UFC 311: Live Winners and Losers, Results

It's a mantra for show business and, this weekend anyway, combat sports:

The (slightly adjusted) show must go on.

The UFC went ahead with a 13-bout card Saturday night in suburban Los Angeles barely 24 hours after its planned-for main event was scuttled by a back injury to Arman Tsarukyan, the No. 1 challenger to lightweight champion Islam Makhachev.

Into the breach stepped 10th-ranked contender Renato Moicano, who'd been set to square off with Beneil Dariush elsewhere on the main card. The promotion filled that vacant slot with a heavyweight bout between top-10 contenders Jailton Almeida and Serghei Spivac.

Makhachev, 33, aimed for a fourth successful defense of a title he won with a submission of Charles Oliveira at UFC 280. It was a first bite at the championship-level apple for Moicano, 35, who'd won four straight fights and was 12-5 since debuting in the octagon in late 2014.

The co-main was a title bout at bantamweight, where champion Merab Dvalishvili defended for the first time against second-ranked Umar Nurmagomedov. Dvalishvili won the belt from Sean O'Malley at UFC 306 last September and Nurmagomedov was 6-0 with the company and 18-0 as a professional since debuting in 2016.

The B/R combat team was in position for Saturday's show at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood to deliver a real-time list of definitive winners and losers. Take a look at what we came up with and drop a thought or two of your own in the app comments.

It wasn't supposed to last very long. And it didn't.

Decorated lightweight champion Islam Makhachev added another couple bullet points to an already impressive resume in Saturday's main event, snatching short-notice Renato Moicano into a d'arce choke and prompting a tap-out surrender at 4:05 of the opening round.

The win was the 15th in a row for the Russian–moving him within one of Anderson Silva's promotional record of 16–and his fourth defense at 155 pounds since his reign began.

"Whoever can make 155, just step to the cage and stand in front of me," he said. "If somebody wants this belt, come to the cage."

The foes didn't touch gloves upon receiving instructions from referee Herb Dean but that was as dramatic as things got, aside from a punch to Makhachev's arm that resulted in a slip that sent him to the floor and initially looked like a knockdown.

He rose immediately and quickly chased and secured a takedown, then seized Moicano into a front headlock and transitioned it into the d'arce that yielded his 13th career submission.

Analysts Daniel Cormier and Joe Rogan suggested he was the best lightweight in UFC history.

"From the moment he puts them down, they're kind of stuck," Cormier said, "and the moment they do take a chance he jumps on them with the d'arce."

It was Moicano's first loss after a four-fight win streak.

"Islam was much better than I am today," he said. "I don't know if I'll ever get a chance like that again, but I'll try my best."

It was all about the visuals.

Bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili's nose was crooked, his cheeks were reddened and he was bleeding from one or more cuts on or around his eyes.

And through it all, he was smiling.

Meanwhile, challenger Umar Nurmagomedov looked like he'd rather be anywhere else.

The first-defense king at 135 pounds took all sorts of stand-up punishment from his pedigreed opponent through the first 10 minutes but appeared ebullient as the instant classic dragged into its latter stages and he took his unbeaten opponent to places he'd never been.

Chiefly among them, to a non-victorious post-fight locker room.

Dvalishvili dropped the first two rounds on two of three scorecards but swept the third, fourth, and fifth on all three to secure a unanimous decision with two 48-47 scores and one 49-46.

B/R's W/L scorecard agreed with the majority and had it 3-2 in rounds for Dvalishvili.

It was Nurmagomedov's first loss after 18 pro fights and six UFC appearances and the primary cause was Dvalishvili's superhuman gas tank, which allowed him to fight through his opponent's early success and continue pressing the action with 30 overall takedown attempts and a 133-81 edge in landed strikes across 25 minutes.

"Umar looked so exhausted and Merab looked like he just woke up," Rogan said. "Just unbelievable endurance. It's such a weapon that he has."

It was Dvalishvili's 11th win at bantamweight, moving him to fifth on the division's all-time list.

"You know I train all the time. I am the machine," he said. "Umar is a tough fighter and he's good. But he called me old. Yes, I'm old. But I'm working every day. I was the underdog. The whole world was against me. But I don't give a sh-t."

Nurmagomedov suggested he deserved the decision and had won the first three rounds, and he said his offense was hampered after the first round by an injury to his left hand.

"I knew he was a tough guy," he said. "But I don't think I lost this fight."

Sometimes, fights deliver exactly as advertised.

The eagerly anticipated light heavyweight scrap between top-three contenders Jiří Procházka and Jamahal Hill was precisely that fight.

