UFC Shanghai: Nurmagomedov vs Song - Aug 29 🇨🇳

[wandshogun09]

Back in China this week…

PARAMOUNT+ MAIN CARD
Umar Nurmagomedov vs Song Yadong 

Yan Xiaonan vs Denise Gomes 

Aoriqileng vs Kai Asakura 

Alex Perez vs Sumudaerji 

Liu Ce vs Levi Rodrigues Jr 

Bilal Hasan vs Nilson Rojas 

PARAMOUNT+ PRELIMS 
Andre Lima vs Namsrai Batbayar 

Rei Tsuruya vs Kevin Borjas 

Jack Jenkins vs Sean Woodson 

Xiao Long vs Francesco Nuzzi 

Lawrence Lui vs Hector Santiago 

Xiong Jingnan vs Julia Polastri 

Ding Meng vs Cam Nelson 

 

 

Standard China Fight Night we’ve come to expect really. Not the best but it’s not the worst card in the world either. Always helps that these things are on live in the morning for us over here though, I think. I’d have probably skipped a few of the China cards over the years if it wasn’t for the fact I can just get up on Saturday morning and whack the shows on over breakfast. As you can see from the thread tags, the prelims for this get underway from 8am with an 11am kick off for the main card.

 

 

Umar Nurmagomedov vs Song Yadong is a perfectly fine Fight Night main event and it obviously makes sense to have Song headline a card in China. But I don’t know if it’s just me but Song just doesn’t move me one way or the other. He’s got some skills and he’s not what I’d call boring but, I don’t know, for whatever reason I just don’t feel any excitement for his fights. Don’t hate them, don’t love them, just kind of indifferent. It’s not a bad fight by any means though and being able to watch it live on a Saturday morning won’t hurt. And I’m never gonna complain about the Bantamweights getting these main event spots on the Fight Nights. Least it’s not Heavyweight, 205 or women’s 135. Depending on which set of rankings you look at (and again, I hate that there’s two lots now), Umar currently sits in the #2 or #3 spot, Song’s at #6 on both. So they’re very much in the mix.

Umar turned 30 early this year. In theory he’s smack bang in the middle of his physical prime right now. He has a record of 20-1 with 9 finishes and the only blemish so far has been that decision loss to Merab Dvalishvili in their title fight in January last year. And even that, Umar fought well in defeat. I feel like that’s kind of been forgotten, misremembered or in some cases rewritten now. Partly because the moments that really stay in your memory from that fight are mostly Merab’s meme worthy showboating and piss taking. Merab definitely took over and I had him winning, but it wasn’t the one sided whitewash many make it out to be. Since then Umar’s won a couple of decisions over Mario Bautista and Deiveson Figueiredo. I think Bautista is underrated and that was a very good win. I don’t put much stock in the Figgy win though sadly, because Figgy hasn’t looked at the races in a while. Still, another win here would be three in a row and at that point he could be in prime position to be the next challenger for the winner of Yan vs Merab 3.

Despite my personal apathy towards Song, of course he’s gonna be the big crowd favourite here. He’s still only 28 years old, which seems mad considering his long tenure on the roster, and he’s 23-9-1-1 with 13 of his wins not requiring the judges. He’s also coming off a win over faded Figgy, on the Macau card in May. Although, unlike Umar, he did manage to finish Figgy with the patented Team Alpha Male guillotine choke in the second round. He’s had an up and down last couple of years. Before that win over Figgy he’d gone 1-2 in his previous three - a weird win over Henry Cejudo which ended on an eye poke, and points losses to Petr Yan and Sean O’Malley. You don’t wanna be too harsh on a guy who’s still the right side of 30 but I feel like he found his ceiling a few years ago - upper mid level of the division but will always come up short against the elite. I’d be surprised if he ever gets over that hump.

