SATURDAY, AUGUST 29 FROM THE SHANGHAI INDOOR STADIUM IN SHANGHAI, CHINA
EARLY START TIME WARNING | PRELIMS 12 AM PDT / 3 AM EDT | MAIN CARD 3 AM / 6 AM | EARLY START TIME WARNING
If the UFC's trips to China are starting to look a little familiar to you, don't worry, contrary to social expectations you are not in fact growing more racist as you age, you just have basic pattern recognition. Eight of the fighters on this card were on the last China card back in May and have done nothing else in the interim. One of these fights is just a re-do from said event.
(Zhang Mingyang, it should concern you deeply that they don't have you here.)
MAIN EVENT: RELATIVE SILENCE
BANTAMWEIGHT: Umar Nurmagomedov (20-1, #3) vs Song Yadong (23-9-1 (1), #6)
Earlier this Summer Umar Nurmagomedov posted a video that was ostensibly about the press denying the genocide occurring in Gaza but was, more forwardly, about the Holocaust being an overinflated lie. I woke up, I read the story, I double-checked it, I thought about it, and I realized with some mixture of extreme dismay and exhaustion that I didn’t really have anything to say about it anymore.
Rather: What is there to say other than the acknowledgment that it’s there and it, and everything, is the worst? We’re coming up on 200 of these write-ups pretty soon (event #200 is on my birthday, hilariously enough), and I can’t stop reflecting on just how much more nihilistic things have become in those two and a half years. One of the top Bantamweights in the world, someone who will almost certainly win a title at some point--sorry to spoil the ending of this essay--posting Holocaust denial isn’t just no longer particularly notable, it’s not even the first, second or third time it’s happened in recent memory. Fuck, it’s not even the WORST time. Bryce Mitchell did a podcast episode that included his opinions on how the story of the Holocaust is liberal public school indoctrination and Hitler was a patriot who was just trying to stop the Jews from turning Germany gay and not only did it not have any negative consequences for him, it had positive consequences. The UFC pulled him from other events so he could be on a pay-per-view.
We’re just so absurdly neck-deep and near-drowning in the nothing-matters era of the sport that I’m not sure what it would even take to register a response these days. Dana White smacked his wife on camera and is still promoting Power Slap. Conor McGregor lost a very public rape trial and the UFC gave him a hero’s welcome. Justin Gaethje won a UFC championship on the White House lawn in front of Donald Trump after staring lovingly at the Declaration of Independence inside the Oval Office during his walkout. Everything is as stupid, as gross and as utterly banal as it could possibly be, and instead of controversy, the overarching response--even from the right wing the entire company has pivoted towards courting--is apathy.
No one cares. Positively or negatively. The biggest UFC shows do about 1/4 as many viewers as an episode of hit Paramount+ series Landman, which is, I assume, about a man who has land. The average numbered UFC event underperforms televised re-runs of R.J. Decker. And the average Apex show? Hell, they don’t even put out viewership ballparks for those.
The UFC has a white-hot Welterweight contendership bracket and one of the greatest fighters of all time in Islam Makhachev and a whole platoon of generational talents like Tom Aspinall, Kayla Harrison, Alexander Volkanovski, Max Holloway, Ilia Topuria, Petr Yan, Merab Dvalishvili, Alex Pereira, Charles Oliveira and Valentina Shevchenko on their roster, and they are absolutely struggling to make anyone outside of their dedicated fanbase give a damn.
And--even divorced from the fucking Holocaust denial aspect--this fight is a prime example of why.
Umar Nurmagomedov’s one of the best Bantamweights on the planet. Think about what you watched Mario Bautista do to fighters like Cory Sandhagen and Vinicius Oliveira, and realize Umar did that to him. There’s only one blemish on Umar’s record, ever, and it’s Merab, and Umar was one round away from taking the decision and the title. He’s a fantastic fighter. He’s a complete competitor. On a long enough timeframe it’s almost inevitable that he’ll wear the belt.
Song Yadong isn’t that far away. The patch on Song has always been his inability to crack the very top of the division. He puts everyone below him to shame, but Sandhagen punched his eyebrow off, and Petr Yan outworked him, and at the start of this year Song got a shot at Sean O’Malley and split the media scorecards almost down the middle, but the judges weren’t having it. He’s an exceptional puncher and, almost ten years into his UFC tenure, people are still underestimating his grappling.
