SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10 FROM THE IMPERCEPTIBLE CAVERN OF THE APEX
PRELIMS 2 PM PDT / 5 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 5 PM / 8 PM
At some point I’m going to do a supercut of all of the times I’ve said some permutation of ‘this is one of the worst-assembled cards the UFC has put on’ and see just how long it’s actually become. We’ve been building it up for years, it’s growing on a month-by-month basis, and I can only wonder how many pages of Contender Series fighters we’ll have by the time it’s over.
Anyway, here’s a Brendan Allen vs Christian Leroy Duncan/Matheus Camilo vs Jai Herbert Apex show.
MAIN EVENT: WHAT DID I FUCKING TELL YOU LAST TIME, BRENDAN
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Brendan Allen (27-7, #4) vs Christian Leroy Duncan (15-2, #10)
Seriously, I don’t know if you remember the last time we gathered here to talk about a Brendan Allen fight, but the header was named Don’t Do Them Any Favors, and here we are four months later about to have this same goddamn conversation again.
To recap: Brendan Allen was perpetually stuck at the lower end of the Middleweight rankings. Sean Strickland knocked him out, Chris Curtis knocked him out, and after spending two years toiling through a hyperactive seven-fight winning streak, Nassourdine Imavov and Anthony Hernandez handed Allen his first back-to-back losses and more or less boxed him out of contention. A solid victory over Marvin Vettori reminded everyone that Allen belonged in the general divisional conversation, but without something crazy happening, there was very little chance of having the Brendan Allen Championship Contender conversation.
As it so often does in sports, something crazy happened. Several somethings, in fact. First, the UFC went out of its way to pay for former ONE Championship star Reinier de Ridder to join the roster. Then RDR burned through four wins in eight months that culminated in a victory over former champion Robert Whittaker, which established him as a top five fighter and a serious contender to then-champion Khamzat Chimaev. October of 2025 was supposed to see de Ridder take on Anthony Hernandez, which made all of the sense in the world: Two contenders on huge winning streaks who hadn’t been tested against the top of the division with equally aggressive but technically opposed grappling styles. Sure thing as both a great fight and a title eliminator.
A month beforehand, Anthony pulled out. The UFC asked Brendan Allen to take the fight and save their main event--which, keep in mind, meant going from his first victory in three fights to a short-notice, five-round bout against the biggest prospect in the division who was, on paper, a nightmare matchup for him as a great grappler--and Allen took it and just beat the stuffing out of de Ridder. Lost the first round, took over, and pounded RDR until his body gave out on him.
Fantastic performance. Easily the best win of Brendan Allen’s career, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. After seemingly being eliminated from even the possibility of contention, with just one win, Allen was in the top five. He had the position, he had the relevance, and more than anything, as a top Middleweight, he had leverage to determine what happened next in his career.
His next fight was a co-main event in the Apex against the unranked Edmen Shahbazyan.
Utterly baffling we-have-a-hole-in-the-schedule matchmaking. Utterly pointless you-are-both-managed-by-the-same-person-and-he-doesn’t-care matchmaking. Allen won, and the UFC noted how good it was that, as a person who thinks he can be a world champion, he was willing to take on all contenders, but having beaten a man so far below him on the ladder after winning a genuine contendership fight, it was roundly agreed that his next fight should be relevant.
And it is!
In the sense that instead of a fully unranked opponent he’s only fighting all the way down to the absolute edge of the top ten, and he’s still in the Apex, but now he’s the main event again, so, obviously, it’s completely different.
Which is funny, because in a lot of ways, this is the same goddamn situation. The UFC pulled Christian Leroy Duncan onto the roster back in 2022 as an undefeated champion out in England’s Cage Warriors, they had high hopes for him as a source of cheap new blood in the Middleweight division, and it kept not quite working out. Armen Petrosyan ended his perfect streak two fights into his tenure. Wins over losing-streak fighters like Denis Tiuliulin and Claudio Ribeiro got Duncan just high enough to get completely shut out and sent to the back of the line by Gregory Rodrigues.
