UFC Apex: Garcia vs Onama - Nov 1 ??

[wandshogun09]

Back at the bastard Apex…

ESPN MAIN CARD
Steve Garcia vs David Onama

Waldo Cortes Acosta vs Ante Delija 

Jeremiah Wells vs Themba Gorimbo

Isaac Dulgarian vs Yadier Del Valle 

Charles Radtke vs Daniel Frunza 

Allan Nascimento vs Cody Durden

ESPN+/FIGHT PASS PRELIMS 
Billy Elekana vs Kevin Christian

Timmy Cuamba vs Chang Ho Lee

Sedriques Dumas vs Donte Johnson  

Ketlen Vieira vs Norma Dumont

Alice Ardelean vs Montserrat Conejo

Phil Rowe vs Seok Hyeon Ko

Talita Alencar vs Ariane Carnelossi
 

Deary me. I almost forgot how bad these cards could be. We’ve had a lovely little break from the UFC warehouse lately. I just checked and we’ve had eight non-Apex cards in a row since August. All good things come to an end.

Seen this card getting absolutely shat all over. And let’s be honest here, it’s justified. Piss weak this. A lot of the negativity has been aimed at the choice of main event but, while it does look out of place headlining a card, I actually really like the fight itself. Neither Garcia or Onama are boring to watch, both are aggressive, both have fan friendly styles and they’ve both long been undercard MVPs for me. It does feel weird as a main event but we’ve had much worse fights at the Apex. My main issue with this one is…everything else. Garcia vs Onama is the best thing about this card by fucking miles. Problem is, although it’s a fight that will probably be fun to watch, it doesn’t have the type of name value to prop up the dregs of the roster which make up the rest of the card.

Seriously, looking at everything below the main event…Ante Delija had a really strong UFC debut, knocking out Tybura in Paris. I’d be looking forward to him fighting again if they weren’t pairing him with Waldo the salsa dancing dullard. That Syeok Hyeon Ko lad looked good in his debut win over Oban Elliott from my vague memory of it. As always, hopefully Domestic Abuse Dumas gets brutally chinned by whoever Donte Johnson is. That’s it. I’ll happily watch the main event in full but I genuinely think I’ll skim through the rest in about 30 minutes tops. 


Oh well. It’s a Dumont big bum card.

Edited October 30, 2025 by wandshogun09

[Bruce85]

Delija train with Apinall or Gane?! Costa not only carrying on the fight but then getting the KO really isn’t going to help silence the people criticising Tom. 
 

We are going to see Salsa boy get a title shot soon aren’t we…. 
 

Maybe it’s because I haven’t had chance to sit down and watch a UFC card for a month but I enjoyed this show. I didn’t bother with the prelims though. 

[Dai]

Was a decent show and an OK way to kill a few hours. Yet another very strange ref decision in the Delija fight. Seems like theres been a run of very strange ref decisions/blunders within the last few events, starting with that Magny one, and there was also another one that I cant remember, but it was dodgy too. Knowing what we know now, that Dulgarian fight does look dodgy. Fail with the takedown, allow your back to be given up, and then dont fight the hands when the other guy is attempting the choke.

[wandshogun09]

Well for an Apex card, this was pretty eventful. 

Garcia vs Onama was always gonna be exciting for however long it lasted. Garcia wasn’t fucking about. I expected a back and forth war here but Garcia just walked him down and smashed him up. Obama’s no world beater but it was still quite impressive just how Garcia went about his business here.