Both ex-champions were hit and hurt several times across two-plus rounds before Procházka, whose frenetic style has been successful against all but one UFC opponent, countered a missed shot from Hill with a two-punch combination that floored his foe and began a decisive sequence that ended with a TKO finish at 3:01 of the third.

It was his fifth win in seven UFC fights and improved him to 5-0 against any foe not named Alex Pereira. Pereira, though, has beaten him twice, both by KO, in 2023 and 2024.

"I expected everything," Procházka said. "I had to evolve. I put a lot more importance on the training."

Procházka and Hill split the first two rounds with back-and-forth exchanges but Procházka established control early in the third even before the wide missed left from Hill that allowed him to counter with a short left and a hard right that dropped Hill to the floor.

Hill scrambled to elude ground strikes but was ultimately back on the mat, where a flurry of follow-up shots forced the hand of referee Mike Beltran.

"That's in my nature," Procházka said. "Everyone has his wildness. Sometimes I need to catch some punches to be the true Jiří Procházka."

Just when it looked like Jailton Almeida had earned his adulation, he stumbled.

The sixth-ranked heavyweight was moments past a first-round finish of No. 7 Serghei Spivac when he took the mic from Rogan and went about offering love for the local crowd:

"Let's go, Las Vegas," he said.

The only problem? He was in California, not Nevada.

Predictably, boos were audible from across the Intuit Dome as the flustered Brazilian quickly appealed for forgiveness with an "I love you, Los Angeles" pivot.

Rogan suggested the fans give Almeida a break considering he'd just been in a fist fight and it had been a compelling one while it lasted until Almeida punctuated a series of takedowns and reversals with a hard flurry of strikes that sent Spivac reeling toward the fence.

A takedown followed and Spivac was soon flattened out and battered with fists until referee Jason Herzog leaped in to stop the punishment at 4:53.

It was his eighth win in nine fights since a successful turn on Dana White's Contender Series and it left him angling for an even higher-ranked target–second-ranked Ciryl Gane.

"We came here to put on a show," he said. "Ciryl Gane, stop running away. Brazil vs. France. Let's go."

Kevin Holland said he'd be stunned if Reinier de Ridder could submit him.

As it turns out, perhaps stunned should be an understatement.

One of the most active and dynamic fighters in the promotion, Holland was paired with the former champion from the ONE promotion who'd made the octagonal jump in November.

And instead of taking the relative newbie into deep waters with his unorthodox kung fu style, Holland found himself on the mat within 15 seconds, found de Ridder on his back within three minutes, and found himself tapping to a rear-naked choke at 3:31 of the first round.

"That was about as good as (de Ridder) could have hoped for," Rogan said.

Indeed, the 34-year-old Dutchman was comprehensively dominant for the brief duration of the bout and instantly turned his attention to what could be next, calling his shot for an immediate return against a highly-ranked contender at 185 pounds.

"This was about the plan. Working all aspects of the game but the main goal is always to choke a guy out," he said. "Anybody and everybody. I can be ready quick. I'm very happy with this win. Gimme a top-five guy now, come on."

Raoni Barcelos was ready for the moment.

So when the horn sounded to end his featured prelim with unbeaten prohibitive favorite Payton Talbott, he stood and screamed toward a nearby camera, then strutted around the mat with his finger to his mouth to silence a crowd that had loudly supported the young American.

It was a fitting reply to odds that had the 26-year-old going off at 12-to-1 after just nine professional fights and three UFC appearances that had gone less than 17 minutes combined.

Barcelos, 37, made his 12th octagonal trip his most impressive, getting his young foe to the mat eight times and controlling him for nearly 10 minutes on the way to a shutout on the scorecards that was barely as close as the 30-27, 30-27 and 30-26 scores indicated.

"Raoni Barcelos is teaching Payton Talbott a lesson," analyst Daniel Cormier said. "Sometimes (fighters) win themselves into a position they're not ready for. He's in positions he's just not experienced in the octagon, Raoni Barcelos has."

Barcelos took Talbott down in the opening minute of the first round and kept him there for the rest of the session, reversed a Talbott takedown to take control in the second, and got things to the mat again late in the third before sealing the deal with a barrage of punches and elbows.

"It's belief and trust," Barcelos said. "The people around me believed in me."

Some debuts are auspicious, others are suspicious.

Saturday's card had a bit of both with a pair of fighters making their first trips into a UFC-branded cage across consecutive fights in the middle prelims.

Russian middleweight Azamat Bekoev graduated from a championship run in the LFA promotion to an octagonal victory, getting Zachary Reese to the ground with a single-leg takedown before pounding him into oblivion with a torrent of fists and elbows.

