“I first started training at The Academy, popping in and out in college was like 2011 through 2014,” Castaneda recalled. “During that time, I think it was kind of like the end of another era like that. There was a lot of guys like Nik Lentz, Jacob Volkmann, Sean Sherk were leaving – Rose Namajunas. They were kind of on their tail end of their career or moving locations.”

While it was cool to see the names that he saw there, it did create a tough time for Castaneda. After some of the larger names departed the gym, he was left with a bit of a void when it came to high-level sparring partners. Although that was rough at first, the gym is coming out the other side of that now.

“I almost like to think like, okay, everybody kind of graduated from that. I was like the lower classmen, and I was able to kind of climb the ranks with a lot of bodies for sure, but not a lot of high level people around me,” he said. “Not quite yet, but over the last few years – that’s evolved. Everybody’s getting better. The team is growing. People are coming to join up.”

Now he has a slew of guys who are high-level and much younger than him – all of which are keeping him on his toes. As a result, he’s enjoying the process and growing as much as ever.

“I got a roster full of guys who are anywhere from 135lbs to 155lbs that are at the highest levels,” he explained. “Those are the names that you mentioned, the Noah Gasho’s, the Cannon Swanson’s, the Tyree [Overton]s – there’s a lot of guys that are that I’m in the trenches with every single day. It’s awesome to go from like the young up-and-comer to now the old established vet and seeing these guys kind of work up those ranks now as well.”

He looks to use all that hard work with the up and comers to make a statement at UFC Winnipeg. He faces newcomer and Dana White’s Contender Series graduate Mark Vologdin in a matchup he believe favors him heavily.

“I’m going to be in his face. I’m going to push the pace. I’m going to break him,” he said. “I see either a TKO or a sub. I’m trying to get the job done inside the first three rounds.”

You can catch that bout with Vologdin on the prelims of UFC Winnipeg. That fight card begins at 5pm EST this Saturday and airs on Paramount+.

The post UFC Winnipeg’s John Castaneda Talks Next Wave at The Academy MN appeared first on Cageside Press.

“That was a trip. It was it was a really cool memory like a big life moment that I’ll never forget walking out in a huge arena like that. I’ve never been in an arena that big before and I didn’t really expect to to really make a difference in in the experience and everything,” Croden said. “It was funny like before I walked out, I was like my stoic self – really focused, really concentrated. Then as I’m walking people are giving me high-fives and cheering me on and stuff – it’s hard not to smile in moments like that. I just really enjoyed it and immerse myself in the entire present moment of it.”

Following that fight and a subsequent short notice fight inside of the Apex, Croden wasn’t necessarily expecting a return to her home country. As you can imagine, with the reception she got last time, she was pumped to get that call again.

“I was really excited. I wasn’t expecting to get on the the game. The next Canadian card, honestly, because I know there’s lots of other Canadian fighters that are chomping at the bit to perform in the homeland,” she said. “So when my manager called me and was like, okay, we got it. We got you on the Canadian card. Here’s your opponent. Here’s the date. I was quite excited.”

Now she’ll look to feed off the crowd yet again as she faces Darya Zheleznyakova this Saturday. She expects a fight that the crowd is going to love and one that should help her move forward in this division.

“I think it’s going to be a really exciting fight because her and I both like to stand and throw hands. So I think it’s going to be like a crowd favorite fight. I think I think it’ll be yeah one to appease the gods,” Croden said. “I think I’m going to have to go with a good old-fashioned Croden TKO, third round.”

You can catch her bout with Zheleznyakova as part of the UFC Winnipeg prelims this Saturday. The card begins at 5pm EST and airs on Paramount+.

The post UFC Winnipeg’s Melissa Croden Looks to Feed Off Crowd Again appeared first on Cageside Press.

“I’ve been trying to get on contenders for two, three years now – and it didn’t happen. I was actually cut from the Ultimate Fighter, the season that Robert [Valentin] was on it, and he went in final. I was like in the one of the last, I was not in the last alternate, but I was like waiting,” LeBlanc explained. “I had signed the contract waiting to know if I was flying out to Vegas to go and unfortunately, I didn’t get the chance.”