Great fighters. Solid fight.
And it’s happening in the vacuum of space.
There are two reasons to promote an MMA event. One is to build cash/cache with a region, which is essentially the UFC’s entire reason for being right now, and in that sense it’s not a particular surprise why Song Yadong keeps showing up on their Chinese cards. Win over China with your most successful (male) Chinese fighter. Is it a fight he’s most likely going to lose? Sure! But it’s the highest-profile one you can give him.
The second reason is to get your viewers invested in what you’re going to do next, and in that sense, this kind of fucking sucks.
Umar’s already earned his title rematch, and he’s treading water instead because Bantamweight is stuck. Merab ran the table for years only to get upset by Petr Yan last December, and then Yan needed back surgery, and rather than booking an interim title or working out contendership or having anyone do anything, the entire division’s been in a holding pattern. Merab’s been doing wrestling matches for Eric Bischoff’s fake-real amateur wrestling organization. By the time we get to the only-recently-booked rubber match between Yan and Merab at the end of October it will have been almost an entire goddamn year since the title changed hands.
In the meantime? Aiemann Zahabi rose up in the ranks and they sacrificed him to O’Malley. Song almost beat O’Malley and had to settle for choking out the rapidly aging Deiveson Figueiredo, who had, one fight prior, already lost to Umar. Hell, they wanted Umar to fight David Martinez, and if your response to that was “Who?” I have the task of telling you two of his three UFC fights were co-main events, and yet, your answer is still correct.
Is this going to fix any of that? No! Of course not. If Umar Nurmagomedov beats Song Yadong it is business as usual, if Song Yadong beats Umar that’s kind of a big deal, but all of that’s irrelevant because the fight’s going to be happening on an internet stream at like five in the fucking morning for the majority of the UFC’s audience. I am a giant fight sicko and I live in the Eastern time zone and I am not waking up at six in the goddamn morning to see if Bilal Hasan can beat Nilson Rojas.
The only really beneficial outcome this has from a promotional standpoint is the home-appeal upset shock if Song beats Umar, and, respectfully, I really don’t think that’s going to happen. Song’s got a power advantage here. If he can keep Umar too wary of his punches to commit and/or too hurt to focus on not getting knocked out, he’s got a solid chance. Failing that? Umar’s got a lot more variety on his strikes, he’s got a real big grappling advantage, and he’s really, really hard to hurt, let alone rattle.
UMAR NURMAGOMEDOV BY DECISION is a massive betting favorite for a reason. I hope whoever wakes up to watch it has a good time and I hope Umar gets a set of history textbooks for his birthday.
CO-MAIN EVENT: TRUE SUBTLETY
WOMEN’S STRAWWEIGHT: Yan Xiaonan (19-5 (1), #4) vs Denise Gomes (12-3, #14)
So, just out of curiosity, what exactly do you think the UFC’s hoping will happen when top-five ranked former title challenger Yan Xiaonan fights a barely-ranked woman whose best victory was over a retiring Tecia Pennington and also they’re in Shanghai?
We just finished discussing the holding pattern the Bantamweight division has been stuck in, but Women’s Strawweight hasn’t been doing much better. Zhang Weili’s thousand-day reign as the queen of 115 only included one title defense per calendar year, but by far the most memorable was her UFC 300 showdown with Yan Xiaonan. In the course of five rounds Zhang arguably both knocked out and submitted Yan only to have the referee recognize neither, scored multiple 10-8 rounds, and somehow, Yan still came out of the fight with more fan approval than she’d had going in, as despite getting absolutely shellacked, she survived and even won a round.
Fantastic performance. Career-making performance! It was also in April of 2024 and Yan’s only fought twice since, and the last time was almost a year and a half ago. Which sounds apocalyptic until you realize there have only been three title fights in those nearly three years and 2/3 of them were dominated by a woman Yan already beat in Mackenzie Dern. Despite having defeated her, Yan has been sitting on the sidelines, watching the red carpet lead Mackenzie straight to the title.