So the UFC did what it commonly does and gave him a little bit of a nudge, as we discussed in the preamble to his ranked fight with Jared Cannonier.
How about Duncan? What’re his last six fights like?
Knocked out Cláudio Ribeiro, who was cut immediately after for being 1-3
Lost to Robocop
Got a decision over Andrey Pulyaev, who is currently 1-3
Knocked out Eryk Anders, whose last wins were a crippled Chris Weidman and the five-fight-losing-streak-laden Jamie Pickett
Knocked out Marco Tulio, who is currently 2-2
Decisioned Roman Dolidze, whose entire career is a confusing morass of looking persistently middling
In other words: Jared has been persistently fighting top competition, and Duncan has been getting gently nudged up the ladder in the hopes that by the time he gets to guys like, say, Jared Cannonier, he’ll be ready to feast on their aging bones. Even this fight, itself, isn’t dissimilar. He’s not rematching Robocop, he’s not defending his spot against Ikram Aliskerov. And it’s not like the UFC is shy about pushing it! They just gave Edmen fucking Shahbazyan an abrupt shot at the top five! If they thought he could handle it, they’d have Duncan fighting Reinier de Ridder.
Cannonier, by then, was 1 for his last 5 and had fought nothing but top contenders for about six straight years despite being 42 years old. Unsurprisingly: Duncan won. Coincidentally Jared's next fight, a month and a half from now, is against Ikram Aliskerov.
They like Duncan. They're ambivalent about Allen. Truthfully, I don't even really like Allen that much. It's gonna take me more than three years to forget about the whole 'whooping my children makes them better than yours and society is too pussified to accept this' horseshit. But we are in the age where Ciryl Gane is getting his eighteenth title shot, Wang Cong was almost a champion and Joe Pyfer vs Bo Nickal is a heavily-hyped attraction that they might just pick the winner of for the next chance at the belt anyway, so denying someone the fights they deserve on account of their being a dick is, clearly, not an option.
Brendan Allen does, in fact, seem like kind of a dick. Brendan Allen also deserves a lot better from the UFC than this.
On paper, this is a very good fight for Allen. Duncan does his best work at his comfortable striking range and Allen, at his best, can be a smothering grappler. If he commits to shoving CLD into the clinch, forcing him to defend trips and denying him the chance to strike as much as possible, he should have every advantage.
But Brendan Allen doesn't always fight to his strengths. Brendan's attempts to take Edmen down were pretty perfunctory as he chose instead to spend most of the bout striking with him. And it worked! But Duncan hits a lot harder, and if Allen decides to make this another 'let me show you how marketable I can be so you invest in me this time' performance it could go very, very poorly for him.
That said, Duncan also has this weird addiction to trying to do spinning shit all the time, and I cannot help seeing him getting his back taken trying it against someone as good at opportunistic grappling as Allen. BRENDAN ALLEN BY SUBMISSION.
CO-MAIN EVENT: MODERN MATCHMAKING META
LIGHTWEIGHT: Matheus Camilo (11-3) vs Jai Herbert (14-6-1)
I made a big deal out of how rare it was for me to break format last week, and I really want to do it again here.
The philosophical purpose of the co-main event is the chance to shine a spotlight on people who aren't quite ready to head up a card, but are either on their way there or trying to avert their fall from the top of the mountain. The philosophical purpose of my co-main event essays is shining a spotlight on the stories behind those fighters, as they often need the focus more than the headliners do.
That falls apart when you have co-main events that don't really mean or do anything between people who either just got here or haven't gotten anywhere.
Matheus Camilo has three fights in the UFC. 50% of his victories consist of Viacheslav Borshchev, who was cut last year and is now 8-8-1 in his entire career, and the other was Nazim Sadykhov, who is 2-2-1 in his last five fights, with that 1 being a draw to--you guessed it--Viacheslav Borshchev. He got choked out by Gabe Green, who is still missing in action.