After nearly being on the season with Valentin, it was a wild moment when his manager got a hold of him and told him his debut would be against the TUF 32 finalist.

“It was like a full life circle. It was crazy. My manager just told me like you got a fight and I’m okay with the opponent. I didn’t really know and then he sent me his topology,” he said. “I was like, wow, that’s crazy. Some things are like they look like coincidence, but I believe it’s not a coincidence. I believe like I said, sometimes life is doing weird things. I was laughing in my head.”

While he recognizes the skill that Valentin brings to the game, he’s been waiting too long to squander this moment. He’s ready for all the heat early and ready to go in there to get the ‘W’.

“I respect him a lot… I do believe that he’s going to come out really hard in the first round. So I’m going to be ready for the fire,” LeBlanc said. “The only way I see it and ending is with my hand raised. So that’s the ultimate goal regardless how it is – that’s really the ultimate goal and that’s what’s going to happen.”

You can catch Julien Leblanc’s fight with Robert Valentin as part of the UFC Winnipeg prelims. The fight card begins at 5pm EST this Saturday and airs on Paramount+.

The post Julien Leblanc Talks Full Circle Moment at UFC Winnipeg appeared first on Cageside Press.

Kicking off this UFC Winnipeg edition of TTP is our interview with UFC bantamweight, John Castaneda. Castaneda discusses the up and coming talent at The Academy in Minnesota, and how it’s really come full circle for him. Then he digs into his upcoming fight against Mark Vologdin and gives us a breakdown of the fight.

Fights, Dogs and Parlays: UFC Winnipeg (17:11)

The UFC is on the road again this week with UFC Winnipeg – North of the border. The fight card will be headlined with local Mike Malott as he looks to take a big jump up the middleweight rankings against Gilbert Burns. And in the co-main event, Kyler Phillips and Charles Jourdain look to take a step forward as well. We’ll break down those fights as well as some of our other favorite fights on the main card. Plus, as always, we’re hitting you with an underdog and a plus-money parlay that we think will make your wallet fat this weekend. For this segment, all odds via FanDuel Sportsbook.

Melissa Croden Interview (23:10)

Next up on this UFC Winnipeg edition of TTP is our interview with UFC bantamweight, Melissa Croden. Croden discusses the wild time that was her first two months in the organization. Now settled in and having seen so much already, she’s locked into this training camp. She’s also moved camps to Xtreme Couture and talks about that choice.

Julien LeBlanc Interview (32:21)

Closing out this UFC Winnipeg edition of TTP is our interview with UFC middleweight, Julien LeBlanc. The newest signee to the UFC shares his thoughts on getting signed outright and getting to skip the likes of Dana White’s Contender Series and The Ultimate Fighter. He also shares that he was nearly on the same season of TUF as his upcoming opponent, Robert Valentin.

The post TTP Ep. 527: John Castaneda, Melissa Croden, Julien LeBlanc, and UFC Winnipeg appeared first on Cageside Press.

“I moved to the United States with the help of Meab Dvalishvili. I was living with Merab in his house, and I was training in a Syndicate MMA,” Gogoladze said speaking through a translator. “There were many, many good guys and many, many fighters who have helped me to develop my skills and all the stuff, but mostly I was training with Khalil Rountree Jr., and we were the main training partners for each other, and he helped me to evolve a lot.”

However, it wasn’t just the team at Syndicate MMA that helped him to grow. He travelled around to many places in the city to make sure that he could get the most out of the experience.

“I was training with those guys, and also I was trying different training places in Las Vegas,” he said. “So, physically and mentally, I’m so strong after those days, and I’m more than ready for everything.”

Now in the best shape of his life, Gogoladze looks ahead to his fight with former champion, Ion Surdu. He knows just what’s at stake in this fight and is ready to come take it.

“He’s technically undefeated in the title fights and he lost the belt outside the cage,” Gogoladze said. “So we’re gonna see how how everything goes and also I’m more than ready and more than sure that this is gonna be a number one contender fight. If I win this fight and it goes to the championship fight.”

