CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 160: IT MEANS "THE BART, THE"
We're going to Rio to watch Charles Oliveira ride again.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 11 FROM THE FARMASI ARENA IN RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL
PRELIMS 1 PM PDT / 4 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 4 PM / 7 PM
Welcome back to Brazil. This is the fourth-to-last stop on the UFC’s 2025 regional appeal tour--we’re in Canada next week, so look forward to co-main event Mike Malott again--and every single fight on this card has at least one Brazilian for people to cheer and clap and chant “uh vai morrer” about. Which is probably necessary, because in terms of my ‘how has everyone done in the last two years’ scale, this is the worst-performing card yet, with an overall losing record of 32-35.
Y’know, the death chants used to weird me out, but in the modern age where American crowds chanting “USA” sounds damn near weaponized, I’ve become cooler with it. Morrer it up, Rio.
MAIN EVENT: GOOD THINGS IN BAD WAYS
LIGHTWEIGHT: Charles Oliveira (35-11 (1), #4) vs Mateusz Gamrot (25-3 (1), #8)
This is such a great fight, and like so many of the best parts of the Lightweight division, it is happening under duress because the UFC’s demonstrably worse original plans didn’t work out.
Charles Oliveira is the crown jewel of the Lightweight division. He’s not the champion, tragically, and jesus christ his title win was already four years ago and our bones are collectively turning to dust, and he’s not the best fighter in it, but by god, he’s The Best. He doesn’t pick his spots, he fights anyone, he’s a challenge to everyone, and the only people to get past him in the last eight years were either world champions or #1 contenders. In a division marked by titleholders abdicating to chase double-champ status, high-ranked competitors holding out for title opportunities they may or may not deserve and management’s favorite prospects managing to find the path of least resistance up the ladder, Charles Oliveira is a Fighter, and god bless the dying breed.
Mateusz Gamrot is surprisingly close to being one of his heirs apparent. He’s an indefatigable grappler, he’s a dogged competitor, and he fights everyone the UFC throws at him. Unfortunately, this is because he has to fight everyone the UFC throws at him. Gamrot’s one of the UFC’s best Lightweights but he’s also only recorded one finish since 2021, and even that’s only because Rafael Fiziev’s leg exploded in mid-round. His fights are all-takedown affairs, and that means a plethora of decisions, and that means the UFC has repeatedly tried to get rid of him. When he beat Fiziev, Gamrot was ranked #6: The UFC matched him up with the #11-ranked Rafael dos Anjos. When he beat dos Anjos, Gamrot was ranked #5: The UFC matched him up with the #11-ranked Dan Hooker. When Gamrot lost a split decision that included two judges scoring a round against him that included him literally breaking Hooker’s face, Gamrot was ranked #7: The UFC matched him up with the unranked Ľudovít Klein.
But hey: We’re here, so that means management has finally acquiesced, right? Gamrot has been calling for a fight with Oliveira for years, so if he’s got the opportunity, that must mean the UFC has acknowledged his role as a top Lightweight and given him an honest shot at contendership, right?
Of course not! This was supposed to be Charles Oliveira vs Rafael Fiziev, despite Fiziev having just one win in three years and four fights and also the win was against an unranked man and also one of those three losses was to Gamrot. Why would any of that disqualify him from a top contendership match when you consider that he’s a striker?
A funny thing happened during the preamble for last week’s Magomed Ankalaev/Alex Pereira main event. While both fighters were being introduced, commentator Daniel Cormier expressed his confusion at the audience lustily booing Ankalaev and cheering for Pereira. Their choice of sides was a mystery to him.
While I waited for the fight to start, I checked the UFC’s merch website. When I pulled down its list of advertised fighters, a funny thing happened:
You may subtly notice that an at-the-time world champion was missing. I pulled up Alex Pereira’s page. It advertised 105 items, from baby rompers to fight shorts to action figures, and, in total, 27 unique t-shirts.
