CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 145: UNTIL WE GET WHAT WE WANT
Carl walks through UFC 316: Dvalishvili vs O'Malley 2 and looks at the wasteland of marketing matchmaking.
SATURDAY, JUNE 7 FROM THE PRUDENTIAL CENTER IN NEWARK, NEW JERSEY
EARLY PRELIMS 3 PM PDT / 6 PM EDT | PRELIMS 5 PM / 8 PM | MAIN CARD 7 PM / 10 PM
We all know why we're here, let's just get to it.
MAIN EVENT: THE FUTURE
BANTAMWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Merab Dvalishvili (19-4, Champion) vs Sean O'Malley (18-2 (1), #1)
I had this whole schtick planned for this write-up. I was going to play devil's advocate, and talk about how it's not that bad that Sean O'Malley is getting an instant rematch given the state of the Bantamweight division. I was going to step into the Dana White/Hunter Campbell position and embrace the Best For Business mentality and speciously explain why this is fine. Why everything is, in fact, fine.
But four weeks ago, I wrote this on Discord:
And over this past weekend, the UFC confirmed that being ludicrous is a bar that falls ever-lower every year, and Petr Yan will be fighting Marcus McGhee in Abu Dhabi next month. Petr Yan, the former champion turned #2 ranked Bantamweight who just beat the #6-ranked Deiveson Figueiredo and the #5-ranked Song Yadong, will defend his top contendership against Marcus McGhee, who is now ranked #13 after scraping a 29-28 decision past Jonathan Martinez, who is, coincidentally, the only person he's ever defeated with a winning record in the UFC.
Merab Dvalishvili had to win ten straight fights to get a crack at the title. Petr Yan's beaten most of the top ten and just punched up two top prospects. Cory Sandhagen's four for his last five and just shredded Deiveson Figueiredo's knee. Belal Muhammad had to go to ten fights without a loss to get to the Welterweight title, Magomed Ankalaev was denied top Light Heavyweight contendership for two years. Raquel Pennington got screwed out of her championship and still hasn't been rebooked. The entire Heavyweight division is being held in stasis because the UFC can't get their champion and interim champion to fight.
Sean O'Malley fought the #9-ranked Pedro Munhoz: He poked him in the eye until the fight had to be stopped. For failing to beat him, Sean was elevated immediately to a title eliminator against Petr Yan: He won a split decision that virtually the entire world outside of the judging table scored against him. For only barely getting past him, Sean got to sit out almost an entire year before fighting a champion who'd been defending his belt repeatedly and had just come off a five-round title fight three months prior. As the champion, Sean O'Malley had to defend his title: He got to skip all the top contenders and fight Marlon Vera, who was on a winning streak of one.
And then Sean O'Malley finally met Merab Dvalishvili and lost his title.
And now, in a division where every top Bantamweight has once again been fighting one another to prove their worth as a contender, Sean O'Malley, who has had zero fights since losing the title, gets to once again fight for the title in the main event of a pay-per-view.
And Petr Yan is fighting Marcus McGhee on an undercard in Abu Dhabi in July.
When I started writing these things, the point was talking about the whole body of a fight. Not just the breakdown of two fighters and how they'll match up against each other, but the context surrounding the fight--how we got here, why the fight's happening, what brought both fighters to this point, what the fight means for mixed martial arts. Recently, more and more, the answer is just 'the UFC wants the guy they want,' and it fucking sucks.
What else is there to discuss here other than the gross business of this fight? There's no Sean O'Malley redemption story, there's no intervening fight where he climbed back to the summit, there's no chance to show off how he's learned and changed his approach since their first fight. There isn't even much to talk about with Merab! He beat Umar Nurmagomedov, and it was very funny, and now he's doing this rematch because it's what the company wants and it's the way he'll make the most money.
This is all the way they'll make the most money.
And christ, that's boring. It's so god damned boring. Mixed martial arts was the sport of outcasts, weirdoes and criminals, and for all the UFC's attempts to dress Sean O'Malley up and push him as though he's a fascinating fixture of the sport you just have to either love or love to hate, in truth, there is nothing on Earth less compelling than a marketing favorite who cannot be allowed to fail.
