CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 186: VARIOUS DEMOTIONS
UFC Fight Night: Muhammad vs Bonfim
SATURDAY, JUNE 6 FROM THE CAREER ASSASSINATION DESTINATION THAT IS THE APEX
PRELIMS 2 PM PDT / 5 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 5 PM / 8 PM
I cannot help feeling like the next two weeks are one interconnected reckoning with the current nature of the UFC, and, thus, MMA. Next week is the White House card, the moral nadir of the sport’s history, and I’m still not entirely sure what I want to say about that one, but it’ll probably be long and unpleasant.
This week? A world champion two fights ago is in the Apex, a top contender is fighting an unranked man, a top prospect is fighting a Contender Series guy, a man who was just in a de facto title eliminator is on the prelims, and a Nazi walks among us.
I miss when this all brought me more joy than exhaustion.
MAIN EVENT:
WELTERWEIGHT: Belal Muhammad (24-5 (1), #5) vs Gabriel Bonfim (19-1, #11)
When this fight got announced back in March it provoked a forum discussion about whether Belal Muhammad being stuck in the Apex after losing two fights in a row was exceptional or not. My argument, at the time, was this:
Here’s the list of everyone (I think!) in the Apex era that lost a title fight, either defending or challenging, and proceeded to also one-sidedly lose their followup fight:
Sergei Pavlovich
Jamahal Hill
Paulo Costa
Israel Adesanya
Colby Covington
Jorge Masvidal
Kamaru Usman
Leon Edwards
Belal Muhammad
Alexander Volkanovski
Renato Moicano
Max Holloway
Brian Ortega
Petr Yan
Henry Cejudo
Brandon Moreno
Steve Erceg
Kai Kara-France
Mayra Bueno Silva
Alexa Grasso
Rose Namajunas
Here’s who, out of that list, got relegated to the Apex in their next fight:
Belal Muhammad
Renato Moicano
Rose Namajunas
Putting “welterweight champion who was one round away from beating Jack Della Maddalena” in an exclusive fuck-you club alongside “woman who had one of the worst championship fights of all time” and “guy who is only here because we needed a replacement on 24 hours’ notice” parses as pretty exceptional to me.
The mile of crap Belal had to wade through just to get his title shot was already the stuff of legend when we discussed it back in 2022, and even then, they moved Heaven and Earth to get Jorge Masvidal, Colby Covington or Khamzat Chimaev into position instead. Despite being their top-ranked contender, despite having not taken a loss in five years, despite knocking out Sean Brady before it was cool, the UFC wanted to keep Belal and his hard-scrabble wrestling away from the title picture until they no longer had any preferable options. When they did finally relent and book his shot at then-champion Leon Edwards, it wasn’t for Belal’s sake, but Leon’s. They went back to Manchester and put on a big ol’ British special with all the top UK stars they could muster. Arnold Allen got a win. Paddy Pimblett got a win. Tom Aspinall avenged his only (technical) UFC loss. After years of strife the UFC had accepted Leon as one of their next British stars and they wanted that main event to cement him as the top Welterweight on the planet.
Belal outstruck him, outwrestled him and dumped him on his head just to make a point, and that was fortunate, because his title reign was more or less doomed after that.
Shavkat Rakhmonov was supposed to get the first crack at Belal, but first Belal was injured, and when he was healthy, it was Shavkat’s turn. Instead, the UFC turned to Contender Series darling Jack Della Maddalena, who had established himself as one of the best boxers in the sport. I thought Jack, with his previous issues against good wrestlers, would get ground to dust by Belal’s endless double-legs. Instead, Belal boxed. He still tried to wrestle, but not as aggressively or constantly as in his past efforts. Maybe it was Jack’s massively improved counter-wrestling forcing Belal out of his gameplan. Maybe it was latent injuries. Maybe it was a desire to be marketable. It was a game effort, and Belal was only one round away from getting the decision, but it’s the single rounds that kill you. A followup bout with fellow darling Ian Machado Garry went even worse, with Belal getting shut out on scorecards for first time since 2019.