I had to search for Magomed Ankalaev, because he didn’t have his own page. It advertised 20 items. He had five unique t-shirts--if you counted the ones with Alex Pereira on them that were just advertising their pay-per-views.
If you didn’t, he had two.
Cormier’s confusion about the crowd’s reaction belies that the UFC has chosen sides in the marketing war. After beating Ankalaev the comment was made that Pereira had proven he could deal with the best wrestlers in the Light Heavyweight division, which is funny, because there are no wrestlers left at Light Heavyweight. They are gone. Even Ankalaev himself got his shot at the top when he stopped shooting takedowns. The best 205-pound wrestlers in the world now are folks like Corey Anderson, Dovlet Yagshimuradov, Phil Davis and Antônio Carlos Jr., and if you read those names and said ‘hey, aren’t they all in the Professional Fighters League,’ that is, in fact, the point. 205 has been purged. Heavyweight is almost there. Middleweight’s about halfway down the road.
Lightweight is still one of the best, most talent-diverse divisions in the UFC. It’s also a division where Justin Gaethje can hold out for a title shot on the back of one victory while Mateusz Gamrot fights Ľudovít Klein. It’s a division where Arman Tsarukyan won #1 contendership and had to give it up because management got mad at him. It’s a division where Grant Dawson can go 11-1-1 across six and a half years and be stuck getting booked into unranked fights once per turn of the calendar because he shoots more double-legs than big right hands.
It’s a division where a genuinely fascinating, exciting matchup between one of the best to ever do it and one of the trickiest grappling prospects in the sport is only happening by mistake because the UFC’s preferred kickboxer couldn’t make it.
Still: We are here. However stupid the route may have been we still made it to the Outback Steakhouse, and now we must eat our own bodyweight in fried onion. This does, in fact, rule, and it’s a fascinating clash of styles and weaknesses.
Mateusz Gamrot’s best striking attacks tend to be clubbing punches, but he has historic trouble with range and kicks. Oliveira’s got the reach and the kicking game to take him apart. However: Oliveira has always had trouble maintaining range, he likes to let fights wind their way into the clinch where he can open up with elbows and knees.
This is potentially a problem, because Gamrot’s ability to shrug his way through the clinch into takedown attempts is stellar. It is entirely likely he can out-clinch Charles and redirect him to the floor. This poses a problem: It ends with him on the floor with Charles Oliveira, who is, numerically, the most prolific submission artist in UFC history. Gamrot’s confidence in his grappling is supreme and it deserves to be, he’s never been submitted, but he’s also never had to deal with a ground game like Oliveira’s.
And yet, wrestlers with strong top games have been a historic problem for Oliveira. Islam controlled him, Arman controlled him, and if your memory as a fan goes back that far, Paul Felder and even Ricardo Lamas showed how grappling control could be used against him as long as you knew how to ride the waves. But Gamrot has always been closer to a Merab Dvalishvili than an Islam Makhachev--a scrambler rather than a crusher. If he can’t maintain control over Oliveira, grappling with him at all could be incredibly dangerous.
It could be a fascinating fight. It could also be Charles strangling a man in ninety seconds. Gamrot has deserved his shot for a very long time, and even if he hasn’t had as much time to prepare as he would’ve liked, neither has Oliveira, and that’s about all one can ask. I’m going to choose to believe in Polish scrambling. MATEUSZ GAMROT BY DECISION.
CO-MAIN EVENT: A NICE FARM UPSTATE
BANTAMWEIGHT: Deiveson Figueiredo (24-5-1, #6) vs Montel Jackson (15-2, #15)
Combat sports move so goddamn fast sometimes.
Five years ago, Deiveson Figueiredo was the undisputed Flyweight king of the world. He’d just brutally murdered Joseph Benavidez twice in a row to win the title and a world that was still trying to move on from Demetrious Johnson hailed Figgy as, while not better than Mighty Mouse, definitely scarier. His punching power was ridiculous for the division and his submissions were actively violent, and most folks saw him holding onto the belt for a long time.
