UFC Fight Night 262 Live Winners and Losers, Results
If at first you don't get a ranked matchup, try, try again.
Fourth-ranked middleweight Reinier de Ridder was set to meet sixth-ranked Anthony Hernandez atop the UFC's 13-bout Saturday card at Rogers Arena in Vancouver, British Columbia, but Hernandez was felled by an injury and replaced by No. 9 contender Brendan Allen.
De Ridder arrived having won all four of his octagonal bouts after graduating from a two-division title reign in the ONE Championship promotion. He'd have met a fighter with eight straight UFC victories in Hernandez, but traded him instead for Allen, who lost a three-round decision to Hernandez in February but bounced back with a three-rounder over former title challenger Marvin Vettori in July.
Six other ranked fighters were involved in the other 12 bouts, which included three bouts matching homestanding Canadians against fighters from the United States.
B/R's combat team was in place to take in the action and delivered a definitive, real-time list of the show's winners and losers. Take a look at what we came up with and drop a thought of your own in the app comments.
Winner: Turning the Tables
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Allen insisted all fight week that while he knew de Ridder's game plan was to get him to the ground and chase submissions, he had zero concern if it played out that way.
Turns out he was right.
The Louisiana resident strolled in wearing the colors of his Canadian grandparents, survived de Ridder's onslaught in the first round and reversed the Dutchman into compromising positions and ultimately battered him into a fourth-round TKO surrender.
Allen was taken down in each of the first three rounds, but reversed position in the second and third and spent the balance of those rounds strafing de Ridder with elbows and punches. The betting favorite was clearly exhausted and barely made it to his stool after those rounds, then, after being taken down and battered through the fourth, he was given up by his corner team before the start of the fifth.
De Ridder lost for the first time since his time in the ONE Championship promotion in March 2024.
It was Allen's 14th win in 18 UFC bouts and spurred a number of high-profile callouts in the aftermath, including champion Khamzat Chmaev and former champs Dricus Du Plessis and Sean Strickland.
"I'm a different monster," Allen said. "This was three-and-a-half weeks off the couch. When my heads clear and we're on, I'm the best in the world."
Winner: Methodical Man
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Mike Malott had proven he could win with mayhem, but the most important victory of his career to this point could far better be described as methodical.
The Ontario native headed a few provinces to the west and took out the first ranked contender of his UFC run at welterweight, earning a narrow but unanimous decision over No. 15 Kevin Holland in Saturday's co-main event.
The win came via three scores of 29-28 in a fight where Holland nearly bowed out after being struck low with both a kick and a knee in the first round. He took a full five-minute break during the round and had a prolonged consultation with a cage-side physician between rounds before finally agreeing to continue into the second.
"The game plan was to knee him in the nuts a bunch and it was working perfectly," a giggling Malott said. "The guy's hips are up by my nipples. It's hard to get a knee that high."
Malott plodded forward and countered well to Holland's head and body in rounds one and three and was never subject to extended flurries from the perpetually busy Holland, who's lost two straight since a victory over Vicente Luque at UFC 318 in June.
"You guys have no idea how much you mean to me," Malott said. "This has been my dream since I was 12 years old."
Winner: Getting the Nod
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Something had to give.
Upon completing 15 minutes of tactical standup combat, bantamweights Marlon Vera and Aiemann Zahabi pumped their fists in celebration, and both were lifted to the shoulders of joyous corner team members expecting to hear a decision in their favor.
And even if you hadn't heard announcer Joe Martinez reading the scores, it was obvious which way they'd gone when Vera angrily left the cage without a post-fight glove tap.
Zahabi got 29-28 verdicts from two of three judges, overruling the 29-28 score in Vera's favor to give the Quebec native a split decision and his seventh straight win.
B/R's scorecard matched the majority, giving Zahabi the first and third rounds and erasing a second round in which he'd been dropped by a hard left hand. The knockdown was Vera's 11th as a bantamweight, equaling the UFC's record in the weight class.
Vera hasn't won since August 2023, dropping a title shot against then-champ Sean O'Malley at UFC 299 and a subsequent decision to former flyweight king Deiveson Figueiredo on a Fight Night show 14 months ago.
"I thought I won the first and the last round," Zahabi said. "To win at this level, it takes your whole heart. It takes everything you have. It doesn't matter who. I'm gonna fight my heart out."
Winner: (Re)Stating Her Case
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So, does anyone think Manon Fiorot wants another title shot?