Jai Herbert was supposed to be a big British knockout star when the UFC hired him as, at risk of being repetitive, a Cage Warriors champion back in 2020. Over the last six years he's 4-5-1, he's never managed to notch two wins back-to-back, and his best UFC moment was knocking down Ilia Topuria shortly before getting folded like a deck chair in the second round. One fight ago, Herbert defeated no less than Mandel Nallo himself, and if you don't recognize his name that's because it was his first fight in the UFC.
Now they're in the co-main event. Loopy Godinez and Ketlen Souza were, at one point, supposed to be the co-main event, which made sense, because they're great, and their fight is a top-ten bout at Women's Strawweight. Camilo and Herbert got listed as the co-main instead. But two weeks ago, the UFC had a top five fight between Norma Dumont and Ailín Pérez slated as a prelim and Rodolfo Vieira vs Robert Bryczek up in the co-main slot right up until 24 hours before the card actually started, which is your reminder that no matter how much they deny it, they genuinely do not give a shit about the Apex and consider all of the fights that go on inside of it below the main event completely interchangeable.
So enjoy this Matheus Camilo vs Jai Herbert co-main event, unless by the time it's on, it's not. MATHEUS CAMILO BY DECISION.
MAIN CARD: AT LEAST THEY'RE NOT ON THE PRELIMS
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Loopy Godinez (14-6, #8) vs Ketlen Souza (17-6, NR)
It's hard not to read into this as a statement about women's MMA right now. Loopy's great. I spent years writing about just how much I loved her tenacious chain-wrestling technique and how it ate up the competition. And then she started striking, and it bummed me the fuck out. Zero takedowns shot on Virna Jandiroba! It's a crime. I want to be upset about Loopy fighting so far down the ladder, and I'm not NOT mad about it, but at the same time, she's a bit stuck. She already fought and lost against Mackenzie, she already got beat by Virna, and the last time we saw Loopy was this past April when Tatiana Suarez choked her out, which gets her pretty far removed from contendership. Hell, Tatiana can't even get a title shot right now they have her and Virna about to fight.
Besides, if you're peering down the rankings, Alexia Thainara just got into the top ten a couple months ago, Tabatha Ricci and Amanda Lemos just lost, Jéssica Andrade, Amanda Ribas and Mizuki Inoue are MIA, and the UFC tried and failed to get Angela Hill beat again so now they're stumped as to what to do with her. Thus: It might as well be Ketlen Souza. She's great, she's fun, I had a ton of hope for her when she came in from Invicta as their 125-pound champion and then Karine Silva tore her knee apart and everything got real unfortunate real fast. Strawweight has been kinder to Ketlen, aside from her own split decision run-ins with Angie and Piera Rodriguez, but she's back on a two-fight winning streak and she just kicked Ariane Carnelossi in the dang head, so she has momentum on her side.
But she also gets taken down a lot. The only person in the UFC who's tried and failed to get her down was Yazmin Jauregui, and Yazmin is not a great wrestler. Loopy is--when she allows herself to be. If she's playing to her strengths, LOOPY GODINEZ BY DECISION feels absurdly likely. If she's here to throw hands, it could get rough.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Andre Fili (25-14 (1)) vs Kai Kamaka III (18-8-1)
One of my most frequent soapboaxes is how personally angry I get about fighters being booked within three months of a vicious knockout loss. The lack of respect for no-contact periods exhibits itself pretty often in the sport, but I cannot help feeling it more keenly than most in the case of Andre Fili, who's now in the back half of his thirties, going on two decades of combat, and went from getting knocked out once in his first 30 bouts to three times in his last 10. Particularly given the whole, y'know, briefly went blind from getting hit too much thing in his past. But I can't make that complaint here, because yes, Vinicius Oliveira knocked Fili out after hitting him 105 times in his last match-up, but that was three and a half months ago. So it's all good! Can't bitch about it this time!
Except I can, because Kai Kamaka III ate a standing TKO in his last fight after Luke Riley dropped him and landed 17 unanswered shots--a stoppage Kamaka protests as premature--90 days before this fight. Literally the day after an old-school no-contact concussion protocol order would've allowed Kamaka to go back to sparring, he will instead be back in the cage fighting a man with knockouts that are almost old enough to enlist in the military. And, hell, that Riley fight was only barely three months removed from a split decision over Dakota Hope, and even though Kamaka won, he still got hit 155 fucking times. This is his third fight in 187 days and a chance to see if he can get that number over 200.