Two years ago, Deiveson Figueiredo left the Flyweight division after winning only one of his last four fights. His destiny as the king of the world was interrupted by Brandon Moreno, the underdog who shocked the world by embarking on an ultimately successful quadrilogy with Figueiredo. It wasn’t how Deiveson wanted things to go, but in the end, it was okay. He was past his mid-thirties, tired of the weight cut, and ready to move up.
One year ago, Deiveson Figueiredo was a top Bantamweight contender. Fears about being undersized and underpowered hadn’t stopped him from tearing his way up the ladder. He boxed up Rob Font, he choked out Cody Garbrandt, and he knocked down the iron-chinned Marlon Vera on his way to a decision. His double-champion dreams were alive and well, and the world was excited to see his upcoming title eliminator.
Today, Deiveson Figueiredo might be on his way out of the sport. His title eliminator ended with a wide loss to Petr Yan. His comeback fight saw Cory Sandhagen dominate him on the ground and shred his knee in just two rounds. It wasn’t just two losses at a pivotal moment, it’s the first back-to-back losses of Figueiredo’s entire life. Fighting out of his first-ever losing streak, fighting out of the death of his title hopes, fighting out of a torn anterolateral ligament while staring down his thirty-eighth birthday--all of these things are imposing as hell, and a break and a soft target would have been entirely understandable.
Instead, he’s back in the cage five months later against arguably the scariest puncher in the entire division.
Were it not for bad luck, Montel Jackson might have been a title contender already. He was one of the earlier pickups the UFC made from the Contender Series as a 6-0 rookie all the way back in 2018 and, like a surprising number of people who would one day matter, folks wrote him off early when Ricky Simón made him look like garbage. Wrestling makes fools of us all, on a long enough timeline. It wouldn’t be a quick recovery for Jackson, either: He picked up some wins, but a loss to Brett Johns (whom the UFC would inexplicably let walk immediately afterward) set him right back in the heap.
And then he started knocking motherfuckers out.
Many people knock motherfuckers out. There are entire schools of study about the frequency with which motherfuckers get knocked out these days. Knocking out a motherfucker, by itself, is not necessarily enough to get you through the door. But the extent to which Montel Jackson knocked out said motherfuckers made him immediately notable. When he landed on Jesse Strader in 2021, he flattened him. When he met absurdly durable WEC veteran Rani Yahya in 2023, he destroyed him. Montel Jackson fought a real prospect in Da’Mon Blackshear, who had never been finished by any means, in 2024: Jackson knocked him cold with one punch in eighteen seconds.
You may be noticing a pattern in how separate those years are.
Jackson’s career has been plagued by delayed opportunities. Between the Yahya and Blackshear fights he had matches lined up with folks like Chris Gutierrez, Said Nurmagomedov and Farid Basharat that could have propelled him into the rankings, and every single one fell apart. Even Jackson’s last fight this past May was a comeback after 10 months of silence. If he makes it to this bout, it’ll be the first time he’s managed multiple fights in a single calendar year since 2021.
In other words: He can’t fuck it up. The universe does not grant Montel Jackson many opportunities, and he’s got a golden chance to jump from the farthest edge of the rankings to outright contendership with one punch. If he fails, it could be years before he gets another shot.
I do not think he will fail. I have been a Figueiredo Fan for nigh unto a decade and it’s plausible he chain-wrestles Jackson into outright suffocation, but I think this is where the train is going to crash. The size, strength and power differences at work here are massive, and Figueiredo has always left an allowance for getting caught during his more aggressive entries because he could trust his chin to absorb the damage, and I think we’ve reached the critical juncture of age, competition and divisional difference that will finally crack him.
MONTEL JACKSON BY TKO. I’m sorry, Figgy.