As I have said before, admittedly: It's not Sean O'Malley's fault the UFC loves him. It's not Sean O'Malley's fault that the instant replay of Sean O'Malley vs Aljamain Sterling was brought to you by a three-way advertising campaign between the UFC, Sweet Sweat, and their sponsored star, Sean O'Malley.
But as I also said the last time this fight happened:
But it's not my fault Sean O'Malley is using his stardom to cape for Andrew Tate and Donald Trump while making himself a walking billboard for a pedophile, either, so in this one particular circumstance I'm going to continue to be at peace with my loathing.
At the end of the day, I don't have anything to say about this fight that I didn't already say when we saw it nine months ago. I said Sean would land some dangerous counters, and he did, and I said Sean needed space to excel and Merab would deny it to him, and he did. I picked Merab to wrestle him into paste for five rounds. He did.
Maybe Sean has gotten better. Maybe he's been drilling nothing but wrestling since his loss. Maybe he's going to find the right hand down the pipe he couldn't last time. Maybe the UFC will threaten to strip Merab if he doesn't spend the first five hours of the card sprinting around the arena so he doesn't have the strength in his legs to take O'Malley down anymore.
But MERAB DVALISHVILI BY DECISION is still the call. If he loses, I don't imagine he's getting the same rematch privileges O'Malley did.
CO-MAIN EVENT: THE PAST
WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Julianna Peña (11-5, Champion) vs Kayla Harrison (18-1, #2)
One year ago Kayla Harrison was the biggest free agent in women's MMA and the world was aggressively eager to see what she could do in the UFC, and now she's getting her title shot and it's hard to avoid the feeling that the division is dying every death it can.
Because there's just no one out there. At that same point last year Raquel Pennington, after six years of toil, had finally achieved her goal and become a world champion and the undisputed best Bantamweight on the planet, and the UFC wanted so little to do with her that they didn't give her Kayla or any of the women actively fighting in the division's upper ranks, they gave her Julianna Peña.
Julianna Peña, who hadn't set foot in the cage in two years and hadn't won a fight in almost three. Peña famously defeated Amanda Nunes back in 2021, one of the biggest upsets in the history of the sport, and spent the next seven months mocking everyone who claimed it was a fluke and Nunes looked COVID-stricken and decidedly unlike herself. She vowed a repeat performance in the rematch and vowed that no one would question her skills again after she put the legend away.
Amanda Nunes beat the absolute fucking shit out of her to the tune of a 50-43 scorecard.
The UFC booked the rubber match anyway.
Julianna dropped out of the fight, and another year of competition, thanks to injuries. Amanda beat up Irene Aldana in her stead and retired, which Julianna cited as proof Amanda knew she would have lost the rematch and was running scared. The UFC, having failed to care enough to promote anyone else into contendership in her absence, just shrugged and gave Peña the shot at Raquel Pennington's championship when she finally returned.
I'm aggressively tired of how often I find myself saying some equivalent of this next bit, so rather than telling you the media scorecards, I'm going to use a visual aid and show you the media scorecards for the fight.
As you have no doubt noticed, Raquel Pennington is not in this fight. Raquel Pennington hasn't actually been booked into any subsequent fights. In fact, every woman in the top fifteen except the three associated with this fight have been subsequently booked.
Kayla Harrison got her shit in ahead of time. They threw her into the deep end against Holly Holm in her debut and she passed the UFC test with flying colors by choking Holm out in two rounds, and rather than elevating her to the belt they gave her a title eliminator against Ketlen Vieira on the same night as Peña/Pennington. It wasn't quite as impressive, but it was still a unanimous decision that secured her as so clearly the top contender that it would've been silly to let anyone else have a crack at the champ.
Which made it very funny when Peña used her post-victory interview to blow past Kayla as unimportant in favor of calling Amanda Nunes out again for that rubber match she'd missed out on.
It's silly. It's dumb. It's so nihilistic for matchmaking as a newly-crowned champion to immediately shit on your rightful top contender that it actively makes the sport worse.
And it completely worked, because Amanda Nunes is coming out of retirement to fight whoever wins this match.
Because Women's Bantamweight, the division that birthed the very idea of women's divisions in America, is rotting on the vine. The UFC barely promoted anyone other than Ronda Rousey, Miesha Tate and Holly Holm even during the height of its power, and in 2025, they've got no bullets left in the chamber. And however much the blame ultimately lays with them for spending years fucking around and failing to get the audience invested in anyone, it's not entirely their fault.