He made it to the top, he fell to two of the best Welterweights on the planet, and now he’s in the Apex.
Gabriel Bonfim? Well,
He got signed off the Contender Series in 2022 and made a lot of noise by being undefeated and winning his first two UFC fights, which were against the 2-2 Mounir Lazzez and the 7-7 Trevin Giles
He lost his undefeated streak after getting knocked out in two rounds by living enigma Nicolas Dalby, who went on to lose his next two fights
The UFC embarked on a rehabilitation quest by giving Bonfim Ange Loosa, who had once lost to Lazzez, and Khaos Williams, a solid but inconsistent prospect
Bonfim’s jump into the rankings came from a fight with former title contender Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson, who was 1 for his last 5 and hadn’t beaten a ranked opponent in almost five years; Thompson proceeded to outland him, nearly knock him out and win 12 out of 14 media scorecards, only to lose what would ultimately be considered the second-worst decision of 2025
The UFC followed this by booking one of the worst Apex cards of all time, with Bonfim having his first ever main event against the unranked Randy Brown on a one-fight winning streak, whom Bonfim stopped in the second round
This? This is why this sucks.
For all that I complain about it, bringing up talent is difficult. Margins are slim, fighter availability is questionable, turnover is harsh. There are arguments for putting your underheralded prospects up against your established quantities. There are reasons to book Belal vs Bonfim that aren’t inherently awful.
But those reasons are only less awful in a vacuum. In the context of the UFC’s Welterweight matchmaking? Michael Morales and Leon Edwards are unbooked despite having not fought since November. Sean Brady suffered one loss and is back to spinning his wheels in the bottom half of the top ten. Kamaru Usman, lifetime Welterweight, is leaving for the Middleweight division and an instant shot at its #2 contender. Joaquin Buckley has lost two consecutive fights without his #9 ranking changing. Mike Malott got into the top fifteen by beating a retiree. Uroš Medić got into the top fifteen by beating a man who was still #12 despite having one win in the last four years, which was over a man who also only had one win in the last four years. Michael Page is tied for #13 at Welterweight, but they had him fighting at Middleweight for the last two years, and when they finally brought him back to 170 it was to battle Sam Patterson, who was unranked and had never fought anyone remotely close to a ranking.
The talent at the division is incredible. The booking is gross. It is impossible to separate the context of giving Gabriel Bonfim a shot at the top five from the context of demoting Belal Muhammad as fast as is humanly possible, in front of as few people as humanly possible, and seeing it as a positive movement for the weight class gives me hives.
Besides, as I put it during our rankings special:
If Belal Muhammad cannot defeat a man who got knocked out by Nicolas Dalby, I am quitting mixed martial arts and the next time we meet we are going to be ranking competitive snorkeling.
Please don’t fuck it up. BELAL MUHAMMAD BY DECISION.
CO-MAIN EVENT: DON’T DO THEM ANY FAVORS
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Brendan Allen (26-7, #4) vs Edmen Shahbazyan (16-5, NR)
I started this section with “Brendan Allen, fire your fucking manager,” and then I decided to do a little research. The conclusion is still the same, but the reasons are different.
Initially, I just thought this was an irresponsibly stupid fight to take. And it still is! Brendan Allen has been struggling to make it as a top Middleweight for the last six goddamn years, and every time something’s gotten in the way, be it Sean Strickland or Chris Curtis or Brendan’s own inability to not tweet weird things about how child abuse is an ethical good. The last couple years weren’t much kinder: Allen got a rematch with Curtis and only barely managed to beat him, then dropped all the way down the ladder thanks to back-to-back losses against Nassourdine Imavov and Anthony Hernandez, both of whom would end up stuck in contendership amber themselves.
But the rest of 2025 wound up working out extremely well. Allen took on Marvin Vettori, who was on his own rapid descent, and managed to beat him when that still meant something. Much more importantly: Allen took a big risk by agreeing to be a short-notice fill-in for a main event with Reinier de Ridder. If Imavov and Hernandez were two points on the rising-contender triangle, RDR was the third: He hadn’t even been in the UFC for a year but had already worked up a four-fight winning streak that included choking out Kevin Holland, knocking out Bo Nickal and just barely winning a decision against former champ Robert Whittaker. Many people thought Reinier would get elevated straight to a title eliminator with Khamzat Chimaev, but his bout with Hernandez was just as logical a contest, and when Hernandez dropped out and Allen stepped in, most of the world looked at his grappling strengths against Reinier’s, thanked Allen for his service, and prepared to move on to RDR’s title shot in 2026.