MAIN CARD: FUCKING OOF
WELTERWEIGHT: Vicente Luque (23-11-1) vs Joel Álvarez (22-3)
Vicente Luque’s theoretical career has been so much more fun than his actual career. Theoretically, within the last two years, Vicente Luque was supposed to fight top contender Ian Machado Garry, grappling wrecking machine Sean Brady, and, on two different occasions, Nick fucking Diaz. All of these things were signed and scheduled and all of them fell apart. Instead of trading chokes with Brady, Luque got crushed by Joaquin Buckley. Instead of having what could have been the saddest fight in years with Diaz, Luque was booked against Themba Gorimbo, which obviously is completely equivalent in importance. After getting choked out by Kevin Holland this past June, Luque was supposed to have a battle of embattled aging former prospects against Santiago Ponzinibbio here, but towards the end of September, Ponzinibbio had to pull out. What gentle, digestible challenge could the UFC pull together for Luque on just a couple weeks’ notice?
Joel fucking Álvarez. This is, pretty unequivocally, an attempt to put Luque out to pasture. They hoped they could pass his credibility onto Themba, and Themba failed, so now it’s a guy so visibly dangerous that he’s coming up from Lightweight for the first time and he’s still a -500 favorite. There are two patches on Joel’s UFC career, and they’re Damir Ismagulov, who was really, really good and fell out with the UFC under some pretty weird circumstances, and Arman Tsarukyan, the #1 Lightweight contender. Joel didn’t just beat everyone else, he finished them. The UFC would have loved to push him up the Lightweight ladder, but they were prevented by Joel’s repeated pleading that he’s a 6’3” man nearing his mid-thirties and he doesn’t want to cut that much goddamn weight anymore. It took almost an entire year to get the UFC to cave and give him a Welterweight bout, and it still took a short-notice replacement slot to do it.
But he is, almost certainly, going to do it. Despite having fought at Lightweight his whole life Joel’s a lot bigger and he hits pretty goddamn hard, his grappling is sound enough that Luque’s back of deceptively strong chokes is unlikely to catch him, and while the Luque of 2019 could have probably given Joel a run for his money, in 2025 Luque’s worn so much of the tread off his tires that I do not think this will be enormously difficult. JOEL ÁLVAREZ BY TKO.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Jhonata Diniz (9-1) vs Mario Pinto (10-0)
Heavyweight is fraudulent, man. It barely exists. It is a shadowplay and we are all being lied to. Jhonata Diniz was brought into the UFC as a kickboxing-centric rookie just like Alex Pereira before him, and after a decision against Karl Williams, who was immediately cut afterward, and a knockout over Austen Lane, the UFC tried to get Diniz into the top fifteen with Derrick Lewis. When Lewis couldn’t make it, they shrugged and booked Diniz up into the top ten instead, by way of Marcin Tybura. Tybura crushed him. Who did Diniz get after that? Alvin “Goozie” Hines, a regional fighter with maybe one non-rookie fight, who lost, pissed hot for steroids, and was immediately cut.
Does Diniz go back to the top fifteen? No. Does he get a Heavyweight of equal record? No! He gets Mario Pinto. Mario Pinto is a large British-Portuguese man who got into the UFC on the Contender Series a year ago thanks to his victory over a 5’10” Heavyweight, and as of now, Pinto is 1-0 in the UFC. Who was that one? Austen Lane. He knocked out Austen Lane. A year and a half ago Jhonata Diniz made his UFC debut by knocking out Austen Lane, and they tried to get him into the top ten for it, and now that it’s failed, he is here fighting newly-debuted men whose only claim to fame is having also knocked out Austen Lane. Coincidentally, Vitor Petrino is on this card’s prelims getting his own borderline-ranked UFC bout after a failed Light Heavyweight run. Who’d he beat in his Heavyweight debut? Austen Lane. Hey, did you know that Justin Tafa is still here despite having only one win in his last four fights? Who do you suppose that win was? Why, it was Austen goddamn Lane.