We are not even two weeks removed from Raoni Barcelos collapsing in the middle of a fight because his brain was reportedly too swollen to keep functioning and we're booking two guys who both got knocked out in the extremely recent past, and it doesn't have any divisional relevance, and it's not going to make either man rich, but the Apex needs something to fill its schedule and who cares about anything, let alone fighter health. ANDRE FILI BY DECISION.
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Julius Walker (7-3) vs Gerald Meerschaert (37-22)
Back in February of 2025 I talked about Julius "Juice Box" Walker's debut as a profoundly weird idea wherein a 6-0 fighter with barely two years of experience who'd just come off a victory over that luminary of the sport, the 22-14 Myron "Lightskin Dynamite" Dennis who somehow comes up in these conversations over and over again, and from that, Walker was getting a shot at a top fifteen ranking against Alonzo Menifield. He lost. He's mostly been losing. He beat Raffael Cerqueira! That's not nothing! But Cerqueira got drummed out of the UFC on an 0-4 record after Abdul Rahman Yakhyaev beat him in thirty-three seconds, and Walker is on a two-fight losing streak after Yakhyaev beat him in eight seconds, and that, too, was barely three months ago.
None of which can stop fate from conspiring to break my heart. My weakness for scrappy grapplers is one of my constants, and there are few if any nearer and dearer to me than Gerald Meerschaert. Is he good? Yes! But is he good? Well, at this particular moment in time he's 3 for 10 and on a five-fight losing streak that's taken him below a 50/50 success rating in the UFC, so in terms of objective statistical analysis, no, he's not, but also, fuck math. Gerald took a round off Reinier de Ridder! He temporarily postponed the UFC's fourth attempt to get Edmen Shahbazyan over! Sure, he's almost 39 and he's losing an awful lot and now he's moving up to Light Heavyweight because he can't make 185 anymore and he's only 6'1" and my large bearded child is probably going to get domed by bigger men, but can you really root against him?
Like. He's most likely gonna lose. He's most likely getting TKOed here. But damned if I stop myself from picking hope. GERALD MEERSCHAERT BY SUBMISSION.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Malcolm Wellmaker (10-2) vs Otari Tanzilovi (10-2)
A decade ago we talked about the way Sage Northcutt was the living example of how to fuck up a good prospect by pulling them into the big show too soon, six years ago we were saying it about Chase Hooper, and now Malcolm Wellmaker is poised to be one of the victims of the modern everything-all-at-once booking style of the UFC. Wellmaker got into the Contender Series as a regional fighter with seven fights under his belt, none of them against genuinely solid, experienced competition, and they had him earn his contract against a man whose record was even worse, and then they surfed him to a two-fight winning streak against guys like Cameron Saaiman and Kris Moutinho, who had already proven they did not belong there. The second Malcolm wound up fighting serious competition he floundered, and now he's struggling to avert a three-fight losing streak and he's punching like he's scared to pull the trigger.
Otari Tanzilovi is the test to see if Wellmaker can still cut it here. I wrote about how Tanzilovi's debut fight against fellow newcomer Shane Collins this past June was one I had some genuine excitement for--Tanzilovi had some visible skills, Collins was demonstrating real offensive promise down in Urijah Faber's organization--and it was, ultimately, a good fight, but it was also ultimately a 30-27 victory for Collins. Otari put up a struggle and wrestled Collins repeatedly, but he couldn't keep him on the floor and he couldn't outpace him on the feet. That's part of what makes this interesting. Otari's biggest struggles come from volume, but Malcolm Wellmaker is not a volume striker, he's a power puncher. Wellmaker's never won a unanimous decision in his life. He gets by on hurting people.
He can most definitely hurt Otari. Hell, I'm pretty sure Wellmaker could hurt the side of a mountain. But he's going to have to stop the pressure attack to land one of those big counterpunches, and Otari's going to give him as much as he possibly can. OTARI TANZILOVI BY DECISION.
