UFC Vegas 81 this past weekend delivered a thrilling main event that saw a couple of near finishes, at least one from both fighters involved — Edson Barboza and Sodiq Yusuff. The bout took home Fight of the Night honors, and deservedly so. Where do those who were turned away on the main card go from here? We’ll play a little matchmaker for the losing side of Saturday’s main card.
Sodiq Yusuff
Yusuff took only his second loss in five years with the UFC on Saturday against Edson Barboza when the legend came back to win the final four rounds in the event’s ‘Fight of the Night.’ Although Sodiq lost, he showed how exciting he can be and is a mainstay of the featherweight top-fifteen at this point.
With this loss likely dropping him a few places in the rankings, this is the perfect time for Yusuff to welcome a fellow talented striker to the rankings in fifteenth-ranked Brit, Lerone Murphy. Lerone is undefeated as a professional and now has five wins in the UFC, with his latest win over Josh Culibao earning him a number next to his name. To solidify that place he will need to beat a fellow ranked opponent though, and Murphy vs Yusuff is a thrilling fight.
Yusuff’s Next Fight: Lerone Murphy
Jennifer Maia
Despite now being 6-6 in the UFC after her loss to Viviane Araujo, Jennifer Maia has fought as hard a strength of schedule as anyone in her division in the UFC and is one of the more solid gatekeepers at 125lbs, turning back prospects like Casey O’Neill and Maryna Moroz in the last year. She was ranked ninth going into this fight against #11 Araujo, but now will have to fight down again.
The time is perfect to test one of the best prospects in all of MMA against a dependable force like Maia. Natalia Silva has looked simply incredible in her four UFC wins as she now is ranked fourteenth at flyweight, but she has not faced someone like Maia yet who is strong enough in every facet of MMA to turn back streaking prospects like her.
Maia’s Next Fight: Natalia Silva
Adrian Yanez
Bantamweight Adrian Yanez could not deal with the punishing leg kicks of Jonathan Martinez on Saturday, as his leg was mangled en route to a second-round TKO loss. He clearly injured something in that knee as he could not even stand on it by the end of the fight; he speculated on Twitter about a potentially torn MCL, which would put him out of action for the better part of a year.
Yanez is still just 29, but after suffering his first two UFC losses back-to-back he will now have to fight down again to get back on a championship trajectory. He may fall out of the rankings when they are updated on Tuesday, and in a stacked division like bantamweight it will surely be an unranked opponent next for him whenever he is healthy. In January Ricky Simón is fighting Mario Bautista in a fight where only one man will have a ranking after it is done. With the likely lengthy timeline for Yanez’s recovery, fighting the loser of that fight makes a lot of sense for Adrian.
Yanez’s Next Fight: Loser of Simón/Bautista
Andre Petroski
Petroski was 5-0 in the UFC when he stepped in to fight Michel Pereira on short notice and got knocked out. While its unfortunate given that he could have been a ranked middleweight soon, the short nature notice of the fight likely means this is not as big of a setback as it would have been.
The unranked waters of middleweight are chock full of athletes for him to fight. One name who has decent fan recognition is Gregory ‘Robocop’ Rodrigues. Rodrigues is 5-2 in the UFC and has won a host of performance bonuses (as well as 2022’s Violenceweight Fighter of the Year) along the way for his violent fight style. If Petroski were able to dispatch ‘Robocop’ then he could see himself right back in line for a ranking afterwards.
Petroski’s Next Fight: Gregory Rodrigues
Cameron Saaiman
South Africa’s Saaiman lost his first fight as a professional in MMA when he fought Christian Rodriguez to a unanimous decision loss in a fight that really showed how the future of the bantamweight division could look, given that Saaiman is just 22 years old and ‘CeeRod’ is just 25. That future seems bright, for the division as well as Cameron himself. He acquitted himself well, and against an opponent who missed weight by four pounds at weigh-ins.
Cameron will take a slight step back in opposition now, but he has all the time in the world to get to the stop. Next he could see himself fighting someone like Da’Mon Blackshear, who also recently lost to a top prospect but has prodigious talent himself. Blackshear would really test Saaiman’s grappling and see what improvements he can make in that area after Rodriguez was able to successfully implement his own grappling to win their fight.
Saaiman’s Next Fight: Da’Mon Blackshear