Yeah, not a bad fight at all but it’s the same story with Song. I think this fight is beyond his limit, Umar’s most likely gonna win and Song will go back to beating someone lower down the pecking order before doing this same song (no pun intended) and dance again and losing to another one of the top guys. Wouldn’t be the biggest shock in the world if Song pulled off the win, we’ve seen much bigger upsets. But I just don’t see it myself. I’d like to see Umar really put a stamp on this fight and force a finish. Given his high ranking and his surname, three wins in a row might be enough for another crack at the gold regardless. But a really strong performance and/or a finish would make him hard to deny or pass over. If he wins a snoozer they might just gift O’Malley another title shot. I think with a decisive win here, Umar would be the most deserving though and Umar vs Yan or a rematch with Merab would be class as a title fight in the first quarter of 2027.

 

Yan Xiaonan vs Denise Gomes is co-main. Yeah, not arsed in the slightest about this and it’s clearly only got such high billing because Yan’s Chinese. I get it but it just feels weak as piss even on a Fight Night. Yan hasn’t fought in well over a year either which doesn’t help. We last saw her in April 2025, losing a decision to Virna Jandiroba. She’s 37 now, 19-5-0-1 and she does have some good wins on her record over the likes of Karolina Kowalkiewicz and Claudia Gadelha years ago, a five round decision over current champ Mackenzie Dern in 2022, a first round knockout over Jessica Andrade etc. And she did challenge Zhang Weili for the title at UFC 300. But given her age and recent inactivity, I don’t know what we’re getting here. Brazil’s Gomes is over a decade younger at 26 and she’s 12-3 with 7 knockouts. I do recall her being quite heavy handed for a Strawweight. She’s coming into this one off a four fight win streak and beat Tecia Pennington on points in her last fight at the Apex in November. She’s not bad from what I remember but she has fought a lower level of competition overall compared to who Yan’s been in with over the years.

 

Aoriqileng vs Kai Asakura. It’s slim pickings on this card but this is ***WAND’S ONE TO WATCH*** for me this time. Yeah there’s no stakes to it but are there ever stakes to any fights on these Fight Night cards, besides maybe the main event in some cases? This fight stands out to me though as the one most likely to be a bit of a fireworks display. Aoriqileng, AKA ‘The Mongolian Murderer’, is 33 years old and he’s 26-13-0-1 with 10 finishes. Wildly mixed results in the UFC, his Octagon record is 4-5-0-1, but he usually brings it. I’ve been recommending it for years and I’ll do it again here, if you never saw his UFC debut against Jeff Molina from 2021, get it watched. He lost that fight but it was a banger and made me take notice of his fights from that day forward. Win or lose, when he fights I’m watching. He’s coming off a TKO loss to Cody Haddon here. As for Asakura, he finally got in the UFC win column on the Macau card in May when he stopped Cameron Smotherman in the first round. He badly needed that win after going 0-2 in his first couple of UFC fights against Alexandre Pantoja and Tim Elliott. Love this matchmaking, to be honest. Aoriqileng is the kind of fighter who’s gonna stand and trade with Asakura so it should make for a fun scrap with high KO potential either way.

 

Alex Perez vs Sumudaerji 2 then. This one’s an immediate rematch. They fought on the Macau card at the end of May and I remember kind of looking forward to it. It all went to shit on the night though. Not gonna bother doing a full rewatch and review like I usually do but I just skimmed through the fight now to refresh my memory and it started off alright. Sumudaerji got the better of most of the first round with his leg kicks and jabs, then Perez had a little bit of a moment with a guillotine attempt at the end of the round. Second round, Sumudaerji drops him early, Perez survives and is trying for takedowns, then Sumudaerji misjudges an inside leg kick and clips Perez in the bollocks. It’s a bad one.