The 35-year-old French contender was five months off a narrow loss to flyweight champ Valentina Shevchenko upon arriving in Vancouver for a date with fifth-ranked Jasmine Jasudavicius, and her performance in B.C. certainly sent a definitive message.
Fiorot walked her Canadian foe directly into the straight left hand that left her legs compromised, and, after being sent to the mat with a subsequent knee, the local hero was battered with a series of ground strikes that ended the fight after just 74 seconds.
Now the No. 2 contender to Shevchenko's crown, Fiorot stepped back to the front of the line for the winner of the champion's scheduled defense next month against rising strawweight titleholder Zhang Weili.
She'd won seven in a row before the loss to Shevchenko and scored her first finish since a second-round TKO of Tabatha Ricci in 2021.
"I wanted to come back in here. I was a little depressed. It was a rough time for me, but we were able to come in and get a big win," Fiorot said. "We worked a lot on our boxing. We were confident we were going to come in here and, well, there you go."
Winner: Aerial Assault
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"Air Jordan" was dangerous for NBA rims. "Air Jourdain" is lethal to UFC foes.
Popular Canadian bantamweight Charles Jourdain put his nickname to lethal use in a main card encounter with Davey Grant, blasting the Englishman with a jumping knee that soon led to the guillotine choke that ended things at 3:05 of the opening round.
"(Grant) throws looping shots. Everything's open," Jourdain said. "If you're fighting someone that's circular you use linear weapons. I truly believe I have the best guillotine in the UFC. And if I can put my knee in your face right before, it's even easier."
It was Jourdain's eighth win in the UFC and his second straight since shedding 10 pounds and dropping from featherweight to bantamweight.
Grant wore the gruesome damage in the aftermath, instantly leaking blood from the nose after the knee landed, then having that blood spurt as Jourdain cinched in the choke.
"How can you not love everything about Charles Jourdain," analyst Daniel Cormier said. "Look at Davey Grant's face. His face is destroyed."
Loser: Getting it Right
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The fans in Vancouver came for the fights, and a hockey game broke out.
Or at least one of the familiar chants typically heard in hockey arenas, only this time the "Ref, you suck" refrain was directed at octagonal official Dan Miragliotta.
The veteran referee was on the wrong side of controversy near the end of the first round, when he stepped in and appeared to be stopping the lightweight scrap amid a Kyle Nelson flurry that had left opponent Matt Frevola in bad shape on the mat.
Replays showed there were three seconds remaining when Miragliotta intervened, though UFC official Marc Ratner said Miragliotta told him that he'd heard the round-ending horn.
"He said he heard the horn. There was no horn," Ratner said. "He stopped the fight prematurely. It was a mistake by the referee."
The fight continued, and, fortunately for Miragliotta, Nelson continued to control things across the subsequent 10 minutes, ultimately winning a unanimous nod on the scorecards with counts of 30-27, 29-28 and 29-28.
"Somebody was yelling, 'It's not over, it's not over,'" Nelson said. "But I was thinking, 'I just blew my gas at the end of that first round.'"
Winner: Turning Heel
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Drew Dober lost the point. But he took the initiative.
The popular American drew the ire of a partisan Canadian crown when he felled fan favorite Kyle Prepolec with a low kick that prompted referee John Cooper to dock him on the scorecard. But the five-minute break clearly reenergized him, too, and he used the timeout to restoke the aggression that soon led to a fight-ending flurry.
Dober blitzed the still-stricken Prepolec with a quick barrage of punches and kicks, leaving him defenseless along the fence and prompting Cooper's wave-off at 1:16 of Round 3.
"Drew Dober emptied the clip after he lost that point," blow-by-blow man Brendan Fitzgerald said.
The win ended Dober's three-fight skid since a defeat of Ricky Glenn two years ago, while Prepolec dropped a fourth straight UFC bout, all of which have come in Canada.
"I love that Drew Dober knew what he was supposed to do, then went out there and did it," Cormier said. "As I'm watching it, I'm like 'Man that kind of sucks. He lost a point, but he wasn't the guy that was damaged.' If you're Kyle Prepolec, you're pissed. This guy got five minutes to rest up and kick my butt."
Winner: Protecting the Brand
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It was a nickname mismatch. And the fight was no different.
Though Cody Gibson's "Renegade" tag conjures images of a rugged competitor, the California-based bantamweight was simply a speed bump for a guy billed as the "Mongolian Murderer."
China's Aoriqileng scored the ninth KO of his career in sudden, violent fashion, countering a Gibson kick with a perfectly delivered right hand that both flattened him and left him defenseless to the half-dozen hammer fists that ended matters after just 21 seconds.
