UFC Seattle could bring needed clarity to blossoming bantamweight division

Last month at UFC 311, Merab Dvalishvili cemented his standing as the top bantamweight in the company with a unanimous decision win over unbeaten challenger Umar Nurmagomedov, successfully defending his title for the first time.

This week, the promotion makes its long-awaited return to Seattle with a reshaped fight card headlined by a crucial matchup in the 135-pound weight class between former champ Henry Cejudo and top-10 fixture Song Yadong, with a couple other bouts in the bantamweight division currently pencilled in for Saturday as well.

Over the past several years, the men’s bantamweight division has established itself as the most competitive and deepest in the UFC, and with a championship fight recently wrapped and a key contest on tap this weekend, now feels like a great time to take a deep dive into the makeup of its talent-rich ranks.

THE CHAMP STANDS ALONE

Dvalishvili is a true one-of-one in this sport — a high-octane pace monster that uses otherworldly conditioning and excellent wrestling to pressure, break, and ultimately drowned his opponents inside the Octagon.

His win over Nurmagomedov in January cemented this after the champion was seemingly content to give up the first two rounds as long as he was able to do two things: keep it close and work at his traditional torrid pace. In doing so, he fatigued the challenger, at which point, Dvalishvili took it up a notch, eventually drawing even and then pulling away from the undefeated Russian down the stretch to lock up his first successful title defence.

At this moment, there is no clear “next in line” challenger for the champion, as he’s beaten the men stationed at No. 1, 2, and 3 in the latest edition of the UFC Fighter Rankings, and neither of the titleholders on either side of him are threats to venture to bantamweight in search of “Double Champ” status.

And so for now, “The Machine” can enjoy his win, recharge his batteries, and wait to see how things shake out over the next couple of months.

THE FOUR HORSEMEN

Sean O’Malley, Petr Yan, Nurmagomedov, and Cory Sandhagen are the top four contenders in the division at the moment, according to the rankings, and represent a class of competitors that any other hopeful is going to need to get through in order to truly establish themselves as a legitimate candidate for a championship opportunity.

To be clear: hopefuls should have to beat one of these men, two at the most, to merit consideration; we don’t need a “run the gauntlet” situation, as that would likely result in one of these four stifling the ascent of most of the emerging class.

Nurmagomedov won’t fight again for several months, at the earliest, but should come back to a marquee assignment, given that he remains a standout with genuine championship skills.

Yan has earned consecutive victories since his loss to Dvalishvili in March 2023, and could benefit from being the “best available option” whenever the champion is ready to return to work, as there is a rivalry between the two and a matchup between the current and former champion would certainly generate attention.

O’Malley had little to offer Dvalishvili in losing the title at UFC 306, despite his tepid insistence that he did enough to win the fight, and had surgery in early October to repair a torn labrum in his hip.

Sandhagen has been doing everything he can short of stalking the former champion and bursting into the UFC offices in order to secure a fight with “Suga” whenever he’s ready to return, and it’s a pairing that makes a great deal of sense given that they’ve yet to cross paths, both are coming off losses to top-five opponents (Sandhagen lost to Nurmagomedov last August), and the bout would help clear things up at the top of the division.

No matter how these four get booked, they should remain in the thick of the chase for the foreseeable future.

SEATTLE SHOWDOWN

This weekend’s main event clash between Cejudo and Song is massive for each man, and will invariably have divisional repercussions, regardless of who comes out on top.

Cejudo has dropped back-to-back contests since ending his three-year sabbatical, getting edged out by then-champion Aljamain Sterling before getting out-worked by Dvalishvili in his final non-title bout before challenging for the title last year. He just turned 38, his last win came against Dominick Cruz in May 2020, and a third straight setback would not only signal the end of his days as a potential challenger in the division he once ruled, but it could very well prompt “Triple C” to hang up his gloves for real this time.