It wasn’t a full on, flush, shin to the spuds. The toes just sort of whipped into Perez’s sack. But that’s no fun either is it? I remember fans giving him a load of shit for ‘faking it’ and ‘acting’ but I’m not having that. If he was that good an actor he wouldn’t have been wasting his time doing a much more dangerous job for the last 15 years for relatively shite pay. He’s clearly in agony here, immediately asking for the sick bucket and spends a bunch of time with his head in it retching what’s left of his bollocks up. After a long period of him writhing about in pain, it becomes crystal clear Perez can’t continue and the fight is called off and ruled a No Contest. Really unfortunate. They’re both respectful after the fight and Sumudaerji is apologetic. Clearly was unintentional on Sumudaerji’s side and no-one wants to go through a whole training camp and weight cut only for the fight to end like that. Running it back ASAP is the right call. They’ve both had their ups and downs but Perez was coming off a really strong first round stoppage win over Charles Johnson going into this fight and Sumudaerji was on a three fight winning streak. Hopefully this one goes off without any issue and they have a good fight.

 

Liu Ce vs Levi Rodrigues Jr. Not familiar with either of these two. Liu Ce is Chinese so it’s cool for him to make his UFC debut in front of a home crowd. He’s about to turn 30 in September but he’s only 3-1 in MMA and hasn’t been that active. First couple of fights were in 2023, then he lost in 2024, then never fought again until May this year when he won by first round TKO. Most of his combat sports experience is in Kickboxing though. His Wikipedia page has him listed at 18-3 with 14 knockouts in Kickboxing. Fought a bunch in K-1 apparently. I don’t know what the scene or talent is like over there these days, I’m completely out of the loop, but when it comes to K-1 there’s definitely not the sizzle these days that there was in the 90s heyday. Rodrigues is 29 with a 5-1-0-1 record. He’s already fought once in the UFC, on the Du Plessis vs Usman card in July, and he got stopped by Felipe Franco. That card was only a few weeks ago and I’ve already got no memory of that fight so I’m hoping I skipped it, otherwise my memory’s more shot than I thought.

 

Bilal Hasan vs Nilson Rojas kicks off the main card. A battle of UFC newcomers. Hadn’t heard of either but did a little bit of digging and I’m quite interested to see Hasan now. He’s Indonesian but is based and trains in America as far as I can tell, he’s 25 years old and he’s undefeated at 9-0-0-1 with 8 finishes. He literally just fought on DWCS on August 11th and scored a 45 second TKO, complete with moonwalk celebration. Just gave it a watch now. Didn’t take long…

Quite a way to introduce yourself. Apparently he was a significant favourite going in and I’m guessing they expect big things from him. All his wins except his MMA debut have ended inside the distance and he was also the Cage Fury Flyweight champion and successfully defended the belt three times with three knockout wins. Not bad. Peru’s Rojas is 27 years old and also unbeaten at 9-0 with 7 knockouts. He’s coming off a points win in a promotion called Inka in late July.

 

Andre Lima vs Namsrai Batbayar. Not a clue. Seen Lima a few times, he’s fought in the UFC a bunch of times since his debut in 2024. But the only thing I really remember is that fight with Igor Severino which Lima won by DQ when Severino started chomping on his arm like Hannibal Lector. Lima’s 27 years old and 11-1 now. He won three fights after the Severino biting incident but suffered his first defeat in his last fight in June when he dropped a decision to Kevin Borjas. Think Lima was a big favourite going into that fight as well so it was an upset. Batbayar is making his UFC debut here. He’s Mongolian, 25 years old and 10-1 with a 100% finish rate. Looking down his record, the only name I recognise is current UFC fighter Nyamjargal Tumendemberel (a name that sticks in the memory obviously), who beat Batbayar back in 2022. Batbayar’s won six in a row since then.

 

Rei Tsuruya vs Kevin Borjas could be fun or could be just a Tsuruya steamroll job. We’ll see. Tsuruya is one of those Japanese Flyweights who came in over the last few years with high hopes of potentially becoming the first Japanese UFC champion. With him, Tatsuro Taira, Kai Asakura and Kyoji Horiguchi all on the roster in the same division, it did seem like if Japan were finally gonna get a UFC champ, Flyweight would be their best chance. Hasn’t worked out for any of them yet though.