(Editing note: Two days after I wrote this, Justin Tafa retired. Austen Lane, this is somehow your fault.)
This entire division is cursed to the deepest pits of nothingness, and the fact that Alex Pereira could waltz right into a Heavyweight title shot without anyone batting an eye is proof. MARIO PINTO BY DECISION.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Ricardo Ramos (17-7) vs Kaan Ofli (11-4-1)
When I saw Ricardo Ramos on this card, my instinctual reaction was ‘oh, that’s great, he’s on the comeback trail and it’d be nice to see him keep it going.’ Then I remembered that comeback victory was a knockout over Danny Chavez and it was almost three and a half years ago. Ricardo Ramos is 1-4 in those subsequent years. He got choked out twice, he barely scraped a split off Josh Culibao in a decision that could and probably should have gone Culibao’s way, and any momentum he could’ve kept from the near-loss was squashed when Chepe Mariscal dominated him one fight later. The train isn’t just wrecked, it’s rusting in a ditch.
Kaan Ofli is not doing much better. Ofli had some promise as an angry Turkish-Australian grappler on The Ultimate Fighter 32 (jesus christ), but that promise led to Mairon Santos pasting him in six and a half minutes and taking the vaunted TUF championship away. The UFC signed Kaan anyway, just as they signed both of the season’s Middleweight finalists, and like said finalists, Ofli hasn’t found a mote of success. Muhammad Naimov outpunched and outwrestled him to a wide decision loss, and just as fast as he got here, Ofli’s staring down the fear of three consecutive losses and a likely cut.
Which is why they’ve trotted him out in front of Rio as the evil foreigner. I have been on Ofli’s side of the picks twice, and I have been wrong twice, but I doubt Ramos and his capacity to not shove himself into guillotines, so what’s a third. KAAN OFLI BY SUBMISSION.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Lucas Almeida (15-4) vs Michael Aswell (10-3)
In his UFC debut, I wrote about the promise Lucas Almeida had as a regional champion with a lot of neat strikes and some good, opportunistic chokes mixed in. I felt very smart when he knocked out Michael Trizano that night, and I hope Almeida holds onto that moment, because the rest haven’t been all that grand. In the more than three years since that night Almeida’s 1-3, he’s gotten both choked and knocked out, his sole victory came against a late replacement signing who has looked decidedly not great, and when last we saw Almeida this past March he blew his weight cut and lost a decision anyway. How you book a Lucas Almeida at this point in his career is very indicative of if you still care about his future.
Who did he get?
So, funny story: I put together lunch before finishing the editing and publishing today and in the time it took my fiancée and I to make and eat tacos, MarQuel Mederos dropped out of this fight and got replaced by Michael “Texas Kid” Aswell, a former Fury FC champion who lost on the Contender Series last year and is getting his second shot at the UFC with 72 hours to prepare. Fun fact: The man he lost to, Bogdan Grad, was also getting his second shot after losing to Tom Nolan on the Contender Series last year. Tom Nolan’s first UFC fight? A loss to Nikolas Motta, who was also getting a second shot through the Contender Series after washing out on TUF Brazil 4. Everything is recursive. Everything is feeding on itself in an inescapable circle. I watched Aswell’s tape and he’s a striker who seems to be allergic to takedowns so I’m sure he’ll be a champion in three years.
That’s right! It’s that guy. This may shock and surprise you, but Michael Aswell did not win his three-days-notice debut. He didn’t do terribly, either, but he lost the striking war pretty thoroughly to Bolaji Oki, who, himself, is a grappling-allergic striker.
So I am making the lamentable choice to once again put my faith in Almeida. LUCAS ALMEIDA BY DECISION.
PRELIMS: JAFEL RIDES THE PAIN TRAIN
FLYWEIGHT: Jafel Filho (16-4) vs Clayton Carpenter (8-1)
Hey, Jafel.