I said everyone in the top fifteen's been fighting, and they have, and it's failed to produce a real contender. They came close with Mayra Bueno Silva, but she's fallen so badly that she's now failing at two separate weight classes. Irene Aldana had a good comeback against Karol Rosa, but couldn't beat Norma Dumont. Ailín Pérez beat Rosa too, but not well enough to earn any good will. Just last week the UFC ran the #5 Macy Chiasson vs the #3 Ketlen Vieira to hopefully get new blood running and Vieira missed weight so badly the fight had to be contested at 145 pounds, and then she still smothered Macy for a clear decision. Even Miesha Tate had another failed comeback.
Maybe they could've run with Norma Dumont after the violence-fest of her bout with Aldana. Maybe they could've actually promoted Raquel Pennington, your former fucking champion.
But they did neither, so now all they have is the hope that Amanda Nunes still has it after two and a half years on the shelf.
I frequently write about my persistent underrating of fighters and how I refuse to learn my lesson, but in Julianna Peña's case, I am demonstrably correct. I did not believe in her chances in the Nunes rematch and I was right. I did not believe she had what it took to beat Raquel Pennington and I was right, even if the judges disagreed.
She's not a great wrestler, she's not a great grappler, she's not a great striker, she gets rattled on the ground and she walks into punches frequently. She does have one trait that makes her a danger for Kayla Harrison: She's too goddamn stubborn to quit. Amanda Nunes may have dropped Julianna on her ass three times, but she got up and went back to marching her down every time. Raquel may have deserved the win, but Julianna still hung in there and made it a close fight for twenty-five minutes. Kayla has only been fighting at 135 pounds for a year and she still visibly kills herself making the weight. If she can't get Julianna out of there and this fight drags into the championship rounds that gas tank could become a problem.
Or, alternatively, the Olympic gold medalist could drop the woman who got choked out by Germaine de Randamie on her head and break her arm. KAYLA HARRISON BY SUBMISSION.
MAIN CARD: THE PRESENT
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Kelvin Gastelum (19-9 (1)) vs Joe Pyfer (13-3)
Look at that, we got back here. This fight was supposed to happen two months and change ago in Mexico City, but Joe Pyfer got sick and said some shitty stuff about it being Mexico's fault and we moved on because the sport sucks now. On the plus side, I get to copy-paste.
Once upon a time, Kelvin Gastelum was the guy the UFC fed its aging veterans to. When you look back at the path of destruction that turned him into a real boy, it's paved over people who were on their way out of the game. Johny Hendricks, Tim Kennedy, Vitor Belfort, Michael Bisping, Jacaré--all former world champions, all closing in on retirement. Hell, two of them called it quits immediately after Kelvin speedbagged them. It got him stardom, it got him power, and it got him in there with the best of the best in the new generation. Unfortunately, it definitively proved he wasn't in that conversation. Kelvin's 3 for his last 9, and everyone who beat him is or was a top contender, and everyone he beat is at the absolute edge of the rankings. There was a renewed hope for Kelvin when he announced he was returning to Welterweight at the end of 2023--a 5'9" Middleweight just wasn't working out--but he got destroyed by Sean Brady in his first shot back at the division, and then he couldn't make the weight against Daniel Rodriguez and the fight wound up having to be contested at 185 pounds, and now he's just giving up on pretending altogether.
As is the UFC. Kelvin was fed; now he is the feed. Joe Pyfer was meant for the top from damn near the moment he rolled off the Contender Series and we know this because he admitted it. They tried to book Pyfer into ranked fights against Nassourdine Imavov as soon as he was in the UFC and Pyfer had to turn them down. As he put it, he felt it was too soon for his skill and experience level; it would probably also be fair to say he (very reasonably) wanted to be off his minimum-wage DWCS contract before he started taking ranked fights. As it turned out, that was a good idea for multiple reasons. The UFC gave Pyfer his shot at the big time in February of 2024, in an act of ultimate hubris they booked him against Jack Hermansson--the same man who spoiled Kelvin's Middleweight hopes four years earlier--and once again, Hermansson won. He called for the Imavov fight Pyfer had been offered afterward. Funny thing: In the thirteen months since the fight Pyfer's had a tune-up bout with Marc-André Barriault and now he's booked against a former main eventer, and Jack Hermansson has yet to get another fight on the calendar.