Tsuruya’s still only just turned 24 years old, hardly on the scrapheap, and he’s only had one career setback so far. There’s no reason he can’t get there eventually. He’s got some work to do though. He’s 11-1 now with 9 finishes. Went 10-0 at the start of his career before taking his first loss against Joshua Van (that loss hasn’t aged too badly) by decision back in March 2025. He didn’t fight again until the Macau card in May this year, and he bounced back in style with a first round neck crank submission over Luis Gurule. Borjas is from Peru, 28 years old and 11-5 with 8 by KO/TKO. He’s gone a shite 2-4 in the UFC and he’s clearly never gonna be a player in the division but I’ve always quite enjoyed watching him, to be fair. Even in defeat I remember really enjoying his fights with Josh Van and Alessandro Costa. He beat Ronaldo Rodriguez, who was starting to get a bit of hype and push from the UFC, and he scored the upset over previously unbeaten Andre Lima last time out. I suspect Tsuruya’s grappling will be too much for him here but we’ll see. Hopefully Borjas can make a bit of a dogfight out of it.

 

Jack Jenkins vs Sean Woodson is probably one of the better fights on the card for me, so of course they bury it right near the bottom of the prelims. Of course they do. Aussie Jenkins is 33 years old, 14-4 with 9 finishes and he beat Ramon Taveras on the Perth card in September last time out. He’s had a very up and down run in the UFC, win one/lose one rinse and repeat stuff, but I’ve found him quite enjoyable to watch. Woodson hasn’t fought since April 2025, when he suffered a late TKO loss against Dan Ige. Looking back at the thread for that card, I said I thought the stoppage was a bit dodgy/harsh. And Woodson was on a four fight win streak before that loss. He’s 34 now and 13-2-1 overall. Not gonna be creating any waves in the rankings or anything but a decent fighter at his level. He lost the fight but I remember loving his scrap with Julian Erosa back in 2020. If you’ve never seen it, it’s worth firing up Fight Pass for. It got forgotten because they’re not big names and also because Poirier vs Hooker headlined that card and understandably took all the glory, but it was a cracker in its own right.

 

Xiao Long vs Francesco Nuzzi. Yeah, me neither. Don’t know, don’t particularly care. I’ll quickly go through the motions. Long’s 28 years old with a record of 27-11 and 14 finishes. He’s gone a dismal 1-3 in the UFC so far and is coming into this fight off back-to-back losses. We last saw him in March dropping a decision to the empty shell of Cody Garbrandt in what I described at the time as “a foul filled mess of a fight”. Smashing. Nuzzi’s making his first Octagon appearance here. He’s Italian, 30 years old and 11-2-0-1 with 8 of his wins not making it to the scorecards. Nothing jumping off the page from his record but his last three fights have gone Loss, Win, No Contest. Bit odd signing a guy off a No Contest but whatever. It’s the UFC in 2026. No point trying to make sense of anything.

 

Lawrence Lui vs Hector Santiago. Another couple of UFC newbies. Lui is from New Zealand, he’s 30 years old and he’s 8-1 with 4 finishes. Apparently he did actually technically fight in the UFC last time out. He fought on the Volkanovski vs Lopes 2 undercard in January but he was the very first prelim of the night and it was a ‘Road To UFC’ tournament final. I didn’t see it but he won by split decision. Brazil’s Santiago is 33 years old and 6-1 with 5 finishes. He won by first round TKO in his last fight in May on a ‘Money Moicano MMA’ card. Had no idea Moicano had started up his own promotion but there we go.