And then Allen just beat the shit out of him.
The first round looked just the way people had anticipated, with de Ridder flinging Allen down, controlling him easily, and nearly submitting him several times. Midway through the second Allen took over, and Reinier fell apart on the spot. After three full rounds of Allen doing damn near whatever he wanted, hammering de Ridder with ground and pound, RDR’s corner threw in the towel rather than letting their man come out for the fifth. It was the best win of Allen’s career, it could not have been timed better, and it teed him up for instant relevance at the top of the division.
So he’s fighting Edmen Shahbazyan in a co-main event in the Apex.
Edmen Shahbazyan! Edmen Shahbazyan, the third-most exciting Middleweight striking prospect of 2019. Famed Ronda Rousey training partner Edmen Shahbazyan. Got-completely-destroyed-by-Derek-Brunson Edmen Shahbazyan. Edmen Shahbazyan, who lost four out of five times in a four-year span, took a year off from the sport, and was greeted with a rehabilitative matchup against AJ Dobson, one of the company’s least successful fighters. Edmen Shahbazyan, who promptly got strangled by Gerald Meerschaert in the latter’s only victory in his last six fights. Edmen Shahbazyan, whose best and most recent win is a 1-for-his-last-5 André Muniz whom the UFC cut immediately afterward. Edmen Shahbazyan, a man so tertiary in his importance that an official onscreen graphic once misspelled his nickname as “The Doglden Boy.”
Edmen Shahbazyan, who is going straight from that unranked victory to battling for a spot in the Middleweight top five.
Even by the UFC’s standards this is baffling matchmaking, and they know it, because Edmen was supposed to fight the unranked Iron Turtle himself, Jun Yong Park, this past April. Park got injured, they couldn’t find a replacement, and now, instead of a middle-of-the-pack bout against a man who only barely beat Brad Tavares, Edmen is fighting to be one heartbeat away from the world championship.
I wondered what kind of shit-ass manager Brendan Allen must have, to either encourage or simply allow him to take this kind of fight--no upside, all risk--and, after looking into it, it was, of course, Ali Abdelaziz, a man so notoriously unethical that Conor McGregor during his living cocaine elemental era was still able to score legitimate conversational points against him. I also wanted to know who could be managing Edmen Shahbazyan, that he gets booked so persistently well.
It was, of course, Ali Abdelaziz.
I’ve written a lot of words about the way folks like Dana White, Joe Silva, Hunter Campbell, Ari Emanuel and essentially every c-suite that’s ever existed in the mixed martial arts space have helped harm the sport, and they deserve it, but they couldn’t exert their total control without having an iron grip on its fighters, and they wouldn’t have that grip on the fighters without the complete obeisance of their management. The promoters who sign their promotions up to be feeder leagues; the managers that advocate for the UFC’s best interests instead of the fighters they’re supposed to be cultivating. Ali Abdelaziz alone constitutes half of that problem. He manages hundreds of fighters, he very openly pits them against each other for the UFC’s benefit, he was named as part of the antitrust lawsuits that are still plaguing the company, and when last I saw an update in February he was refusing to cooperate with a court order to turn over records of their negotiations with the UFC. But you can’t blame the corrupting influence of the big show, because when Ali was the matchmaker for the World Series of Fighting he was also managing a bunch of its fighters, which was perfectly fine and in no way a conflict of interest.
And you can’t even blame the corrupting influence of mixed martial arts, because before he even touched the sport, he got out of being convicted of forgery by working as an FBI snitch reporting on The Muslims of America, which the government was just certain were secretly harboring terrorists, for some strange reason.