Wasn’t pretty and he’s not a technical marvel but he’s a scrapper and it’s been working pretty well for him recently. He’s now on a seven fight winning streak and has moved up to #8 in the Featherweight rankings with this win. Unfortunately, I felt like his post-fight interview was a complete waste of time. So many fighters don’t take advantage of the opportunity they have when they’re asked who they want next. It doesn’t even have to be talking shit or creating fake beef. Just have a name ready who you think would be a fun fight, or a good stylistic fight for you, or a fight that will move you up the ladder. But most importantly, make it a realistic fight. And let’s face it, Garcia calling out Max Holloway for a BMF title fight is absolutely not happening, is it? All due respect to Garcia but Max is way beyond that at this point. He’s probably having the ultimate babyface barnburner with Charles Oliveira next. And if he wins that he’ll be back in the conversation for a crack at the proper belt. Garcia could’ve called out someone like Pitbull. He’d still have been the biggest name Garcia would’ve fought yet and Pitbull’s at that stage in his career where it’d probably be a very winnable fight for Garcia. He could’ve called out Jean Silva. That’s a no brainer just for how violent it would be. That’s the kind of fight Garcia could’ve gained something from win or lose. But no. He calls out Max Holloway. Even if that’s his dream fight and the one he wants most, he has to know it’s not realistic. A wasted opportunity.

Just when you thought the “Aspinall is a quitter” shite was slowly starting to calm down, the Waldo Cortes Acosta vs Ante Delija mess happens. Really a crazy turn of events that Delija, who trains with Aspinall and had just commented days before on the Aspinall-Gane fiasco and said he’d never poked an opponent in the eye in 30+ fights…then pokes Waldo in the eye here, leading directly into the finish.

Ref missed the eye poke, stopped the fight as a TKO win for Delija. The fight was over at that point. Then they go to the replay, restart the fight and…

Waldo knocks Delija out seconds later! What the fuck? Yet another total shitshow balls up from the referee. Delija committed the foul and should’ve been punished. But to stop the fight, then restart it like that was weird as fuck. Absolute mess. Will it ever end?

Worst thing about the whole thing is it’s given twats another excuse to have a dig at Aspinall. There was always gonna be a comparison with this fight being just a week after Aspinall vs Gane and it did feature Aspinall’s teammate. Fair enough, I get the link. But fuck me, the stupid shite I’ve seen about this. Apparently all eye pokes are exactly the same now and just because Waldo was able to continue, that means Aspinall was fine as well. Actually saw knobs posting shite like this…

Insufferable. We live in a world where people are pretending to be huge fans of Ciryl Gane and are now pretending to be fans of Waldo Cortes Acosta just to shit on Aspinall because of the Jones thing. And it is because of the Jones thing. There’s no other reason why there’s so much hate towards Aspinall than it coming from Jones fans. Any fighter gets stick for so called ‘quitting’ but the level of joy I saw in people shitting on him the last week or so is nuts.

Delija fucked up big time with the eye poke. His carelessness created this mayhem so that’s on him. He looked to be well on his way to finishing Waldo before that foul so he sabotaged himself there. But it didn’t need to be the monumental issue it became. The ref’s handling of the situation was piss poor. He either completely missed the eye poke or just didn’t wanna get involved, then instead of taking a point or ruling it a No Contest, he couldn’t own his mistake so made it even worse by restarting a fight that was already over. Shambles.

Don’t even know where to start with the Del Valle vs Dulgarian scandal. Barmy stuff.

10 hours ago, Dai said:

that Dulgarian fight does look dodgy. Fail with the takedown, allow your back to be given up, and then dont fight the hands when the other guy is attempting the choke.

Even weirder when you consider that it was so unusual for Dulgarian to look that amateurish on the ground. This is a guy who looked like a legitimate prospect when he came in and only had that one loss against Christian Rodriguez, which was a split decision loss and a highly debated decision at the time. A lot of people felt like Dulgarian should’ve got the decision that night. He looked the real deal and like he could really have a bright future. So to see him seemingly looking so clueless here, not even fighting the hands and stuff, trying to punch his way out of a RNC etc, was fishy in itself. Michael Chiesa seemed to immediately know something was up and rightly shat on the performance when they went to the analyst desk. The funniest bit was this tweet from ESPN after the fight ended…

Dulgarian certainly got the “job” done. He did the favours. He put Del Valle over. ESPN deleted the tweet, I think it was actually a mistype as mad as it sounds and they meant to type Del Valle.