You can catch his bout against Surdu on the Oktagon 86 main card. The fight card begins at 12:00pm EST and airs on Oktagon.tv this Saturday.

The post Oktagon 86’s Amiran Gogoladze: Leveled Up appeared first on Cageside Press.

“Just a lot of growth. I was looking at it today – I got into the UFC, and I think I was only pro for two years from the time I got into the UFC, which that’s not common at all,” Mederos said. “And I had only been training martial arts four years before that. I thought about it from the perspective of these gaps, although I don’t like them, I’m getting to grow within the game, which not a lot of guys get to do.”

With that time, he not only spent time working in the gym, but also spent time reviewing his entire career. Going back to the very beginning, he dug through his catalog of fights to nitpick the little things.

“It’s been a lot of growth. I repeatedly watched all my fights, even going back to my amateurs before this, and just worked everything that I saw was a hole and just tightened it up these last nine or 10 months,” he said. “honestly, this nine or 10 months, not to say it was needed, but it’s definitely brought my game to another level.”

Now he’ll get a chance to put all of that growth on display as he takes on Taco Padilla. While he likes the name value that comes with the fight, he likes the matchup even better.

“I don’t necessarily look at the name. I just look at the man for what he is and what he brings to the table,” Mederos said. “I’ve seen what he brings to the table and I’m ready to do work.”

You can catch Mederos doing work as part of the UFC 327 prelim card. The card begins at 5:30pm EST this Saturday and airs on Paramount+.

The post MarQuel Mederos: Focused on Growth Ahead of UFC 327 appeared first on Cageside Press.

Not that he doesn’t have the talent – he very clearly does – but after a run with Bellator, part of which played out during COVID, it seemed like Nallo’s window might be closing. Then, the fighter known as “Rat Garbage” (at least to some, more on that later) arrived on Dana White’s Contender Series last year. A finish, and a UFC contract, followed.

Speaking with Cageside Press in a recent interview, Canada’s Nallo (14-3, 1NC) admitted that while his journey to this point has “been long,” it has also “been a pleasure.”

“I love training under Firas [Zahabi, TriStar head coach], I love getting better every day,” Nallo explained. “I was never dejected, I was never disheartened at any point. I was always, maybe I’m delusional, but I was like ‘something good is going to happen.'”

“I do too much work, I just don’t believe that this amount of hard work in the right way will go unrewarded in some way. So I was always happy to do it. But yeah, it’s been a long one.”

Nallo even being on the Contender Series raised eyebrows, given Dana White has stated he’s not looking for older “contenders.” Earning a contract at age 36, the oldest fighter to do so, was all the more impressive as a result. Going in, Nallo knew he needed more than just a regular performance.

“The only fight I’ve gone into with the mindset that I need something special to happen was the Contender fight. And it wasn’t just so much of my age, it’s just like, that show is not a regular MMA show. You’re not going in there to get show/win, you’re going in there to get a UFC contract,” he stated. “And securing a boring win can be significantly worse for your career than having an entertaining loss. Not to say anybody should go on there and damage themselves in any way, but I’ve seen guys ruin any chance I think they have of signing to the UFC by grinding out a really secure 10-9 every round.”

The way Nallo fights, he added, “I always trusted something cool would happen.”

It did, and Mandel Nallo became the oldest fighter signed to the UFC off the Contender Series. Now, he’s getting a hot start out of the gate against Jai Herbert, who will be entering his 10th UFC fight at UFC Winnipeg.

It’s exactly the sort of match-up he was looking for.

“I think that’s exactly what you want. If you are entering the UFC with the skillset required to climb quickly, you don’t want to fight another random dude with an 0-0 record or 1-0 record, because it’s just so hard, no matter how well you do, for people to understand what that means.”

When you’re fighting an unknown fighter and score a quick knockout, Nallo added, fans can question how good the level of competition truly is. “Whereas fighting a guy with 10 fights, it’s undeniable.”

“I have pretty high aspirations for myself, so there’s no sense in slow playing this. I’m good to go. So we were ecstatic about the match-up,” he added.