Just funny how that happens. Funny ha-ha. I'm not huge on Pyfer. I don't see the star in him that the UFC does. I also think betting on Kelvin in 2025 is an exercise in futility. And yet: I must. KELVIN GASTELUM BY DECISION. I just don't think Pyfer has the gas to put him down or outwrestle him. I will feel very silly about this conviction when he chokes Kelvin out in seven minutes.
(For the record: In the intervening months, Jack Hermansson got a fight scheduled! It's a preliminary bout against the unranked Gregory Rodrigues. Fuck you, UFC.)
BANTAMWEIGHT: Mario Bautista (10-2, #10) vs Patchy Mix (20-1, NR)
Mario Bautista has had the pleasure of experiencing the arbitrary love and loathing of mixed martial arts. One fight ago Mario was a widely-acclaimed rising star of a prospect, an aggressive grappler on a six-fight winning streak with some hype as a potential contender. And then he committed the unforgivable sin of beating José Aldo. It wasn't a robbery--it was so close that media scorecards formed the rare, perfectly even 50/50 split--but Aldo is Aldo and aside from being beloved by the fans he was out there trying to knock Mario out, and Mario is Mario and was out there trying to clinch Aldo against the fence and effectively neutralize him, and the judges thought his argument was more persuasive. It won Mario his spot in the top ten, but it cost him all the good will he'd built up with the audience. The UFC had intended to test Bautista against an ever-so-slightly higher opponent here in Marlon Vera, but after a rescheduling and an injury, they decided to do something special instead.
Patchy Mix is special. We've spent a lot of these columns over the years bemoaning the way the combination of the UFC's monopoly on the sport and the complete disarray of the American B-leagues have kept interesting talent down outside the company. Bellator's implosion provided the rare chance for a talent raid, but the slow, inexorable nature of its death under the PFL's mismanagement means we're only now starting to see it. Patrício Pitbull was our first, and his decidedly unfortunate performance as a Bellator representative is hopefully not going to curse Patchy Mix, who has been the best goddamn Bantamweight in the world outside of the UFC for years. He's big for the class, he's an intensely creative grappler with a strength advantage over almost everyone he faces, he's got victories over multiple world champions and Japan's best in Kyoji Horiguchi to his name, and in the entirety of his career, he's only had one loss--sort of. His only official loss came against Juan Archuleta, who used to be a hell of a thing. But Patchy's last fight under the shambling zombie version of Bellator was a rematch with Magomed Magomedov, and where Mix choked him out easily in 2022, in 2024, Magomed used clinch pressure and top control to fight Mix to a split decision that, as much as I love Patchy, probably should've gone Magomed's way.
Which feels disconcertingly relevant in a fight against someone like Bautista, who has been using the clinch-pressure game so well it pissed off the entire world. I have been rooting for Patchy to join the UFC for the last two years, it would be aggressively silly to abandon him now, so I'm essentially honorbound to say PATCHY MIX BY SUBMISSION, but there is a very, very real chance Bautista stifles him for fifteen minutes.
WELTERWEIGHT: Vicente Luque (23-10-1, #14) vs Kevin Holland (27-13 (1), NR)
It's hard not to feel bad for Vicente Luque. He was one of the UFC's best bout machines for years, he brought the sort of all-violence all-the-time energy the company begs for every time he got in the cage to the point that he was able to drag a fun fight out of end-stage Tyron Woodley, and he managed to stay a reliable fixture in the rankings for damn near a decade. But then he lost two fights in a row. So they booked him against Rafael Dos Anjos, who was unranked at Welterweight, and after Luque won they booked him against Joaquin Buckley, who was unranked at Welterweight, and after Luque lost they booked him against Themba Gorimbo, who was unranked at Welterweight, and after Luque won they've now booked him against Kevin Holland, who is, unsurprisingly, unranked at Welterweight. Luque was an underdog against Themba, and I thought that was slightly silly, and Luque dropped him and choked him unconscious in under a minute, and as it turns out that gets you essentially nowhere.