PRELIMS: THE PRICE
LIGHTWEIGHT: Francisco Prado (12-5) vs Ismael Bonfim (20-7)
Your featured prelim has Ismael Bonfim, who is 1 for his last 5 and on a three-fight losing streak that has seen him stopped every single time, against Francisco Prado, who is 1 for his last 6 and on a four-fight losing streak that spans two separate weight classes. It's very funny to see the different paths people get from beating these men. Ismael Bonfim's second-to-last loss was a TKO at the hands of Chris "Taco" Padilla, and for his efforts, Padilla got an early prelim fight with Marquel Mederos. After that, Ismael got tapped out by Axel Sola, and despite now being a man on a losing streak, beating him got Sola a co-main event in Paris against the formerly ranked Farès Ziam. In mid-2025, Francisco Prado lost a split decision to Nikolay Veretennikov, and Nikolay got a preliminary bout with Punahele Soriano. This past April Prado lost a duke to Charles Radtke, who is getting a fight against former title contender Stephen Thompson.
At a certain point there's no motivation to win anymore except "don't lose" and "hopefully afford food," and it angers me deeply that this was, of course, the point. ISMAEL BONFIM BY DECISION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Niko Price (16-11) vs Leon Shahbazyan (12-5)
This is rare, but indulge me. I'm going to quote basically an entire fight writeup from Leon's debut this past June.
Hold on, wait. I'm sorry. Leon Shahbazyan? Edmen Shahbazyan wasn't already enough, you had to go hire his older fucking brother? His brother who got knocked out by Phil Rowe on the Contender series? His brother who got thrown in a trashcan by Ryan Loder, TUF 32 (jesus christ) champion, in a minute and a half, a couple years before Loder proceeded to get repeatedly and effortlessly destroyed in the company? You are hiring that Leon Shahbazyan? His last five wins were the 14-10 Robert Hale, the 10-9 Gláucio Eliziário, the 9-10 Aaron "The Alaskan Bull Worm" Phillips, the 7-5 Aireon Tavarres, and my personal favorite, Marcus Hardaway, an 0-2 fighter whose last fight was against the man with the best name in the entire sport, Here Dudes? And you're putting him against Levan Chokheli, who, himself, is known almost solely for losing to Goiti Yamauchi and Lorenz Larkin in Bellator?
You know what probably would have been a better idea? HIRING GOITI YAMAUCHI OR LORENZ LARKIN. You cut Lorenz Larkin a decade ago on a two-fight winning streak over Jorge Masvidal and Neil Magny! You could still get him! It isn't too late!
Except, y'know, for how late it is. LEVAN CHOKHELI BY JESUS CHRIST, WHATEVER, I GUESS TKO, FUCK.
This may shock you: Levan Chokheli won that fight really, really fast. Within ten seconds Leon was barely able to walk after a pair of leg kicks, within twenty seconds he was stuck on the cage getting punched repeatedly, and after twenty-three seconds he was curled up on the ground. I don’t like talking shit about fighters, man. I don’t like denigrating the years of effort people put into their craft. But we’re in a state of the sport now where the UFC’s stupid robot Facebook rankings say Anthony Wint is the #15 Heavyweight in the UFC because he beat two men who’ve not only never been in the UFC before, but have never beaten a winning fighter in their entire lives. The lower the bar becomes, the more important it becomes to establish that there is, or at least should be, a bar.
As a case in point, Levan Chokheli hasn’t been booked again yet. But Leon has! Against Niko Price, who is 37, 2 for his last 10, and only has one victory over anyone who’s still active in the UFC. It was Randy Brown. In 2018. Niko has one win in the last five years. Niko is on a four-fight losing streak with three straight stoppage losses. Niko got choked out by Michael Chiesa in 63 seconds this past March, and then Niko tried to retire but the UFC wouldn’t give him the mic.
I still favor the retiree. NIKO PRICE BY TKO.