You may have noticed a change to Mandel Nallo’s profile among MMA’s record keepers. Long known as “Rat Garbage” (he still uses the handle on Instagram, and his artwork carries a similar theme), recently, he’s become Mandel “Mango” Nallo.

The change was a bit of a surprise, including to Nallo himself.

“It happened without me knowing. Somebody messaged me the other day and said ‘hey you’re Mango now.’ I’m like ‘oh, I guess I am.’ I might be, I don’t know. I have no idea,” revealed Nallo. “It’s what my friends call me in the gym, but I’ve never been upset about ‘Rat Garbage’ as a nickname. You don’t get to choose, and people seem to enjoy it, but I know some people really dislike it for me. Like I have friends that are like ‘you cannot, you can’t be associated with garbage or rats or both.’ So maybe one of them.”

Nallo isn’t sweating it either way. “I have no say, so whoever changed it, do what you want, change it back, I don’t care. Call me what you want.”

Whatever you want to call him, Mandel Nallo makes his UFC debut against Jai Herbert at UFC Winnipeg on April 18, 2026.

The post Mandel Nallo “Never Disheartened” During Long Journey to UFC appeared first on Cageside Press.

The fight has been booked before, and as former champ Surdu told Cageside Press recently, “a few times we had a chance, but unfortunately, the fight didn’t work so now is the third one. Hopefully we’ll be all good until the fight.”

Asked if he had any trepidation about the fight falling through once again, Surdu (17-7) admitted that “our business is a hard business. Until the last day, you can be good but on the last day you can do something or you can have some problem unfortunately. I hope that it will be all good with my opponent, with me, and finally we will meet each other in the cage. But at the same time if something happens, I’m ready for all [comers].”

Surdu never lost his welterweight title in a fight, instead, he lost the belt on the scales, missing weight back in November. What happened after that loss sheds some light on why the mishap occurred in the first place.

“After that I went for a blood test, I did tests on my body and unfortunately there was bacteria in my body. Because of this bacteria, my kidneys were blocked and I couldn’t do my weight, so for that [reason] I missed the weight.”

Clearing the bacteria from his body and making a few changes in camp has Surdu back on target for the welterweight division. And despite having gone up to middleweight before, he never considered another move up.

The day or so between losing his title and actually fighting (and defeating) Andrej Kalašnik last November, meanwhile, was a tumultuous one.

“It was a crazy, crazy 24 hours. I [missed] the weight, there was a chance to not fight, because 3 and a half kilos, it was a lot, and much respect to Kalašnik that he accepted the fight,” stated Surdu. “Of course I gave him 50% of my purse but yeah, he accepted the fight. I did a few things from doctors and I got back. Mindset, I can say I have one of the best mindsets in the game because I know what I can do. When people say that I can’t do something, for me it’s the best motivation.”

“At the same time when I step into the arena, when I walk into the cage, all the people were hating me. It was a crazy, crazy atmosphere. First time in my life, 60% of the highlights were on me but for me, it was the best. Because under pressure, I’m good.”

In fact, under pressure is exactly where Ion Surdu wants to be. “When it’s the biggest pressure of my life, I’m good. So I love to be under pressure, and you can see that in my last fight, in my performance.”

Watch our full interview with Oktagon 86’s Ion Surdu above. The event takes place on Saturday, April 11, 2026 in Szczecin, Poland.

The post Oktagon 86’s Ion Surdu: “I Love to Be Under Pressure” appeared first on Cageside Press.

Kicking off this UFC 327 edition of TTP is our interview with UFC lightweight, MarQuel Mederos. Mederos talks about his 10 months out of the cage and describes how it was some of the most important times of his career. Then he digs into his upcoming fight with Chris Padilla and discusses what it’s like to have constantly changing opponents.

Fights, Dogs and Parlays: UFC 327 (15:00)

The UFC heads to Miami for UFC 327 with a stacked card top to bottom. At the tippy top of the card, we have a bout for the vacant light heavyweight title. Jiri Prochazka looks to reclaim the belt that was once his when he faces Carlos Ulberg. Plus, Azamat Murzakanov looks to take a step forward in that same division as he faces Paulo Costa. We’ll break down those fights as well as some of our other favorite fights on the main card. Plus, as always, we’re hitting you with an underdog and a plus-money parlay that we think will make your wallet fat this weekend. For this segment, all odds via FanDuel Sportsbook.