Which is where Kevin Holland lives these days. Where Luque is a company man for his wild-eyed performances, Kevin Holland is a company man because he does whatever the fuck they want. Four fights in five months? Sure. Abrupt near-title-contention bouts with veterans? Absolutely. Bounce between Welterweight and Middleweight for shits and giggles? Who needs to climb ladders. Accept a last-minute day-before-the-pay-per-view change in opponent from Daniel Rodriguez to Khamzat Chimaev? I wasn't using my neck this weekend anyway. As maybe the best case in point, Kevin Holland's last five fights were:
Michael "Venom" Page, the near-undefeated superprospect who was making his UFC debut at 170 pounds
Michał Oleksiejczuk, a 185-pounder who was 1 for his last 3 and had just been run through by Michel Pereira
Roman Dolidze, the #10-ranked Middleweight, who was himself just coming off a random fight at 205 pounds
Reinier de Ridder, the near-undefeated superprospect who had just made his UFC debut at 185 pounds
Gunnar Nelson, a 170-pound veteran who hadn't stepped into the cage in two years
Kevin Holland is good. He's a danger to everyone he fights. But his career has done him dirty and over the years his interviews trended far closer to a resigned in-it-for-the-money tone and when people are trying to punch you to death, in the longterm, that's usually a problem.
But there's a real good chance it won't be a problem tonight. I have always liked Luque more than most, I'm a real big fan of his style, but as a consequence of that style he's always gotten clipped a lot. Hell, he may have beaten Themba Gorimbo in fifty-two seconds, but he also ate three rough calf kicks and a swat upside the head in those fifty-two seconds. Holland's bigger, he's rangier, and he hits really fucking hard. Luque's tendency to tank hits with his head is probably going to backfire painfully. KEVIN HOLLAND BY TKO.
PRELIMS: A VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER
FLYWEIGHT: Bruno Silva (14-6-2 (1), #12) vs Joshua Van (13-2, #14)
No matter how bad things get, Flyweight, the division where even the unsuccessful guys rule, is here to save us, and Bruno Silva might be the most successful unsuccessful guy in the company. Only one of his four UFC wins came against someone with a winning UFC record--and said record is currently 6-5-1--and somehow, his ranking has become unmoored from his performances. When he fought Cody Durden last July he was unranked and Durden was #14, and by flooring him in two rounds, Silva jumped to #12. And now, having subsequently gotten demolished by Manel Kape, he is still #12, and Joshua Van, who is 6-1 in the company, on a three-fight winning streak and establishing himself as one of the division's best prospects, is #14. This may sound stupid, but Van, too, only has one victory over a UFC fighter with a winning record. That fighter? Also Cody Durden. Flyweight's the best, but they do not keep that pool very full. Van's fun, he's exceptionally well-rounded, he just took out a hugely-touted prospect in Rei Tsuruya, and aside from a stumble against the criminally underrated Charles Johnson, he's looked great thus far. All he needs is exposure.
Headlining the prelims is a decent start. Bruno Silva isn't exactly an enormously notable opponent, but he is an extremely appropriate one, and he's likely a safe win. Bruno's at his best when fighters are either willing to go toe-to-toe with him or unable to stop him from barnstorming them, and Van, not unlike Manel Kape, is defensively sound enough to work at his own pace and distance until Bruno gasses. JOSHUA VAN BY TKO.
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Azamat Murzakanov (14-0, #12) vs Brendson Ribeiro (17-7 (1), NR)
I love this. I love this for Light Heavyweight, it's what we deserve. Azamat Murzakanov is unquestionably one of the best prospects at 205 pounds. He's undefeated, he's knocked out almost everyone he's faced, he's out there chucking flying knees and haymakers and he's making it work despite not just being the shortest man in the division at 5'10" but having a shorter reach than the average Welterweight. The UFC also finds this funny, because Murzakanov was supposed to fight Johnny Walker, who is 8 inches taller, has 11" of reach on him, and is also a completely rankings-appropriate matchup, because Light Heavyweight is damned. He couldn't make it, so instead we've got Brendson Ribeiro, who was an underdog to the debuting Diyar Nurgozhay just two and a half months ago, was skin-of-his-teeth scraping a split decision off Caio Machado one fight before that, and was on a losing streak before that. This is, I remind you, a ranked fight to determine one of the fifteen best fighters at this weight class in the world.