That is, however, saying more than Denise Gomes, who has simply been toiling in the background just to get to a position where the UFC could use and dispose of her as a utility player.
It’s rough, man. It’s rough out there for the people they don’t really care about pushing. Amanda Ribas is ranked above Denise and she has one win in the last three and a half years. Alexia Thainara just won a top ten match that she earned with a decision victory against the 3-5 Bruna Brasil. Back in 2023, Denise knocked Bruna out in a round and a half, and her reward was getting booked as a +300 underdog against the undefeated, unranked Yazmin Jauregui on a card explicitly marketed around ascending Mexican prospects. And when Denise walked right through Yazmin and punched her silly in twenty seconds?
Why, that meant it was time for a barely-ranked matchup with Angela Hill on some prelims, baby.
Gomes is tougher and more powerful than most of her opponents, and that confidence lets her simply march people down and smash them. Last week we watched Shanelle Dyer, a killer striker with a big size and strength advantage, need almost a full three rounds to chip Elise Reed down to nothing, and even then she had to settle for a standing TKO when the ref simply had enough. Denise broke Elise’s face and dropped her in five and a half minutes. Bruna, Elise and Yazmin had never been flattened on their feet before: Denise walked punches into them until they fell over. That’s her power. It’s what she’s best at.
Which makes this a legitimately interesting bout, because walking stiff punches into people is what got Yan here.
She doesn’t beat Mackenzie without being able to stick her at the end of her fists. She doesn’t get her shot at the title without smashing Jéssica Andrade. And she certainly doesn’t take a round off Zhang Weili without punching Weili right off her feet.
Yan’s more patient. Denise is more intense. I’m leaning towards YAN XIAONAN BY DECISION, but this one’s pretty up in the air.
MAIN CARD: THE RETURNING CAST
BANTAMWEIGHT: Aoriqileng (26-13 (1)) vs Kai Asakura (22-6)
We’re in a little bit of a bizarre situation, here. Aoriqileng is the Chinese fighter given the premier bout on the Chinese card and he’s also pretty unmistakably being set up for failure. Aoriqileng’s crossed over into a double-digit UFC career, but unfortunately for him said career is still more losses than wins, and one of those losses notably came during the UFC’s last constitutional to China back in May, where Cody Haddon beat the absolute stuffing out of him. An 84 to 12 striking differential beating. A kneed-in-the-liver-until-he-can’t-move kind of beating. It was brutal, it was one-sided, and, as is happening an awful lot these days, it was only barely 90 days ago, and somehow, that has not stopped this fight from getting booked.
Kai Asakura was on that card, too. The Rizin champion turned unsuccessful UFC Flyweight titlist gave up on the 125-pound division after Tim Elliott strangled him back in 2025, and that May trip to Macau was Asakura’s return to the Bantamweight class, where his success back in Japan had come from in the first place. It certainly looked a lot better on his frame, and he certainly seemed much more comfortable. It was, however, probably more important that instead of Alexandre Pantoja or Tim Elliott, Kai was fighting Cameron Smotherman, whose biggest UFC achievement was passing out during weigh-ins. Kai knocked him out in under two minutes, and the world, and management, are waiting for him to do it again.
Which feels real, real likely. Aoriqileng is tough, but as Aiemann Zahabi showed, good, straight-aiming counterpunchers are his kryptonite, and that’s Kai’s best game. KAI ASAKURA BY TKO.
FLYWEIGHT: Alex Perez (26-10 (1), #11) vs Sumudaerji (19-7 (1), #11 even though that’s not how rankings fucking work)
This is stupid. This is just so goddamn stupid on multiple levels. For one, before we even get to the fight: Both of these men are ranked #11 and that defeats the purpose of rankings. The point of the rankings is to separate people. If your ranking system leads to two fighters being tied, the system needs to be adjusted. Also, Sumudaerji has never beaten a ranked opponent. The closest he came was losing a unanimous decision to Charles Johnson, whom Alex Perez, notably, knocked the fuck out in one round.
For two: This is a rematch from the aforementioned Macau card in May, which was also aggressively stupid. Perez controlled Sumudaerji in round one, Sumudaerji caught him with a good shot in the second but Perez recovered, and then Sumudaerji kicked him in the dick so badly that Perez began vomiting uncontrollably. The ref decided the kick was egregious, docked Sumudaerji a point and, thus, should have disqualified him when Perez couldn’t continue, but instead it’s a No Contest and now we’re doing it again three months later.