Hello.
That last outing was kind of a bummer, huh? You had to wait almost half a year because Allan Nascimento got sick, and then when you finally got him in the cage he missed weight, and then he beat you anyway. That’s gotta really get to you.
Yes.
Jafel, dearest of my friends, I cannot help feeling like there’s more you want to say.
I could’ve won that fight. I should’ve won that fight. I gave it away. I could have controlled Allan but I couldn’t stop myself from diving on chokeholds I just couldn’t secure and it meant I spent the back half of the fight stuck in bottom position getting elbowed in the head. And it hurt. But in that pain, I found clarity.
What did it teach you?
We are mad dogs, all. In the part of me honed by millennia of socialization I recognized the need to resist, but in the moment I was unable to deny myself the chance at instant gratification, and in my lust for submission I saw the face of Mammon. The cycle of cruelty, hatred and inevitable fascism will not break until we collectively learn to accept that all of us having half-guard is better than a few of us having the mount, and the urge to violence is as beholden to the capture of media by the wealthy as it is the neuron-twitching impulse to have more than we do even if it means taking it from someone else. I see with new eyes, and I see hope and sorrow all at once.
That’s pretty fucking deep, Jafel. Are you going to take your new philosophy to the masses?
I’m going to show it to them.
How?
Breaking a man’s fucking leg.
JAFEL FILHO BY SUBMISSION.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Vitor Petrino (12-2) vs Thomas Petersen (10-3)
We have reached that Vitor Petrino fight I referenced earlier. Petrino was supposed to be the 205-pound contender of the future, a finishing machine with big chokes and even bigger punches, and in hindsight, when they tried to launch him with a co-main event and he struggled to beat Tyson Pedro, that should have been a sign. Vitor proceeded to lose his undefeated streak getting choked out by Anthony Smith, and in doing so gave us three more deeply unnecessary fights where Smith was repeatedly bludgeoned, and then Vitor managed to get knocked cold by Dustin Jacoby, meaning he rescued two faltering contracts in a single year. But now he’s a Heavyweight, so everything old is new again, and that includes Thomas Petersen. “The Train” is 2-2 in the UFC, which becomes slightly less cool when you remember one of those wins was Mo Usman, who is down near the bottom of this card for a reason, and the other was Don’Tale Mayes, who is 2 for his last 8. If you have a good memory for guys, you may remember Jamal Pogues, who had a four-fight run in the UFC. He, too, went 2-2, and oddly enough, one of his victories was over Thomas Petersen. Petersen is still here. Pogues is back in the regionals.
It’s funny how that works. VITOR PETRINO BY TKO.
WOMEN’S BANTAMWEIGHT: Irina Alekseeva (5-3) vs Beatriz Mesquita (5-0)
For all that I complain about the UFC contracting people who haven’t proven themselves at this level of the sport, an awful lot of the time there’s really only so much you can do, and that hits hardest for Women’s Bantamweight because it’s very hard to prove how good you are at diving when the pool is only a foot deep. Irina Alekseeva was a national champion in Sambo, a Bellator veteran and a 4-1 fighter by the time she made it to the UFC: She promptly missed weight in her (successful!) debut, lost her next bout, got suspended for a year over steroids, came back and lost again, and now she’s trying not to hit three straight. Beatriz Mesquita is an incredibly accomplished grappler with dozens of world championships in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and an undefeated record after not even a year and a half in mixed martial arts: She’s also only fought two people with winning records and she beat one of them by disqualification. The pickings are slim and so are the chances to build your reputation.
And even though Mesquita’s a heavy, heavy favorite here, I can’t help feeling a bit worried. Bea’s a killer grappler and she knows how to run the pipe on single-leg takedowns, which puts her ahead of an awful lot of her competition. She’s also 5’4”. Immediately upon signing with the UFC she became their second-smallest fighter at Women’s Bantamweight, and that starts to matter a lot more when the competition gets better. I’m still picking BEATRIZ MESQUITA BY DECISION because my faith in Alekseeva is pretty low, but Mesquita getting out-powered here and having to figure out how to try Flyweight instead would not surprise me at all.
