Now that the UFC is back in Vegas, Dana White’s Contender Series gets to resume to end the run for the year. This should add some more action for the week if you\u2019re in the market for more fights during your week and care to see the new crop of exciting prospects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And what a crop this is. Main event honors for this week go to Carlos Ulberg (2-0), a City Kickboxing rep and teammate of UFC champions Israel Adesanya and Alex Volkanovski. While his mixed martial arts record is shallow, he\u2019s quite the exciting kickboxer that\u2019s been doing damage and looks to stay on the MMA side of things. But first he’s got to square off with Brazil\u2019s Bruno Oliveira (8-1), who only last year had his first and only fight stateside for Titan FC. That fight was a tough one to watch because maybe the ref had better things to think about during the fight. Also a teammate of former RIZIN talent and Jungle Fight champ Bruno Cappelozza, Oliveira has a fair amount of polish on his striking but may be overpowered here. His game on the ground may be enough to get him by, but Ulberg seems to be the more technical and disciplined of the two, and clearly the one with the better support system and coaching staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The co-main event is another one of the strange fights we\u2019ve been treated to in the Contender Series, with Chilean Ignacio Bahamondes (10-3). Training out of Illinois along with Alejandro Flores and Yair Rodriguez, he\u2019s got patience, some slick hands and not-quite-great takedown defense but can work his way back up off the floor. He\u2019s still green, but has a fair amount of hope as a prospect. And his opponent is Edson Gomez, a fighter that has a MMA record of 6-1 despite being a pro since 2015. His first few fights were in Gladiator Challenge, then he moved up to King of the Cage. One of his Gladiator Challenge opponents was 0-8 at the time, and his bounceback fight after his lone loss in King of the Cage was against another fighter who at the time was 2-5. He\u2019s a strong striker that muscles his way through takedowns, but this is an odd matchup from top to bottom. Perhaps Gomez has an impressive enough set of finishes for the brass to overlook everything else here, but there\u2019s almost always a fight on these cards that has a handful of red flags, and this is it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Now that the UFC is back in Vegas, Dana White’s Contender Series gets to resume to end the run for the year. This should add some more action for the week if you\u2019re in the market for more fights during your week and care to see the new crop of exciting prospects. And what a … Continue reading Dana White\u2019s Contender Series: Week 8 Preview<\/span>