It was the winner's first UFC appearance since a loss to Raul Rosas Jr. 13 months ago and his first victory in more than two years since a decision over Johnny Munoz on a Fight Night show in October 2023.
Seven of his KOs have come inside of five minutes.
"That's what he does," Cormier said. "He finishes fights in the first round."
Winner: Stubborn Old Guys
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The message from Bruno Silva was simple:
"Not so fast, youngster."
The 35-year-old Brazilian arrived for his prelim bout against surging HyunSung Park with the No. 14 ranking in the division despite having been finished in consecutive bouts by two other climbing foes—Manel Kape and Joshua Van.
But though he was framed as the gatekeeper against the 29-year-old South Korean betting favorite, Silva was sharper and more aggressive in the first two rounds, then withstood a brief Park early in the third before getting him to the floor and seizing the neck for his fifth career submission.
The official time was 2:15 and it gave Silva both his fifth win in nine UFC bouts and his first since a second-round TKO of Cody Durden 15 months ago.
Park, who'd won three of four with the company including a Road to UFC title fight in 2023, lost for the second straight time after winning his first 10 bouts as a pro.
Loser: Brazil-on-Brazil Violence
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There's apparently something to be said for international rivalries.
Because the only fight on the show matching two fighters from the same country—an early prelim between Brazilian strawweights Stephanie Luciano and Ravena Oliveira—was a tactical, tedious dud almost from start to finish.
Luciano had split two UFC fights upon arriving in Vancouver and seemed determined to take the fight to her opponent, but Oliveira was neither busy nor effective in her replies and the match soon devolved into long stretches of inactivity punctuated by an occasional takedown.
Luciano took advantage of her foe's inactivity and was effective taking things to the floor, ultimately converting three of four takedown tries and turning the final one into back control and the rear-naked choke that gave her a first career submission win at 2:50.
The winner out-landed her opponent by an 80-36 margin, scored the aforementioned takedowns and had 2:53 in control time against Oliveira, who's now 0-2 in the UFC.
There were 10 countries represented on the card and only Canada (8) had more competitors than Brazil's five.
Winner: Beginners' Pluck
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It was everything you'd want from a first time. Twice.
Canadian bantamweight Melissa Croden and Dutch middleweight Yousri Belgaroui came away winners in their official UFC debuts on the early prelim card, each working into the third round before scoring decisive TKOs.
Croden, who fights out of neighboring Alberta, looked nervous and fought tentatively through her first five octagonal minutes against Tainara Lisboa but soon began using her superior height and length to punish her Brazilian foe from distance.
The end came in the third when Lisboa sagged to the mat along the fence and was defenseless to a series of hard hammer fists that drew a rescue from referee Cooper at 4:32.
"This whole week, I've just been kinda riding the wave," Croden said. "It's really like an out of body experience."
Belgaroui was a betting underdog to Azamat Bekoev going in but also found success once he utilized his superior length and striking skills to leave the aggressive Russian bloodied and exhausted.
The end seemed near in the second and came early in the third when referee Sal Ram stepped in as Bekoev was being peppered along the fence after 55 seconds.
"This is what you want to see from a guy built like this, in this division," analyst Paul Felder said.
Full Card Results
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Main Card
Brendan Allen def. Reinier de Ridder by TKO (corner decision), 5:00, Round 4
Mike Malott def. Kevin Holland by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)
Aiemann Zahabi def, Marlon Vera by split decision (29-28, 28-29, 29-28)
Manon Fiorot def. Jasmine Jasudavicius by TKO (punches), 1:14, Round 1
Charles Jourdain def. Davey Grant by submission (guillotine choke), 3:05, Round 1
Kyle Nelson def. Matt Frevola by unanimous decision (30-27, 29-28, 29-28)
Preliminary Card
Drew Dober def. Kyle Prepolec by TKO (punches), 1:16, Round 3
Aoriqileng def. Cody Gibson by KO (punch), 0:21, Round 1
Bruno Silva def. HyunSung Park by submission (rear-naked choke), 2:15, Round 3
Djorden Santos def. Danny Barlow by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)
Stephanie Luciano def. Ravena Oliveira by submission (rear-naked choke), 2:50, Round 3
Yousri Belgaroui def. Azamat Bekoev by TKO (punches), 0:55, Round 3
Melissa Croden def. Tainara Lisboa by TKO (punches), 4:32, Round 3
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