 

Xiong Jingnan vs Julia Polastri is whatever but I’ll probably give it a bash as background noise at least if I’m up early on Saturday morning. Jingnan is a former ONE Strawweight champion and won a trilogy against ONE’s poster girl Angela Lee years ago. At least two of those fights were belters, don’t think I saw the third. ONE’s MMA league seems to have been circling the drain for a while now and they sacked off the Strawweight division recently. Jingnan ended up making her UFC debut on the Macau card back in May and lost to Angela Hill on points. Shame she never made it over to the UFC years ago. She’s 38 now and had been very inactive before making the jump. Even as shallow as the women’s divisions are in the UFC at the moment, it just feels way too late for her to make any kind of significant impact. Brazilian Polastri is a decade younger at 28 and she’s 14-6 with 8 finishes. No world beater and she’s lost two of her last 3 but she still might beat this version of Jingnan sadly. Hopefully Jingnan’s shitty performance against Hill was mostly down to inactivity and ring rust, in theory now the cobwebs are off maybe this ends up being a pleasant surprise. Not getting my hopes up though.

 

Ding Meng vs Cam Nelson jerks the curtain. Meng’s back! Insert your own Haku joke here. He’s 31 years old with a record of 35-10 and 30 of his wins coming inside the distance. Sounds good until you go through his record and recognise none of the 40 names on there. He made his UFC debut on the Macau show in May and lost a split decision against fellow debutant Jose Souza. Nelson makes his debut here, he’s Canadian, 28 years old and 7-1 with 5 finishes. That’s about it on him.

 

Fancy a Chinese?

Edited August 29 by wandshogun09

[wandshogun09]

This is already underway but sod it 🤣

[Gooner]

Nurmagomedov got rendered unconscious. Good he is sitting up on his stool now, but that right hand uppercut Song threw as Nurmagomedov leaned downwards caught him on the sweet spot. 

I only caught the main event, but we'll worth checking out for how loud the crowd were for Song and couldn't have asked for a sweeter finish. 

[wandshogun09]

Well this was quite a show. The Wand family household hasn’t witnessed this level of chaos on a Saturday morning since my daughter somehow flooded the bathroom a few months ago.

Crazy scenes in the main event. I don’t think I saw one person predict or make a serious case for a Song Yadong win going into this one. I certainly didn’t see it coming. After all my talk in the opening post of him never living up to his potential or the early hype, fair fucking play to him. Massive win and quite an upset. For it to happen in China just made it all the more dramatic. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a reaction as loud as this from a Chinese crowd as they were when Song put Umar out. They were going mental for ages after the fight was over. Obviously they wanted him to win but, like almost everyone, they’d probably already resigned themselves to the idea that he was most likely losing. Him pulling off the win, and especially the way he did it, was nuts. Nothing even against Umar but this is surely going down as one of the best moments of the year. Incredible stuff. Thought Song fought well in general as well. I don’t believe in flukes in MMA anyway but this definitely wasn’t one. I felt like Umar probably nicked the first round but Song was always in it and holding his own. Then in the second, that right around the ear/neck just done Umar in completely.

Madness. Already seen calls for Song to get a title shot. I honestly don’t think it’d be outrageous after a win like this but I feel like they’re gonna give it to O’Malley. And O’Malley does have that win over Song back in January which makes Song’s case a bit more difficult to argue. Although, if Merab beats Yan in October and gets the belt back, maybe Song gets the shot because I can’t see them doing Merab vs O’Malley 3, and nor should they really. We’ll see. Song might be out a while anyway now with that gash above his eye. But yeah, hell of a win for Song this was. The way it went down, the fact he was widely expected to lose and with it being in China, it’s gonna go down as one of, if not the career highlight for Song when it’s all said and done.

Had no expectations or anticipation for the co-main but, Jesus Christ, Denise Gomes crushed Yan Xiaonan in brutal fashion inside a round.

I do love a standing elbow and that one was a beauty. Think I did mention that Gomes is more heavy handed than your average Strawweight but I didn’t really expect her to just blow a veteran and former title challenger like Yan out of the water in a round like this. Yan is late 30s now and was coming off a year plus layoff, so you’ve gotta take that into consideration and kind of put it in perspective. But still, this was an impressive performance from Gomes. Easily her best win to date and she’s still only 26.