When this fight was announced, Ali put out a tweet praising Brendan Allen for giving “a young guy” like Edmen an opportunity. Brendan is less than two years older than Edmen, and Edmen was fighting with the UFC a year before Brendan was even signed. There’s no mention of his representing both of them, no mention of the circumstances of the fight. He doesn’t even spell their fucking names correctly. He calls them “Edmund” and “Brandon Alan.”
But where’re you going to go when there’s only one game in town, and only a handful of people who can get you there?
Burn this sport to the ground and start over with something made by human beings again. BRENDAN ALLEN BY SUBMISSION.
MAIN CARD: A SERIES OF WHYS
LIGHTWEIGHT: Farès Ziam (18-4, #14) vs Tom Nolan (10-1, NR)
I don’t hate this matchup quite as much as Allen/Shahbazyan, but it’s not as far away as I’d like it to be. It took six and a half years for Farès Ziam to get here, and that’s after he spent the last four of them quietly assembling one of the best winning streaks in the Lightweight division. Michal Figlak was an undefeated Cage Warriors contender: Ziam beat him. Jai Herbert was a knockout threat who’d just come inches from beating the hideously underrated Ľudovít Klein: Ziam beat him. Claudio Puelles was a grappling threat that’d almost torn Dan Hooker’s knee apart, Matt Frevola flattened Drew Dober, Mike Davis hadn’t lost a fight in five years. Ziam beat every one of them. When last we saw Farès back in December he was in the cage with Nazim Sadykhov, the Ray Longo prodigy who hadn’t lost a fight since his debut in 2018. Ziam didn’t just beat him, he knocked him out. And half of those fights--including that last, biggest victory--happened buried in the prelims.
Tom Nolan’s been in the UFC for just a touch over two years. This is his UFC career, unabridged:
Got knocked out in his debut by Nikolas Motta, who is 3-3 (1), hadn’t won a fight in years at the time, and, fun fact, got flattened by Nazim Sadykhov in his last matchup
Was rehabilitated by a bout with recent knockout victim Victor Martinez, who is now 0-3 in the company; Nolan is the only man in the UFC who didn’t finish him
Beat Alex Reyes, who is now 0-3 in the company and took seven years to accrue said three bouts; Nolan is the only man in the UFC who didn’t finish him
Got a decision over Viacheslav “Slava Claus” Borshchev, who, as much as I love him, is 3-6-1 in the company and has one split decision victory since mid-2023 (although he did go to a draw with the aforementioned Sadykhov, which is very funny)
Choked out Charlie Campbell, by far his best win in the company; Campbell is 2-1 and his best win was, and this may shock you, Alex Reyes
Ziam had to claw his way through a half-dozen genuine prospects over almost half a decade to make it to the rankings. Nolan got a series of layups, some of whom were defined solely by losses to men he’d already beaten, and two years later he’s got a shot at the top fifteen. If you hadn’t already guessed: Farès Ziam was signed back in 2019 as a short-notice injury replacement and Tom Nolan was a 2023 Contender Series winner.
The opportunities are not even, and most of the time they’re not even opportunities. FARÈS ZIAM BY DECISION.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Bryce Mitchell (18-3) vs Santiago Luna (8-0)
In some way, to some extent, I have to be grateful for Bryce Mitchell’s existence. We talk a lot about the barrel-bottom of ethics the sport is currently swimming in, and with the fucking White House one week away lord knows we’ll be discussing it even more this month, but in a sport where the Middleweight champion tells female competitors with whom he’s sharing a press desk that they belong in the kitchen and the head of the company was caught on camera slapping his wife, there is, still, a desire to maintain some semblance of the idea that there are limits somewhere. To kill that notion, we have Bryce Mitchell, who used a podcast to talk about how Adolf Hitler was a great man who loved his country and just wanted to stop the Jews from turning everyone gay, and in the year since he has been booked more consistently than just about any other point in his career. He is the living reminder that there has never been a worse time to be a mixed martial arts fan.