And for three: The first time they fought Perez was a -140 favorite, and then he almost choked Sumudaerji out but got kicked in the jimmy, and now, in the rematch, Perez is a +160 underdog. This is because everything is designed to make me angry, all of the time.
ALEX PEREZ BY SUBMISSION.
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Levi Rodrigues Jr. (5-1) vs Liu Ce (3-1)
This fight is how I am going to die. This will be the one that gets me. It has everything.
You may vaguely remember Levi Rodrigues Jr. from one and a half months ago, but it’s a lot more likely that you don’t, because all of this has blurred together into a mélange of horror, so here’s your refresher course: He got on the Contender Series in 2025, beat a 4-0 fighter who worked as a fulltime gym teacher, had the win overturned after he pissed hot for steroids, got signed to the UFC anyway, and got grotesquely mauled by Felipe Franco, the man said gym teacher had defeated who got his own UFC contract thanks to a victory over a 1-1 guy on the regional circuit. 42 days before this fight, a 205-pound man sat on Levi’s chest and elbowed him in the head until he briefly lost consciousness, and that, of course, does not matter.
Liu Ce has a solid background as a kickboxer. He came up in China’s local scene, he fought around Wu Ling Feng, and he knocked out 6’7” meme kickboxer Sina Karimian to win the K-1 Max Cruiserweight Championship, which is a little impressive and a lot very funny. You may notice that I am only really talking about his kickboxing career! This is because in MMA he’s basically done nothing. He beat a 5-5 journeyman, an 0-2 guy who was also almost a full foot shorter than him, and the 2-6 Igor Barabanov, who has, himself, never won an MMA fight against anyone who’s ever won an MMA fight. The UFC has so much faith in Ce that they initially booked him against the legend himself, Junior Tafa, but Junior couldn’t make it, so they instead took the other not-that-good guy who just got the shit beat out of him a goddamn month ago.
Craven does not begin to cover it. LIU CE BY TKO.
FLYWEIGHT: Bilal Hasan (9-0) vs Nilson Rojas (9-0)
There’s a very good chance this is going to be a murder, but it could be the fun kind of murder. On paper these men are identical, but in practice, Bilal--who is Indonesian by way of Hawaii and now lives and fights in Washington, but his nickname is “The Indoninja” so he can do whatever the fuck he wants, as far as I am concerned--moved up to the Cage Fury Fighting Championships a couple years ago, won their Flyweight title, and proceeded to not just defend it against some genuinely solid prospects, but knock all of them the fuck out. He’s got great offense, he’s got great mix-ups, and he only really moves his head when the time comes to lean back for a pull counter, which makes me nervous that he will one day get chin-checked really badly, but for now, it’s great. Two and a half weeks ago Bilal went on DWCS and smashed Mridul Saikia in 45 seconds, so, as always, it’s imperative the UFC get him in the cage as soon as is humanly possible.
Nilson has not had the same experience. He’s 9-0, he’s undefeated, but, as I find myself saying an awful lot these days, he’s getting pulled into the UFC before getting to really test himself against stiff competition. Thanks to the Peruvian scene and its tendency towards record-padding, two fights ago he was beating the 6-10 Wallafy “Muuh” Fernandes--yes, really--and his contract-earning victory came from Inka, which matched him up with the 4-0 Gonzalo Hanampa, who had half Nilson’s experience and had never fought anyone with a winning record. Consequently, Nilson looks like a lot of prospects you’ll see if you run enough regional tape: Strong offense, with huge, sweeping hooks he likes to dive into, which gives him a lot of knockout power and virtually zero defense.
Which is the meta, these days. And hey: If he catches Bilal not moving his head, he could turn his lights out. Still: BILAL HASAN BY TKO.
