Stand and Deliver: UFC Kansas City

Every fight matters, but some matter just a little more.

A win is a win, and a loss is a loss, but some feel bigger than others for various reasons. In some cases, the elevated stakes are easy to define—the fighter on a losing streak who knows he or she is likely fighting for their job, or conversely, any title fight in a top regional organization, where the combatants know the big leagues are scouting them. At other times, a fight feels especially important for reasons that are harder to quantify but no less real. Whether it’s the unspoken weight of being a pioneer in MMA from one’s native country or the simple added spice of two fighters who genuinely hate each other’s guts, that fight just means more.

This week, UFC Kansas City brings a 14-fight card that draws heavily on the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s deepest divisions: welterweight, lightweight, featherweight and men’s bantamweight. Laboring in those weight classes automatically spells an uphill battle to stand out from the crowd, but this week’s column features two middleweights who are under a little extra pressure to stand and deliver on Saturday in KC.

Moving On, Part I: Michel Pereira

Obviously, not all losses in MMA are created equal. Look no further than Saturday’s headliner, Ian Garry, who is coming off the first defeat of his professional career. Garry’s hard-fought loss to Shavkat Rakhmonov in December was the rare case of a clash between Top 10 fighters in which neither man’s stock appeared to suffer. Garry showed that he belonged in the cage with a man in Rakhmonov who looks to be a likely future champion, the fight was close enough that a rematch at some point down the line would not be a hard sell, and Garry was rewarded with his first UFC main event.

Now consider the case of Pereira. It isn’t that he came out on the losing end of his own first UFC headliner against Anthony Hernandez last October, his eight-fight win streak going up in smoke under the rafters of the UFC Apex. After all, the fight was a near pick ‘em on the betting books, and Hernandez has gone on to win again since then, further cementing himself as a top middleweight contender. The issue was in how the fight played out. Ahead of UFC Vegas 99, the conventional wisdom held that regardless of who won, the fight would be defined by the earlier rounds favoring the explosive Pereira, while the durable and relentless Hernandez would likely take over as the bout wore on. Instead, “Fluffy” took control of the fight midway through the first round and never took his foot off the gas, thrashing Pereira to the tune of multiple 10-8 rounds en route to a fifth-round stoppage that felt like an act of mercy. It was named Sherdog’s 2024 “Beatdown of the Year” in a landslide.

In the wake of such an ugly, demoralizing and memorable setback, all the momentum of Pereira’s win streak is gone. In its place is a sort of morbid curiosity: Is “Demolidor” a legitimate middleweight contender who simply had a bad night at the office against an even hotter fighter, or were those eight straight wins a confluence of smoke, mirrors and serendipity? I believe the truth is closer to the former; Pereira’s transformation from hilariously unhinged welterweight wild man to well-rounded middleweight mauler is well documented and came against solid opposition. However, the onus will be on the 31-year-old Brazilian to prove it on Saturday against Abusupiyan Magomedov. The former Professional Fighters League standout has found his footing in the UFC after a rough start, and should serve as a fitting test of Pereira’s mental and physical state. If Pereira is as advertised, he is better than Magomedov everywhere and should notch another scintillating highlight for his reel, or at the very least an easy, workmanlike “W.” If he loses—or even if he struggles mightily in victory—that is when the Pereira hype train will truly jump the tracks.

Moving On, Part II: Ikram Aliskerov

Similarly to Pereira, if not quite as extreme, Aliskerov dug himself a deep hole in his last Octagon appearance. The Dagestani was the beneficiary of Khamzat Chimaev’s mercurial nature, as he stepped up on to replace the ailing “Borz” in the main event of UFC on ABC 6 last June. Riding the momentum of a seven-fight win streak, six of them inside the distance, including his Dana White's Contender Series appearance and first two UFC bouts, Aliskerov was near even money with former champ Robert Whittaker. It was the kind of short-notice, grab-the-brass-ring opportunity that helped write the legends of fighters like Jon Jones—assuming Aliskerov won, or at least acquitted himself heroically in defeat.

Instead, Aliskerov was made to look like a rank amateur, as “Bobby Knuckles” dusted him inside of two minutes without absorbing a single strike of consequence. There is context to consider; Aliskerov took the fight on short notice, without any time to prepare for one of the greatest fighters in middleweight history, and while Whittaker embarrassed Aliskerov on the feet, he has done that to just about every opponent outside of Israel Adesanya and Dricus Du Plessis. Nonetheless, the visual takeaway was that Aliskerov was not ready for title contention, not by a long shot.

Aliskerov’s road back to serious contender status begins this Saturday and goes through Andre Muniz, another formerly red-hot middleweight struggling to regain his footing after a series of bad losses. While Muniz has relinquished almost all the shine he garnered in winning his first six UFC bouts, including his unforgettable bone-snapping finish of Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza, he remains a physically imposing 185-pounder with a frightening submission game—at least while his cardio holds up. Aliskerov enters his main card assignment against “Sergipano” with all of the pressure implied by his humiliating loss to Whittaker, compounded by his status as a -500 favorite. Fair or not, a moneyline that wide saddles the favored fighter with certain expectations; squeaking out a split decision over Muniz will not be enough to restore faith that Aliskerov has anything to offer the middleweight Top 5.