There’s a good side to that, though: I never, ever have to wonder who I’m picking in a Bryce Mitchell fight. He was supposed to fight Victory Henry here, the man known mainly for getting choked out by Charles Jourdain and punted in the crotch by Javid Basharat, and Bryce would almost certainly have beaten him, and by god, I would’ve picked Henry anyway. But Henry’s hurt, so with just a touch over a week’s notice, he’s been replaced by Santiago “Borderboy” Luna, a man whose entire UFC career thus far came from two fights: A wild back-and-forth one-round affair where he knocked out Quang Le, who was 1-2, and a measured 30-27 victory against Angel Pacheco, who was 0-1. Did he look amazing in either performance? Not really. Have we seen him deal with any kind of significant grappling threat? Nope. Does he have a wealth of pervious experience to draw on? Not even a little! He’s 21 and only barely three years into his career and he was fighting 4-6 guys before he joined the UFC. We just watched him struggle with the wrestling game of a man who got soundly outgrappled by Caolán Loughran. There’s absolutely no reason to think he’s prepared for a Bryce Mitchell level of competition.
But the alternative is picking Bryce Mitchell, which means life is simple, clean, and serene. SANTIAGO LUNA BY TKO.
CATCHWEIGHT, 130 POUNDS: Matt Schnell (17-10 (1)) vs Alessandro Costa (15-5)
Flyweight is still coming to save us, even if it’s not technically Flyweight anymore. Matt Schnell is clinging to life in the UFC by the worn-down tips of his fingernails. At one point he was a genuine contender at both Bantamweight and Flyweight, and he’s picked up a collection of good wins--maybe none more than Naoki Inoue, former Rizin champion--but that was quite awhile ago, and over the last five years he’s 2 for 9. Those wins have been just well-timed enough to keep him afloat, with the one over Jimmy Flick in April last year pulling him out of a three-fight losing streak, but immediately after that win he got himself choked out by Joseph Morales, so he’s right back in the danger zone.
They know it, too, because the original plan was to get Schnell put out to pasture by Imanol Rodriguez, the 26 year-old Morales choked out to win The Ultimate Fighter 33 (jesus christ) who is still technically undefeated because TUF fights aren’t real, but Imanol couldn’t make it, so with about 10 days of prep time it’s Alessandro Costa’s turn to get a win, which is why we’re fighting at pretendweight. His UFC career came from late replacement fights, his career losses keep coming from late replacement fights, he did, in fact, lose to Steve Erceg while replacing Schnell himself once, and now he craves the kind of revenge that comes only from finding the person in your office who keeps rescheduling meetings and getting paid an insufficient amount of money to punch them on camera.
Just send a fucking e-mail next time, Matt. ALESSANDRO COSTA BY TKO.
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Iwo Baraniewski (8-0) vs Junior Tafa (7-5)
You know, at this point, 130 pounds is closer to being a real division than Light Heavyweight is. Look at this. Look at what has become of Forrest Griffin’s division. Iwo Baraniewski is on a two-fight winning streak, which makes him one of the seven out of forty-three signed 205-pounders with multiple consecutive wins. Said victories? Ibo Aslan, who has dropped three in a row, and Austen Lane, who just retired from the sport after a 1-5-1 (1) UFC run. Junior Tafa is 3-5 in the company, it has been almost three years since he beat anyone with a single win in the UFC, he once assaulted Valter Walker in mid-cage because he was upset he got submitted, and even he is only here because Billy Elekana, the owner of a three fight streak in the division, couldn’t make it.
Who, you might ask, did Billy beat to earn that high acclaim? Junior Tafa. Who did Billy beat to earn his shot at Junior? Kevin Christian. You know who Junior Tafa beat to be here? Kevin Christian! More than half of the men to hold the Light Heavyweight title over the last decade vacated the belt, a statistic that might get even sillier if Carlos Ulberg’s injury is sufficiently severe, three people in the top fifteen are departing for the Heavyweight division and three more are sidelined with serious leg injuries, there are two ranked fights currently scheduled in the entire top fifteen and one of them is Nikita Krylov against the division-debuting Robert Whittaker, who used to fight at fucking Welterweight. But who can blame him, because he already holds a recent victory over the newly-minted #7 205-pounder in the world, Paulo Costa, who went from only barely surviving at the periphery of Middleweight to one fight away from the 205-pound belt.