PRELIMS: PUT THE GOOD FIGHTS WHERE FUCKING NOBODY WILL WATCH THEM, THAT’S THE FUCKING TICKET, YOU ARE ALL SO FUCKING GOOD AT YOUR JOBS
FLYWEIGHT: André Lima (11-1) vs Namsrai Batbayar (10-1)
André Lima’s career is a fucking roller coaster, man. He was brought into the UFC despite the mortal sin of winning a DWCS fight by decision and became a sensation when his debut fight ended in a DQ after Igor Severino bit him so hard it left a full-ass dental imprint on his bicep. Lima got a lot of positive press for dealing with it, then boned it up by missing weight for his next fight. He won, steadily, but missed almost a year and a half thanks to injuries and scheduling problems. And when he finally came back this past June, he dropped an enormous upset loss to Kevin Borjas, who no one really gave a chance. Having lost for the first time in his career--having just been punched in the head dozens of times barely two months ago--the directive is, fuck you, get back in the cage. Namsrai Batbayar isn’t going to fight himself. Do you remember Road to UFC 4? No you fucking don’t, don’t lie. Batbayar knocked everyone in the tournament out and won his contract and they’re not pulling any punches with him, it’s sink or swim against one of their best prospects.
Batbayar’s scary as hell, but he’s also been very accustomed to barnstorming everyone he fights. Lima can get outworked, but I don’t think he’s sloppy enough to get overwhelmed. ANDRÉ LIMA BY DECISION.
FLYWEIGHT: Rei Tsuruya (11-1) vs Kevin Borjas (11-5)
Having just beaten Lima, Kevin Borjas is, of course, booked underneath him. In fairness, a) that win still only made Borjas 2 for his last 6, b) Borjas did miss weight by coming in at 129 for a Flyweight fight, which is unfortunate, and more importantly, c) They want him to lose this fight really badly. If you do remember a Road to UFC winner, there’s an even chance it’s Rei Tsuruya, who took the second season’s Flyweight bracket and wound up fighting future champion Joshua Van just two fights later, because the margins at Flyweight are pretty slim. Injuries kept Rei on the shelf for an entire year, he came back in Macau this past May and became the first person to ever submit Luis Gurule, and if you can draw the line between “well-hyped fighter the UFC keeps booking for the Asian market who needs to continue to get back on the right track” and “guy the UFC’s pissed off at for missing weight and killing a prospect he was supposed to be a jobber for,” you are beginning to pick up on the tricks.
REI TSURUYA BY TKO. If Borjas beats Rei they might keep Rei and cut Borjas out of sheer frustration.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Xiao Long (27-11) vs Francesco Nuzzi (11-2 (2))
It wouldn’t be a Road to UFC reunion without Xiao Long. The UFC has moved Heaven and Earth to try to make Xiao Long a thing, and the universe continues to laugh in their face. They brought Long to the Contender Series in 2021: He was soundly beaten by Cristian Quiñonez, who has since been lost in the shuffle. They brought Long in for the first-ever Road to UFC tournament: He got sick and pulled out days before it began. They brought him back for Road to UFC 2: He made it to the finals, got injured, delayed the end of the tournament by half a year, and promptly lost to Lee Chang-ho, who, also, is 1-1 and hasn’t been booked in almost a year. They signed Xiao anyway, because fuck it, and got him a real, honest to god UFC win! Over the 1-3 Quang Le, after which Xiao was beaten by Su-Young You. The UFC doubled down again, booking Xiao into the preliminary headliner under Max Holloway vs Charles Oliveira 2, and they gave him former champion and marketing star Cody Garbrandt at the tail end of years of near-constant loss and thoughts of retirement. And Xiao would have won a unanimous, 29-28 decision! Except he kneed Garbrandt in the junk and lost two points. They won’t stop. They can’t stop. Francesco Nuzzi has never fought in the UFC. He’s only competed three times in the last 3+ years, and one of those fights was a submission loss and another was a No Contest because he got kneed in the dick and couldn’t stop writhing around on the ground saying things in Italian that, I presume, translated to “oh no, my penis.”