Song touches down in the land of Starbucks, fish tosses, and far too much rain at a bit of a crossroads, having cemented his standing as a top-10 bantamweight, but faltered in each of his first two attempts to break into the top five.

Losses to Sandhagen and Yan are nothing to hang your head about, and he’s still somehow only 27, despite being in his eighth year on the UFC roster, so he’s just now reaching the age where most competitors make that real push towards the title if they’re going to do so.

But this weekend’s matchup feels like an “if not now, when?” situation for the Sacramento-based Song. Cejudo is unquestionably a tough out and not someone that is going to go away easy, however is “The Kung Fu Kid” has genuine designs on eventually challenging for championship gold, this is one he almost must win in order to avoid getting pigeonholed as someone whose ceiling rests outside the top five of the division.

The prelims also feature a pairing that stands as the quintessential indicator of how deep and talented the division is at the moment, as PNW local Ricky Simon faces off with Dana White’s Contender Series alum Javid Basharat.

Simon held down a spot in the rankings for a couple years, but has slid out of the top 15 during his current three-fight skid, while Basharat is coming off his first career loss and is without a victory in his last two outings after opening his career with a 14-0 mark. The former is the kind of ecosystem fighter each division needs — like Raoni Barcelos, who upset Payton Talbott earlier this year — while the latter is a highly regarded prospect that needs to show he can bounce back and topple someone of Simon’s standing.

A third bantamweight bout was originally scheduled for the co-main event, as Rob Font was to face off with Dominick Cruz in what was going to be the former champion’s final appearance inside the Octagon, but unfortunately, Cruz dislocated his shoulder for the second time in eight months and announced his retirement.

Thankfully, Font is slated to remain on the card, facing off with exciting Brazilian prospect Jean Matsumoto in a 140-pound catchweight bout that will still potentially send shockwaves through the division.

GOING STREAKING

One of the things that has made bantamweight perpetually exciting is that the lower third of the rankings is usually replete with ascending names on good winning streaks that have yet to face some of the more tenured talents in the division, as is the case right now.

Mario Bautista, Aiemann Zahabi, Marcus McGhee, and Montel Jackson all sit between No. 10 and No. 15 in the current top 15, and have won a combined 21 consecutive fights in the 135-pound weight class.

McGhee has won each of his first four UFC appearances, and that’s the shortest winning streak of the lot, with Bautista having earned seven straight wins and Zahabi and Jackson each earning five straight victories. Bautista is the only one that has faced someone currently positioned in the Top 10, but that came in his short-notice debut against Sandhagen several years ago.

Ideally, each of these surging competitors would get a matchup against someone a little more established that is positioned near them in the rankings — let’s say Bautista vs. Deiveson Figueiredo, Zahabi vs. Jose Aldo in Montreal, McGhee vs. Marlon Vera, Jackson vs. Kyler Phillips — rather than having them fight amongst themselves, but we’ll have to wait and see what happens.

MORE TALENT INCOMING

Here’s what separates bantamweight from every other division when it comes time to make cases for which weight class is the best in the UFC:

There are, conservatively, between 12-15 additional promising talents in the division that still have not been discussed here that have the potential to be interesting names to track over the next 12-18 months.

Vinicius Oliveira just beat Said Nurmagomedov to move to 3-0 in the UFC, while Daniel Marcos and Farid Basharat remained undefeated. You also have standout prospects that still possess a ton of upside like Talbott, Cameron Saaiman, and Raul Rosas Jr., dark horses like Muin Gafurov and Montreal’s Charles Jourdain, and promotional neophytes Cody Haddon, Cameron Smotherman, and Aleksandre Topuria, all of whom won their debuts.

And it’s not like there won’t be ever more new names that bubble up in the coming weeks and months either, as three of the most intriguing additions to the roster from the most recent season of Dana White’s Contender Series are talented bantamweights Malcolm Wellmaker, Josias Musasa, and David Martinez.