It’s not enough to say that the division is cursed. The division is dead. There are zero up and coming prospects, there are no points of interest, the only person left in the top fifteen anyone in the audience cares about is Jiří Procházka and he’s already had three title shots in two and a half years and he got dumpstered in every single one of them. The UFC can’t even pretend to care about these non-prospects because they just have them fighting each other in an endless circle. IWO BARANIEWSKI BY TKO and then the ground opens up and swallows every fighter above 170 pounds and the WEC takes over the world.
PRELIMS: THE BIG DIP
BANTAMWEIGHT: Marcus McGhee (10-2) vs John Yannis (10-4)
Eleven months ago, the UFC made a really obvious, really gross attempt to jump a cheap, favored fighter into title contention by having Marcus McGhee, who was ranked #13 and only barely, at that, suddenly take on Petr Yan, former world champion, current world champion, man who has only ever lost against world champions, and, at the time, the #3 contender. It was blatant, it was nihilistic, and all it did was kill McGhee’s momentum so badly that he went from a man being talked about as a genuine prospect to so completely and wholly forgotten that he fell from sharing a co-main event with the best Bantamweight alive to the Apex prelims against John fucking Yannis. It was supposed to be Jakub Wiklacz, which would be better, but on the other hand, Wiklacz is an unranked dude with two UFC fights. Hell, the fact that McGhee is unranked is, itself, hilarious. It’s not like he fell off the ladder because an up-and-comer beat him! They threw him in there with Petr fucking Yan, he completely unsurprisingly lost, and the entirety of the matchmaking department went ‘ah, yeah, you got us, we had to try’ and over the next few months he just slowly slid down the ladder and out of sight and now he’s fighting the guy who got choked out by Austin Bashi. And don’t you dare fucking tell me you remember who Austin Bashi is. I barely remember who Austin Bashi is.
This is how it’s going to be for the next few years: People they think stand the slightest chance of surviving getting jumped up the ladder getting completely unearned shots at the big time, and if they make it, awesome, and if not, chuck them all the way to the back of the line again. Prepare for Top Ten Tommy McMillen, because it’s coming. MARCUS MCGHEE BY TKO.
FLYWEIGHT: Bruno Silva (15-8-2 (1), #15) vs Edgar Cháirez (13-6 (1), NR)
Good fighters getting ground to death by an extremely tough division is one of the oldest tales in combat sports. There is nothing wrong with Bruno Silva. He’s fast, he’s aggressive, he’s damned good at catching necks when given half a chance, and he’s also fighting to keep his job, because if he loses this one he’s 1 for his last 5. And that sucks, because those three losses were Manel Kape, the #2 contender, Joshua Van, the current champion, and Charles Johnson, the man that knocked said champion out. And hell, the Johnson fight was close! But when you have as many losses as you do wins, being close isn’t enough. Close gets you Edgar Cháirez. They’ve wanted Edgar in the rankings for awhile. Hell, they want him there so badly that this is the first time in five fights and three years that they haven’t booked him on the Noche UFC/Mexico City circuit, because they cannot miss the opportunity. Fortunately: He deserves it. He’s never boring, he’s always tough, and he’s only two fights removed from taking Van the distance and actually stumbling him on the feet.
Not all rankings churn is bad, just like not all marketing focus is unethical. Good fighters being booked well is a thing to be praised. EDGAR CHÁIREZ BY TKO.
WOMEN’S BANTAMWEIGHT: Chelsea Chandler (6-4) vs Priscila Cachoeira (13-8)
Every single time we talk about Women’s Bantamweight I sing you the same song about how terribly mistreated it is; how underserved and poorly-matched; how all of its athletes deserve better. And it’s always true! Except here. Except this one, single time. Chelsea Chandler is 1-3 in the last three years, she’s only successfully made the Bantamweight limit once, and her only victory even technically at the division came over Josiane Nunes, the 5’2” Featherweight who collapsed the moment the 145-pound division closed. Priscila Cachoeira is 1-4 in the last three years, she has been outfought and often outright destroyed in each of those losses, and even that comes from a past history as a notoriously unsuccessful Flyweight. And her only win in this terrible time period? Also Josiane Nunes. If it weren’t for Josi somehow still having a contract these would be the two least relevant women in the least-healthy division in the world.
