Dana White’s Contender Series continues tonight as Season 8 rolls into its second week.
The inaugural week saw the UFC CEO hand out four contracts, with Lone’er Kavanagh, Jose Delgado, Bruno Lopes and Mansur Abdul-Malik all joining the promotion’s roster. Tonight, 10 more athletes will set foot inside UFC Apex looking to catch the eye of White with impressive performances.
In the opening bout of the evening Billy Brand will face Australian Cody Haddon in a Bantamweight contest. Brand enters the series riding a four fight win streak, with three of the four wins coming by way of KO/TKO stoppage. Haddon is in a similar vein of form, also riding a four fight win steak but with all four wins coming by way of stoppage.
The second contest will see Cam Rawston and Torrez Finney battle it out in a Middleweight contest. Cam Rawston will look to add his name to the ever-growing list of Australian fighters competing under the UFC banner. Although unbeaten in 5, Rawston has struggled to remain active over the last few years. Due to two cancelled bouts, Rawston has not competed since 2022. The unbeaten American, Finney, featured on last year’s season of the Contender Series, when he defeated Yuri Panferov with a second round submission but it was not enough for White to offer a contract. Since then ‘The Punisher’ has competed once, with a first round finish against Tyson Jeffries.
It will be back to Bantamweights for the third match up as Cortavious Romious returns to the show, this year, facing Michael Imperato. Romious first appeared on last series Contender Series, but his appearance was cut short just 29 seconds into his bout when Ramon Taveras followed up a clean left hook with heavy ground and pound to claim the win. Imperato signed with the UFC years ago but was cut less than 24 hours later due to previous comments the Canadian had made. He then appeared on this year’s series of Lookin’ For A Fight, when it was revealed White was willing to give him another shot at the UFC.
The co-main event will see another athlete return to the contender series as Rizvan Kuniev faces Hugo Cunha. Kuniev first featured on the Contender Series in 2021 but his third round stoppage against Edivan Santos was not enough to earn a contract first time round. Since then, the Russian has only competed twice. The first of the two bouts saw head back to Eagle FC to defend his Heavyweight title with a first round Guillotine choke against Anthony Hamilton, before competing in the 2023 PFL Global Regular Season. Kuniev beat the man who went on to be crowned the 2023 champion, Renan Ferreira, but the result was then overturned due to Kuniev testing positive for drostanolone, metenelone, boldenone, 19-norandrosterone, post fight.
Pat Pytlik also earned his shot on the Contender Series following on an appearance on the same episode of Lookin’ For A Fight as Imperato. The Canadian will take on Swedishman Andreas Gustafsson. Pytlik has been a regular feature on Unified MMA shows since joining the professional ranks in 2014, having fought eight times on the Canadian promotion. He enters the biggest fight of his career on the back of 2 first round wins, with his most recent coming at the start of 2024. Gustafsson also enters the contest with two finishes in his last two bouts and of his 10 wins, has only been to the judges scorecards once. With both men finding themselves over 30, the winner will need a monumental performance to secure a contract.