Nice to see Kai Asakura get another win and another finish, just a shame it came at the expense of Aoriqileng who I’ve had a soft spot for ever since his UFC debut years ago.

Nasty finish from Asakura this was. The noise the headkick made was like a baseball bat whacking a ball and you could see the sweat fly off Aoriqileng’s head. It’s a testament to his toughness that he never went down immediately from that one. Then Asakura’s finishing knees to the body on the ground were horrible. Good stuff from Asakura here. Still not confident he can get over the hurdle when he faces guys who wanna grapple more but that’s two wins in a row now and two finishes. Considering he went 0-2 initially in the UFC, at least he’s back on track for now and avoided becoming the Japanese Patchy Mix.

Sumudaerji vs Perez 2 didn’t grab me. Didn’t look like a terrible fight but it was the only one on the main card that didn’t hold my attention. At least they never had any controversy or fight ending fouls this time though, they settled their business and now they can move on.

Thoroughly enjoyed Liu Ce’s debut. Wasn’t pretty but it was exciting as fuck for the less than five minutes it lasted. Just a wild shootout. It was clear Levi Rodrigues was outgunned in the striking but he was game to be fair. Liu Ce wasn’t gonna stop until he put that boy to bed though.

Gnarly finish. Rodrigues fell like a sack of shite. Looked like he had no bones in his body. Liu Ce is gonna be must see viewing for me from now on. I understand the opposition wasn’t great here. I’m fully aware of that and I’m not expecting Liu to be able to have success fighting like this against everyone. But at the same time, the Light Heavyweight division is pure shite these days. We need guys like this. Even if they ultimately amount to nothing and don’t make even the slightest dent in the rankings, 205 needs exciting fighters badly. I’ll be tuning in for this fucker’s fights every time if this was typical of his style. It’s a way off but imagine him potentially fighting a Rountree or Jiri somewhere down the road?

Loved the Bilal Hasan debut. Exactly what you want if the idea was to showcase him. I know the guy he fought on DWCS was supposed to be woefully outmatched but, to be fair, his opponent here Rojas was undefeated at 9-0 just like Hasan. And Hasan still slept him.

🤣 Not sure how much of a shelf life the whole Michael Jackson gimmick is gonna have for him. He’s obviously new so it hasn’t got old yet. And it felt kind of fitting here with this show actually being on MJ’s birthday. But if he’s gonna do this every time, I dunno, I can see it wearing thin eventually. I liked him here though. He seems like he’s one of those action fighters where you can pretty much throw him in with anyone and you’re probably getting something at least decent to watch out of it. Still plenty of questions for him to answer and tests for him to pass but, as a first impression, I liked what I saw here.

Prelims had their moments too. Rei Tsuruya just pissed straight through Kevin Borjas. Kind of expected it because Tsuruya’s a really strong grappler and, as much as I’ve enjoyed watching Borjas at times, he’s not that good. A Tsuruya steamrolling was always kind of on the cards here but I was a bit disappointed Borjas got squashed as easily as he did. Tsuruya looks like he could still make some noise in the Flyweight ranks. Still only 24 and his only loss is to current champ Van. 

Oh and Julia Polastri pulled off a legit Knockout Of The Year contender in the early prelims…

Absolutely wiped Xiong Jingnan the fuck out. Proper throwback but it reminded me of Pete Williams vs Mark Coleman way back in the early days. Poor Jingnan. It’s just not working out for her in the UFC at all. Shame she never got out of her ONE contract a few years earlier. At 38 she’s definitely made the jump too late.



Yeah cracking show that. The China shows usually come and go with little of note happening and not many talking points. This might’ve been the best one they’ve had there for me though. 

[Egg Shen]

Caught a main event spoiler but watched the rest, good show!