FLYWEIGHT: Lucas Rocha (17-2) vs Stewart Nicoll (8-1)
Here, we have a battle of second chances. Luchas Rocha was one of the better prospects to come through the Contender Series in awhile, a well-traveled regional champ with a handful of genuinely decent wins to his name, but his debut got pushed back thanks to injuries and it ultimately led to getting choked unconscious by Clayton Carpenter. Stewart Nicoll got pulled onto the roster to fill out Australia’s du Plessis vs Adedsanya card with local talent, and unfortunately for Perth, that was a night an awful lot of said local talent ate shit. Nicoll got choked unconscious, too. Both men are victims of the ‘tapping is for babies’ complex and they deserve better from a sport that enjoys the richest of their blood.
It’s Rocha’s striking vs Nicoll’s wrestling and for once I’m abandoning my elemental home. LUCAS ROCHA BY TKO.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Valter Walker (14-1, #15) vs Mohammed Usman (11-4)
Sometimes, we are our own biggest obstacles to happiness. In this era of endless horrors, in a sport bent on stamping out grappling, the universe has chosen to gift us a single mote of light: A Heavyweight who just will not stop diving on legs. Three heel hooks! In a row! Johnny Walker’s half-brother overcame a UFC debut loss and developed an insatiable appetite for lisfranc ligaments and now he’s getting revenge for his previous failure by robbing large men of their ability to take small walks. Mohammed Usman is a TUF champion with a half-dozen fights in the company and I have absolutely no feelings about him in any possible direction. Nothing he has done, with the possible exception of a small shake of my head when he got outworked by Thomas Petersen, has done anything to provoke any reaction in my blood.
So I am asking him to gently lay his ankle bones down for the cause. VALTER WALKER BY SUBMISSION.
WOMEN’S STRAWWEIGHT: Julia Polastri (13-5) vs Karolina Kowalkiewicz (16-9)
Sometimes I wonder how much better my pick percentages would be if I could let go of my old favorites. I keep picking Karolina Kowalkiewicz, and she keeps losing fights, and instead of changing my ways I keep doubling down. I could probably learn from Jafel Filho’s chokepiphany, but I cling to the possibility that KK could win the big one again, and magically, by doing so, I will once again become young and hopeful about the future. Julia Polatri is not helping me with this dilemma, as after three UFC bouts I feel nothing for her career. She got soundly beaten by Josefine Knutsson, she got soundly outwrestled by Loopy Godinez, and between the two she managed a close decision over Cory McKenna and all of those words, as little as they mean, probably give her the edge over 2025 Karolina Kowalkiewicz.
And I wallow in my own philosophical refuse and refuse. KAROLINA KOWALKIEWICZ BY DECISION.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Saimon Oliveira (18-6) vs Luan Lacerda (12-3)
Our prospects have failed to launch, and now we will lock them in a cage and make them fight for employment. Saimon Oliveira made it through the Contender Series four years ago as a Pancrase veteran and champion of no less than SICARIO MMA, a definitely legitimate promotion that definitely didn’t go out of business after like six events. In those four years he has only made it to three UFC fights, he lost every single one, and the last two were brutal knockouts. Luan Lacerda was a nigh-undefeated Shooto Brasil prospect when the UFC signed him--funnily enough his only loss came against Ary “Astroboy” Farias, the same man who dealt Saimon his last pre-UFC defeat, who somehow has yet to get a look from the UFC--and Lacerda has also only managed two fights in almost three years with the UFC, and both were losses, and we haven’t seen him since Da’Mon Blackshear pounded him flat in the Summer of 2023.
Only one may leave. LUAN LACERDA BY DECISION.