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Felipe Franco (11-2) vs Brendson Ribeiro (17-11)
God dammit, I should’ve saved my ‘reposting an entire fight again’ juice for this, doing it twice in a row would just be masturbatory. Instead, let me shorten this into a bullet point recap:
Felipe Franco loses a Contender Series fight against Freddy Vidal, a 3-0 P.E. coach
Having taken the fight on a week’s notice Freddy missed weight, so the UFC makes him come back
DWCS fight 2 ends with Freddy getting knocked out by Levi Rodrigues Jr.
The win is overturned when Levi immediately pisses hot for steroids; the UFC shrugs and signs him anyway
Felipe also gets signed as a short-notice replacement and loses to Mario Pinto at Heavyweight
The UFC books Felipe vs Levi to get Levi a win, but he gasses out in 6 minutes and Felipe gets the ground-and-pound TKO
Freddy Vidal remains unavenged
Having scored a win, Felipe now gets to fight 2023’s DWCS model, Brendson Ribeiro, who is on a four-fight losing streak and 2-6 overall, and boy, are you starting to notice a pattern in the matchmaking on this card?
I don’t have a lot of faith in Felipe after seeing him get clipped repeatedly by Levi, but I have also seen Brendson lose, constantly, for going on three straight years. But, boy, getting beat by Azamat Murzakanov feels a lot less bad than getting choked out by Freddy Vidal. BRENDSON RIBEIRO BY SUBMISSION.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Allen Frye Jr. (6-1) vs RJ Harris (6-0)
They say Heavyweight is Back and everything’s going fantastically now, and then they give you Allen Frye Jr., a man who got into the UFC by beating a fighter who’d been retired for six years and was now in his late thirties, only for Frye to then get shut out in his official debut by Guilherme Pat, who’d never beaten a man with a winning record in his entire life, and proceeded to spend all of 2026 losing repeatedly. RJ Harris, on paper, isn’t that much better or more accomplished, but he is taller, he is larger, and in his one UFC fight he met Alvin “Goozie” Hines, who made it a full fifteen minutes with Jhonata Diniz. Harris dropped him in a little over a minute and a half.
So. RJ HARRIS BY TKO.
WOMEN’S BANTAMWEIGHT: Alice Pereira (6-1) vs Daria Zhelezniakova (10-3)
It’s awfully hard to be stuck in the middle of a division that barely exists. Did you know the UFC only just removed Miesha Tate from rankings eligibility this past week? Did you know that across 34 events promoted by the UFC this year, which, at an average of 13 fights per event means about 442 bouts altogether, there have only been 14 fights at Women’s Bantamweight--that’s about 3% of them--and by simply competing at the weight class twice in one year, both of these women have become statistical anomalies? Alice was the most successful of the two, having knocked out Hailey Cowan back in April, but Cowan just got released after going 0-4 across four entire years with the UFC, so that didn’t really get her too far. What’s more, one fight beforehand she dropped a split decision to Montse Rendon, whom Daria had just beaten one fight earlier. This should, in theory, place Daria above Alice in the pecking order, but Daria had the misfortune of running into Melissa Croden, who managed to scrape a 29-28 away from her.
Coming off a loss rattles the betting markets. But Daria’s fought tougher competition and done better against them, and I’m not sure Alice is quite there yet. DARIA ZHELEZNIAKOVA BY DECISION.
WOMEN’S FLYWEIGHT: Ernesta Kareckaite (6-2-1) vs Melissa Gatto (9-3-2)
It’s depressing enough to talk about the state of women’s MMA in the UFC without getting into the fighters I was hoping to see more from. Ernesta Kareckaite is a good striker with a very disciplined game and the net result of that was a UFC debut decision loss to Dione Barbosa. Melissa Gatto is a solid grappler who actually tapped out Karol Rosa back in the day, and that, too, earned her the chance to lose a decision to Dione Barbosa. For the record, beating Gatto, who is otherwise 3-2 in the company, earned Dione the right to face a debuting first-round elimination from The Ultimate Fighter 34 (jesus christ).
Circular division. Circular life. MELISSA GATTO BY DECISION.