Then all the stuff came out about the suspicious betting activity and it all made sense why Dulgarian seemed to accept the bad positions, the sub and defeat so easily. The fallout has been crazy. I didn’t even realise Dulgarian had links to James Krause, who was the centre of attention the last time there was a betting scandal involving a UFC fighter a few years back. Apparently Dulgarian used to train under Krause before moving to Factory X.

Then Dulgarian’s purse got withheld by the NSAC and it was announced that Dulgarian had been released by the UFC. The guy on Twitter, Harry Mac, who was really digging into this before anyone else really picked up on it has posted some very interesting stuff over the last few days. This in particular caught my eye…

Dana’s talking tough now and going in heavy on the ‘if we find out fighters are doing this we’ll do everything in our power to get them sent to jail’ but if this is accurate then they had information hours before and let the fight go ahead regardless. Not a good look at all if true.

A few other fighters took to social media and claimed they’d been approached and offered money to throw fights as well.

I think they all deleted these tweets since and Morales is outright saying he was joking. Which is clearly bollocks. Those initial tweets he sent there don’t have a hint of jokeyness or humour about them. This lot have clearly been given a phone call and been told to take those tweets down. It seems it’s happening a lot to these undercard fighters, which makes sense because those fights will go under the radar and be less likely to be picked up on. Plus those fighters aren’t making much money so they’re much more likely to be open to this shady shit if they’re approached with a decent financial incentive. It’s one of those things where you always knew this kind of thing was a possibility and we’ve heard all the stories of the Pride promoters trying (and sometimes succeeding) to set up works. But something like this really makes you wonder how many fixed or tampered with fights we’ve actually seen. Makes you question fighters, referees, judges, the lot. Any of them could’ve been gotten to. And all those times we’ve been baffled at bad scorecards or a ref decision, it makes you wonder if it was really just a case of incompetence or something more sinister. Fuck knows what else is gonna come out about this. Feels like just the tip of the iceberg though.

Was very happy to see Allan Nascimento sub that twat Cody Durden. Nothing really to add to that I just always enjoy seeing Durden lose.

Not much of note on the prelims but…

Donte Johnson subbing shitarse Sedriques Dumas was satisfying, although not as satisfying as a KO would’ve been. Hopefully they bin Dumas now. He’s awful in every way. Saw a clip of Donte Johnson talking to the media after and he was spouting some do-gooder bollocks about Dumas, saying “I guarantee you that’s a good man. I think people should just get off his back. Who are we to throw stones from a glass house? We’re all sinners”. Get the fuck out with that bullshit.

A “good man”. And more than one of these was him battering women. This “who are we to judge” nonsense doesn’t cut it with scum like that. How far do you go with that? Do you say “who are we to judge” about nonces? Piss off. Also makes me curious about what’s going on in Johnson’s “glass house” when he’s defending a cunt like Dumas.

Norma Dumont got the win over Ketlen Vieira but it looked like a dull fight even on x2 speed. I never expected a great fight but I did find it a bit weird how it was billed so low on the card considering it could’ve potentially determined the next contender for the title at 135. To be in a potential title eliminator and not even make the main card on an Apex show says it all. Then Dumont only manages a split decision in a boring fight? Not the best.

I did see Norma having a pop at Julianna Pena post-fight as well so she’s still alright by me. This gave me a little chuckle…

They might as well do Dumont vs Pena, to be honest. We’ve got this Harrison vs Nunes title fight next anyway and they haven’t even announced a date for that yet. So even if Norma had smashed Vieira in a round here, she’d have been waiting a while for the title shot regardless. Dumont vs Pena has ‘snoozer’ written all over it but, sod it, might as well just do it. Although Pena is so delusional she probably genuinely thinks she deserves another title shot next. 


Yeah right mess of a show. MMA’s in the mud at the minute. This was the third UFC card in a row that was mired in controversy. The Vancouver show the other week saw Dan Miragliotta having howlers left and right, then the whole Aspinall vs Gane shitshow in Abu Dhabi the week after, now this. And another Apex card awaits us this weekend. Christ. Hopefully this bad spell is behind us in time for the MSG card on the 15th because that one looks fantastic on paper.

Edited November 5, 2025 by wandshogun09