Which means it’s the perfect matchup. CHELSEA CHANDLER BY DECISION if they even make it to the cage.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Jordan Leavitt (13-3) vs Joanderson Brito (18-5-1)
Look, man. You know what we’re doing here. You know about me and Brito. He’s never going to win the big one and I’m going to keep picking him and my inevitable disappointment is a crop I will harvest like wheat left past its time. I will place my faith in him and emotionally overidentify with his successes and failures until they hold an unprecedented, outsized emotional impact on my day, which will in no way be a projection of my overall experience with this era of mixed martial arts. Eventually I will lose track of where the genuine fandom begins and my commitment to the bit ends, and I will become the same kind of irony-poisoned monster I have been trying to avoid aligning with for my entire adult life. My barometer for sense will fade, my ability to parse my feelings for earnestness will dissolve, and they will find me dead in my office, a victim of perpetual stillness, crumbling into rot.
And that’s still not enough to make me pick Jordan Leavitt. JOANDERSON BRITO BY SUBMISSION.
WOMEN’S FLYWEIGHT: Jeisla Chaves (7-0) vs Yuneisy Duben (6-1 (1))
When Yuneisy Duben made her UFC debut in March 2025 I had a brief conniption about the way things had fallen so far that Duben made it to the Contender Series as a 5-0 (1) fighter whose opponents, before fighting her, had a combined record of 0, as every single one of them was making their professional debut. I wondered aloud how it could, and inevitably would, get worse. Like clockwork, I give you Jeisla Chaves of Bahia, Brazil, who walked into the Contender Series with a body of work consisting of seven opponents with a combined record of 0-8. That’s right, baby: Not a single fucking win among them. As a matter of fact, Jeisla’s last pre-DWCS matchup came from Bahia’s Demo Fight organization on a card wherein, out of fifteen matches, seven were people with winning records against people with no wins and the main event was an extremely competitively booked contest between the 28 year-old, 9-0 Joseilton Santos and the 45 year-old, 19-17 Nilton dos Santos. This is where your talent is coming from. This is the trajectory of the sport. We can’t get you Dakota Ditcheva or Liz Carmouche or Taila Santos, but we’ve got Jeisla Chaves and Yuneisy Duben, and what more could a division possibly need.
Yuneisy got knocked out in her debut. Chaves only barely beat Sofia Montegro, and I’m not going to insult you by telling you about her competition, too. I didn’t have faith in Yuneisy, and having watched Chaves I don’t have a ton in her either, but she seems to at least know where her hands should go when she strikes. JEISLA CHAVES BY TKO.
WOMEN’S STRAWWEIGHT: Ketlen Souza (16-6) vs Ariane Carnelossi (15-4)
Choose your fighter carefully. On one side: Ketlen Souza, former Flyweight queen of Invicta, who is coming off a victory against journeywoman Bruna Brasil, has one definitive UFC loss in the form of a kneebar at the hands of Karine Silva and who has since become maybe the only person to ever lose a dodgy split decision against Angela Hill and nearly beat Piera Rodriguez. On the other: Ariane Carnelossi, who has never directly defeated anyone with a victory in the UFC and whose one and only victory in the last four and a half years was a disqualification after the aforementioned Piera repeatedly, inexplicably headbutted her. Not really a hard decision, is it?
Well, more the fool you, because this is a rematch, motherfucker. Ariane and Ketlen fought back in Brazil in 2019, and Ariane knocked her out in the third with a deceptively gentle-looking push-kick to the body. So ask yourself this: Is seven years, Ketlen’s reinvention as a better, more well-rounded fighter, and Ariane’s years of terrible performances enough of a reason to make you pick the obviously correct choice, or are you a bad enough dude to side with the cyclical reoccurrence of comedy?
Be brave, not wise. ARIANE CARNELOSSI BY TKO.