Long is meant to win. Long has to win. There is no reason for Long to lose other than sheer, painful comedy. Consequently: FRANCESCO NUZZI BY TKO.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Jack Jenkins (14-4) vs Sean Woodson (13-2-1)
This bothers me deeply. Both of these men, while embattled, have been extremely solid prospects. Jack Jenkins is a solid combination striker with devastating leg kicks and getting choked out by the perpetually underrated Gabriel Santos shouldn’t have devastated his stock with the company. Sean Woodson is a terrifying giraffe-man with Jon Jones arms at Featherweight who just lost for the first time in half a decade, and it was a slightly dodgy TKO stoppage against Dan Ige, one of the best gatekeepers in the business. Jenkins isn’t that far away from being rehabbed, and Sean Woodson was on a seven-fight unbeaten streak until his last bout, and now they’re right in the middle of the graveyard shift death slot on the prelims of a Chinese card.
Soul-crushing shit. Woodson’s got an enormous range advantage, as always, and I’m still banking on SEAN WOODSON BY DECISION, but he also has dangerously thin scarecrow legs that he tends to plant way out in front, and a few kicks will really fuck up his day.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Lawrence Lui (8-1) vs Hector Santiago (6-1)
You know what I can’t help noticing? We’ve got multiple Road to UFC winners on this card, which is in China, but none of the Chinese fighters to win Road to UFC are here. Zhu Kangjie? Still recovering from his knockout loss in Macau. Shi Ming? Somehow, inexplicably, bumped back down to Road to UFC exhibitions. Yizha? Hasn’t been booked since January. Rongzhu is booked to fight at Noche UFC 4, two weeks from now, instead of here in China. But Rei Tsuruya is here, and Namsrai Batbayar is here, and Lawrence Lui, who just barely squeaked by China’s Sulangranbao to win this year’s Bantamweight tournament, is here. And so is Hector Santiago, who was just fighting for Renato Moicano’s MONEY MOICANO MMA, which is, as it turns out, yet another Brazilian promotion that dares to ask if ostensibly promising prospects can beat journeymen. Hector, to his credit, beat someone who was actually close to him in experience, and looked okay doing it.
LAWRENCE LUI BY DECISION will happen anyway.
WOMEN’S STRAWWEIGHT: Xiong Jingnan (19-3) vs Julia Polastri (14-6)
Sometimes, you go to bat for someone and you get let down real, real bad. Xiong Jingnan was one of my favorite fighters. Best champion in ONE Championship history, one of the two most accomplished female fighters outside of the UFC (no one’s touching Seika Izawa), dangerous, aggressive, just plain good at everything. I was prepared for her to still lose her UFC debut against Angela Hill this past May. Angie will never get the credit she truly deserves as the greatest road warrior in the history of women’s mixed martial arts, but she’s tough, tricky, and very, very hard to walk down. I thought Xiong would win, but I didn’t think it would be easy. I did not expect Xiong to wind up looking completely lost. 66% of the punches she threw hit nothing but air. She didn’t adjust, she didn’t compensate, she just got speedbagged for fifteen minutes while looking progressively more frustrated. But, once again: That was Angela Hill. Julia Polastri is not one of the best in the sport’s history. She’s not even one of the best today. She’s decent! But she struggles regularly with smaller, less successful fighters, she has trouble handling pressure, and her clinch control fails her regularly.
You gotta get this one, Jingnan. If you can’t, we’re kind of at the end of the road. XIONG JINGNAN BY DECISION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Ding Meng (35-10) vs Cam Nelson (7-1)
At some point talking about opportunity disparity in the UFC just gets obvious and tired. Ding Meng had a long career in China primarily fighting people who weren’t very successful, the UFC scouted him as a potential mainland star and put him on the Contender Series in 2024, and he got soundly beaten by Remi Hamed, who is Lebanese by way of Russia and now lives in Florida. None of those marks are financially meaningful for the UFC, so they ignored him and signed Ding Meng a year later anyway. For his debut they gave him José “Canela” Souza, who had 1/5 his level of experience, a Contender Series knockout loss to washout Yusaku Kinoshita, and a career best win against a man who, I swear to god, was coming out of retirement in his forties after thirteen years on the shelf. And Meng lost. Souza, too, has yet to be rebooked. But Ding Meng is right back on the track, and this time, they went out and got Cam Nelson, who is even smaller, even less experienced, has never fought in the UFC before, and has just one fight in his entire career against someone with a winning record.
They cannot win the fight for you, Mr. Meng. You gotta meet them halfway. DING MENG BY DECISION.