Brendson's also way bigger, way longer, and should have every advantage on the feet. Consequently, AZAMAT MURZAKANOV BY TKO.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Serghei Spivac (17-5, #7) vs Waldo Cortes-Acosta (13-1, #11)
But nothing beats Heavyweight for sheer, zero-sum nihilism. The great Serghei Spivac rally of 2022-2024 is buried. The hero's welcome he got for punching Greg Hardy out of the UFC and the unexpected proximity to contendership he reached by choking out Derrick Lewis got Spivac into the room, but sometimes when you enter a room too fast it eats you. His shot at Ciryl Gane led to his complete failure to wrestle as Gane carved him up in two rounds, and one win later Spivac was getting destroyed on the mat by Jailton Almeida. The UFC is now in the stepping-stone position with Spivac, to the point that the last five months were spent repeatedly trying to book him against the once-again-rising Shamil Gaziev, but after the second scratching, it was time to bring in another prospect. I once celebrated Waldo Cortes-Acosta for the simple joy of a fighter named "Salsa Boy," but that time has passed. On paper, Waldo's a damn fine 6-1 in the UFC and a four-fight winning streak at Heavyweight is more than enough to be relevant. In practice? The six men he beat combine to a UFC record of 38-48 (1)--and almost half of that is just a 45 year-old Andrei Arlovski, without whom it would be 15-30. The win that got Waldo ranked was a decision over Robelis Despaigne, who had one UFC fight and would be cut one fight later. The win that got him this fight came against Ryan Spann, who was competing at Heavyweight for the first time in his life. And Marcos Rogério de Lima, the man who beat Waldo? Cut from the UFC after killing Junior Tafa because they didn't want to deal with him anymore.
This is Heavyweight. This is the Heavyweight division we get. Serghei's a better wrestler and de Lima proved you can grind Waldo out, but Spivac's a finisher, his gas tank over three rounds has never been great, and if he can't get his gameplan going, he tends to look real, real sad about it. I'm still pulling for SERGHEI SPIVAC BY DECISION because Waldo just hasn't shown me much, but I would not at all be surprised if Spivac gasses out halfway through the fight and gets jabbed to a loss.
WELTERWEIGHT: Khaos Williams (15-4) vs Andreas Gustafsson (11-2)
It's time for follies again. Khaos Williams, the perpetual prospect, was supposed to fight the similarly embattled Uroš Medić tonight. Nine days before the fight, Uroš had to pull out thanks to a sinus infection. Needing someone on short notice, the UFC signed Albert "Albeezy" Tadevosyan, a regional prospect with one of the funniest records I've ever seen, to fill in on short notice--and two days later Tadevosyan had to pull out due to issues with his medical examinations. Meanwhile, that same weekend, Andreas Gustafsson was supposed to make his own UFC debut--which had also been rescheduled twice. He was fighting Preston Parsons in January, and then it was Jeremiah Wells on May 31, and when Wells pulled out a week before the fight, it became Trevin Giles. Somehow, on the day of the weigh-ins, Giles was scratched with an unspecified injury. So, in our very real sport, one fighter with two reschedulings is being matched up against another fighter with three reschedulings with less than a week's notice and this is how one of these men is making their UFC debut.
I picked Andreas to beat Trevin Giles last week on the back of his wrestling and his clinch game, but Khaos is a lot stronger and he hits a lot fucking harder. KHAOS WILLIAMS BY KO.
EARLY PRELIMS: UNTIL WE GET WHAT WE WANT (REPRISE)
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Ariane da Silva (17-10, #13) vs Wang Cong (7-1, NR)
Let's go back to February for a second, when Wang Cong fought Bruna Brasil.
Wang Cong was supposed to be the next big thing. The UFC fed her a rookie on Road to UFC and a 1-3 fighter in her promotional debut because they knew she was going to crush both of them, and they were right. She was their next big Chinese star and they were deeply intent on keeping it that way. This past November, the UFC returned to China for the first time since 2019 and made damn sure Wang Cong was on the main card, and they put her up against Gabriella Fernandes, another 1-2 fighter who had only barely scraped by a rookie just a few months earlier. Cong was a -990 favorite. And Fernandes kicked her in the head, punched her in the jaw, dropped her and choked her out in two rounds. It was an incredible performance, it was one of the biggest upsets of the year, and as you may have surmised, the UFC has Wang Cong back out here already three months later to get her hype back and Gabriella Fernandes has yet to be rebooked.