Amiran Gogoladze Interview (23:03)

Next up on this UFC 327 edition of TTP is our interview with Oktagon welterweight, Amiran Gogoladze. Gogoladze talks about missing out on a big fight against the now champion, Kaik Brito. Plus, he shares his thoughts about Ion Suru losing his belt on the scale and his chance to jump him in line this weekend.

Sean King Interview (37:12)

Closing out this UFC 327 edition of TTP is our interview with Fury featherweight, Sean King. One of the hottest prospects in the game right now, King discusses his current path to the UFC. Having picked up a big win earlier this year, he’s looking to rack them up before Contender Series season at the end of the summer.

The post TTP Ep. 526: MarQuel Mederos, Amiran Gogoladze, Sean King, and UFC 327 appeared first on Cageside Press.

Albeit undefeated and a former LFA champ, McKee is unranked, little known, and not the pairing Pettis (25-7) was expecting after going 2-0 in 2025.

“Interesting, I thought it was interesting for sure,” Pettis told Cageside Press in an interview ahead of the promotion’s return to the Wintrust Arena in Chicago. “The whole tournament mix-up thing kind of threw off everything. I was ready to fight the championship winner, [Marcirley] Alves. Things got a little held-up on his end, he was hurt at the time.”

When the PFL offered Mitch McKee in Chicago, Pettis jumped at it. “I’m okay with it, man. I’m here to fight every single one of them, I’ve never said ‘no’ to a fight throughout my whole career, so I’m not going to start now. Even when it’s a risky fight for me to take. He definitely could come and beat me, number one, and him being not ranked would definitely look bad on me.”

With McKee’s low profile but high-level wrestling and overall talent, Pettis admitted that “it’s a risky fight for sure, risky to my position,” but added that “I think it’s also a risky fight for him, for his health. I’m going to go out there and be a veteran, go out there and try to hurt the man.”

Asked whether there was one particular thing, one area within McKee’s game that he’d taken notice of and needed to watch out for, Pettis suggested that “I think everybody who fights me does that one particular thing, and it’s going to be wrestling me. Putting me on the cage, trying to get me in referee position, front headlock position, trying to stall me out.”

Pettis also admitted that Mckee has some power in his hands. “He’s not afraid to throw. That’s the thing about fighting these up-and-coming fighters, they haven’t been hit with anything yet, so they’re very confident, it’s unknown to them. Having that confidence is definitely important in a fight for sure.”

It’s hard not to look at Sergio Pettis’s return at PFL Chicago and not think of what’s missing. Primarily, legendary coach (and former kickboxer) Duke Roufus, founder of Roufusport, the gym Pettis has long called home. Roufus was a constant presence in Pettis’s corner and in his life; he passed away suddenly just weeks after the Milwaukee native’s early October win against Magmed Magomedov.

While some might find it hard to get back into the fighting spirit after such tragedy, “I almost feel like it was easier to get back into fight camp mentality, because I have something to prove in this fight,” Pettis explained. “Not having Duke in my corner, it definitely hurts but at the same time, everything he taught me, I’m going to implement into my game plan and show the world that Duke Roufus’s style is going to be everlasting.”

Pettis still has a solid crew in his corner including brother Anthony, a former WEC and UFC lightweight champ. And Roufus will no doubt be there in spirit. “I obviously miss Duke, it’s crazy not to have him, it’s hard to accept this reality without him. But to be honest I think I’m going to go out there and still get the job done, do what I need to do and be a professional fighter.”

Watch our full interview with PFL Chicago headliner Sergio Pettis above. The event takes place on Saturday, April 11, 2026 at the Wintrust Arena in Chicago, IL.

The post PFL Chicago’s Sergio Pettis Looking to Prove That “Duke Roufus’s Style is Going to be Everlasting” appeared first on Cageside Press.