim to rehabilitate UFC marketing project Sedriques Dumas, who is now 3-5 (1), hasn’t won in two years, and is also still here
In one of the funniest things to happen in quite some time, Brundage rescues his contract from the void by beating Jacob Malkoun in September of 2023 after Malkoun blows a wildly one-sided 10-8 round by elbowing Cody in the brainstem, which draws an immediate disqualification
In a somehow even funnier moment, Brundage is once again called upon to pump up a DWCS prospect, this time the undefeated 6’4” finishing machine Zach Reese, whom Cody knocks out with a powerbomb in under two minutes
For scoring one of the best knockouts of the year, Cody is rewarded by being served up to -1600 favorite Bo Nickal on UFC 300, who chokes him out in two rounds
Undaunted, a second Brundage Comedy Special occurs, this time as a trilogy: In July 2024 Cody is served up to knockout machine Abdul Razak Alhassan as a rehabilitation fight, only for Brundage to get a No Contest after he, too, elbows Cody in the back of the head, after which Cody is iced for almost a year only to return in March 2025 for a knockout victory over Julian Marquez, the man who once parleyed a UFC victory into fumbling Miley Cyrus (no, really) and was now four years removed from his last victory, and having scored an actual, uncontroversial victory, Cody is thrown to the wolves once again, this time for the undefeated Mansur Abdul-Malik, only for that, too, to end in what ultimately became a No Contest after Mansur headbutted him into a knockdown
As with so many of our best performers, Brundage’s magnum opus was followed by disappointment, as the last nine months have been a split decision loss to Eric McConico, a brutal knockout loss to Cam Rowston, and another split decision loss to Donte Johnson, the 5’8” Middleweight
These are the things dreams are made of. Those dreams are generally confusing and unpleasant and a way to cover up the sport eating the rare long-term enhancement talent alive, but as Norman McCay once said, it’s flattering to be remembered somehow. If this goes the way it most likely will and this is the end of the ballad of Brundage, then godspeed to you, Cody. May you and your manager-trainer-wife move on to the Elysian fields of one of the several bareknuckle fighting organizations that exist where the B-leagues used to be. ANDRE PETROSKI BY DECISION.
WOMEN’S STRAWWEIGHT: Alice Ardelean (11-7) vs Polyana Viana (13-8)
Strawweight has kind of formed itself into a pair of tracks. In one, whether you’re winning or losing, you are within the relevant artery of the division and you will, eventually, get somewhere. In the other, you are swimming through the sea of irrelevance and hoping to hang on long enough that someone throws you a ladder. Alice Ardelean is 2-2. The two women she lost to are 2-2 and 1-2 and the two women she beat are 0-3 and 1-4. Polyana Viana is 4-7 and the four women she beat combine for a grand total of 5 UFC wins in 17 bouts. She hasn’t won a fight in almost four years and she’s been stopped in every subsequent attempt. Whoever wins this fight is still completely lacking in momentum and will still exist to be preyed upon when marketing decides the next Hailey Cowan needs a winnable match, but by god, it’s better than losing, I suppose.
That said: Only one of these women lost a fight to Shauna Bannon and the streets do not forget. POLYANA VIANA BY DECISION.
FLYWEIGHT: Daniel Barez (17-7) vs Luis Gurule (10-3)
We may have lost last week’s episode of Heavyweight madness, but we are carrying on its theme of Flyweights in desperate straits, and if they offered me that trade on any kind of regular basis we would never see a Tafa brother again. Daniel Barez has been in the UFC for three years, he is only just now passing three fights, and two of those ended with his getting choked out. Management saw enough potential in Luis Gurule and his angry swinging haymakers to make him the rare Flyweight to go straight from Contender Series to main-card attraction, and one year later he’s 0-3. Neither man has a particularly comfortable grip on his contract and both have been betrayed by the weaknesses of their game, with Barez suffering against superior grapplers and Gurule troubled by people who’ve figured out that punches can travel in straight lines.
Whoever loses, may you go on to have a fun time in Rizin. DANIEL BAREZ BY DECISION.
WOMEN’S STRAWWEIGHT: Shauna Bannon (7-2) vs Nicolle Caliari (8-4)
What did I just say about the god damned streets. The company’s spent the last three years trying to find people that could feasibly lose to Shauna Bannon, whose presence as a Paddy Holohan student out of Ireland means I have now referenced Paddy Holohan twice in a single write-up and will punish myself accordingly after you see yourself out. The last time we saw Shauna they gave her Sam Hughes, which was both understandable, as Hughes is a 6-6 journeywoman by UFC standards and thus a logical jump, and predictable, as she mauled Shauna on the ground and choked her out. This means there is no way to go but backward, and in this case she is backing directly into Nicolle Caliari, whose entire UFC career is a pair of losses. It is a testament to the world’s feelings about Shauna’s fighting chops that she is, definitionally, far more successful in the UFC than Caliari, and Caliari is still the favorite to win because Shauna Bannon is Shauna Bannon.
Which almost makes me want to pick her. Having seen her lose repeatedly I’ve somehow come around the bend and almost feel the need to root for her success. I am not going to, the call is still NICOLLE CALIARI BY SUBMISSION, but the urge is there, and if Shauna wins this one, y’know what, good for her.