Wang Cong won that fight. It's four months later. Both Cong and Fernandes have fights booked now. This week, Wang Cong is fighting Ariane da Silva, a former hot prospect on a two-fight losing streak, for the chance to be ranked as a top fifteen contender in her weight class. In August, Gabriella Fernandes is fighting Julija Stoliarenko, who is unranked, 2-6 in the company, and hasn't had back-to-back wins since her Invicta days more than half a decade ago.
What did I say before about marketing-forward fight booking being boring? The UFC uses Ariane as their you-must-be-this-tall-to-contend gatekeeper at Women's Flyweight, and she does the job perfectly, bouncing the Casey O'Neills of the world but letting Karine Silva or Jasmine Jasudavicius through because she can't quite match their speed, or their strength, or the sheer ferocity of their grappling techniques. More importantly, she's been sparked before. While it was at 135 pounds, even Priscila Cachoeira, one of the more ground-allergic fighters in the company, dropped Ariane in a single minute. And we know from experience that Wang Cong hits like a truck and has great finishing instincts, which is what they would clearly like to happen here.
I'm pulling for Ariane being able to outmaneuver her. I'm not particularly confident in the concept. But we've seen Cong struggle with the technical approach to the point that even Bruna Brasil was hammering her leg during their fight, and I would like to see it again. ARIANE DA SILVA BY DECISION.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Yoo Joo Sang (8-0) vs Jeka Saragih (14-4)
This is a good fight, for the current parameters of what makes a fight good. By the professed standards of the UFC as the purveyor of the best fighters in the world, Jeka Saragih should not be here. He was the runner-up in the first year of the Road to UFC tournaments, and when you consider that he came in second to Anshul Jubli, who got cut from the company two fights later after getting brutally destroyed twice in a row, and that Jeka's record since then is a victory over Lucas Alexander, who also got cut one fight later, and a loss to Westin Wilson, who would have been 0-3 in the company were it not for Jeka, his place in the pecking order feels pretty set. Yoo Joo Sang is our new blood. He's only four years into his professional career, he's never lost a fight, and he doesn't have any amazing wins yet but he's looked altogether promising--fast on his feet, solid on the ground, has at least some sense of defense. He's on the radar thanks to Chan Sung Jung's Z Fight Night, which is rapidly becoming a fairly solid talent-scouting operation in South Korea.
I think it'll be on the money this time, too. YOO JOO SANG BY DECISION.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Quillan Salkilld (8-1) vs Yanal Ashmouz (8-1)
Speaking of Anshul Jubli, we have the man who was birthed after burning his career on a pyre. Quillan Salkilld, who should apologize for monopolizing Australia's entire supply of the letter L, was brought onto UFC 312 as both a Contender Series winner and a local appreciation booking this past February. He paid off the appreciation by smashing Jubli in nineteen seconds, which is about as good a debut as you're going to get. Yanal Ashmouz wasn't too dissimilar--he hopped into the UFC in 2023 as a big underdog against Sam Patterson and demolished him in seventy-five seconds, which was particularly impressive given that Patterson was twice his goddamn size. Unfortunately, he followed it up with an immediate loss to Chris Duncan, which became understandable when it turned out he'd broken his hand in the first round and fought the rest with one arm. He spent a year on the shelf, he defeated unfrozen caveman lawyer Trevor Peek last September, and he is back for further revenge.
It's hard to gauge Quillan, having seen so little of him in the spotlight. He's got the skills and he too has a big size and reach advantage, but there's a specific tenacity to Ashmouz I foolishly appreciate. YANAL ASHMOUZ BY DECISION.
LIGHTWEIGHT: MarQuel Mederos (10-1) vs Mark Choinski (8-0)
Finally, we have the other Other make-good rescheduling. MarQuel Mederos was supposed to fight Bolaji Oki last week, but an illness took him out 72 hours ahead of the card, forcing the UFC to sign Michael Aswell, a regional dude they're now temporarily stuck with. But that means Mederos needs a fight, too. Who can they give him? Why, that would be Mark "The Shark" Choinski, another regional dude. But he's a good one! Undefeated champion of no less than the Anthony Pettis Fighting Championships! Surely, that counts for something, right? Surely Anthony Pettis, the man who boxed a 54 year-old Roy Jones Jr., would book only the most competitive of matches for his champions, right?
Surely. MARQUEL MEDEROS BY TKO.