Reese was semi-conscious when referee Blake Grice intervened at 3:04 of the first and the Texan stayed prone for several moments and needed help exiting the cage.

"That's how you make a UFC debut," Cormier said. "It doesn't get much better than that."

It wasn't so thrilling for short-notice light heavyweight Billy Elekana, who got the call eight days before replacing Johnny Walker and stepping in to meet 13th-ranked Bogdan Guskov.

The American thrived on the ground for much of the first round but quickly ran short on energy and was pummeled in the second round before succumbing to a guillotine at 3:33.

As birthdays go, it wasn't so great for Diego Ferreira.

The Brazilian lightweight marked his 40th with a three-round prelim bout with Grant Dawson, but to say it didn't go so well would be something of an understatement.

Instead of basking in cheers from the fans and his corner team, he was chastised for much of 15 minutes by frustrated trainers and heard intermittent boos from the southern California crowd on the way to a desultory unanimous decision loss by a trio of 30-27 scores.

Ferreira appeared to be a better fighter on the feet but was taken down six times and controlled for nearly 11 minutes by the grinding Dawson and seemed to have no real strategy to regain his feet once horizontal.

Referee Frank Trigg interrupted the grappling with a stand-up order early in the third round and one of Ferreira's corner men yelled "submit or get up" at one point, too.

It was the second time Ferreira appeared on his birthday, coming five years after he submitted Anthony Pettis by rear-naked choke at UFC 246 in Las Vegas.

This just in: It's not all about the record.

Fighters in two of the night's first three fights arrived at the cage and were introduced by Bruce Buffer as unbeaten mixed martial artists, but neither walked down the stairs with the same pristine status with which they'd climbed.

Japanese bantamweight Rinya Nakamura's result was particularly disappointing given the 9-0 overall and 3-0 UFC records he'd carried from the locker room, not to mention his standing as a big betting favorite when a -625 tag was hung on him beforehand.

Clearly, though, Muin Gafurov didn't care.

Instead, the Tajikistan native was dominant in standup against an elite-level wrestler, scored a knockdown with a right hand in the second round, then survived his foe's desperate try for a guillotine finish in the third to score a well-deserved decision, all by 30-27 scores.

Nakamura had won the Asian-based Road to UFC competition in early 2023 then added two more octagonal wins before encountering Gafurov, who evened his UFC mark at 2-2.

Two fights earlier, 8-0 flyweight Clayton Carpenter fell from the unbeaten ranks when he lost a unanimous nod to 11th-ranked Tagir Ulanbekov.

Sometimes, the wins are worthy of highlight reels.

And other times, simply surviving for a hand raise is the end game.

The latter was certainly true Saturday for bantamweight Bernardo Sopaj, who was a superior all-around fighter but had to get through 15 minutes of reckless pressure and an emptying gas tank to secure a unanimous decision over Ricky Turcios.

Sopaj, the card's youngest participant at 24, was beaten on short notice in his promotional debut last winter but was consistently faster and sharper than Turcios. However, the 30-year-old Texan never stopped coming forward, trying to make it an all-out brawl.

Turcios wound up with a 113-97 edge in landed strikes and attempted nine takedowns. Still, Sopaj defended all but one of the takedown tries and landed 64 significant strikes to his opponent's head, leaving him reddened and bloodied by the final horn.

"That was a crazy fight," Sopaj said. "I came to the UFC to fight the best and to have this kind of war. I've never seen anything like this in my life."

The fight wasn't much to speak of, excitement-wise.

But 11th-ranked Russian flyweight Ulanbekov did his best to augment the combat, providing some running commentary during the match and a bold call-out afterward.

The protege of Khabib Nurmagomedov was a unanimous decision winner over the previously unbeaten Carpenter in the show's curtain-raiser just after 6 p.m. ET.

He took down his younger, greener foe in each round and prefaced the final takedown with a look toward nearby analyst Cormier and a suggestion that "this is for you" as he picked Carpenter up and sent him to the mat for a third time.

Then, during a post-fight interview with Joe Rogan, he staked a claim for the upper echelon of the flyweight division with a message directed at champion Alexandre Pantoja.

"All I need is a chance," he said. "Hey Pantoja, I am coming for my belt."

Main Card

Islam Makhachev def. Renato Moicano by submission (d'arce choke), 4:05, Round 1

Merab Dvalishvili def. Umar Nurmagomedov by unanimous decision (48-47, 48-47, 49-46)

Jiří Procházka def. Jamahal Hill by KO (punches), 3:01, Round 3

Jailton Almeida def. Serghei Spivac by KO (punches), 4:53, Round 1

Reinier de Ridder def. Kevin Holland by submission (rear-naked choke), 3:31, Round 1

Preliminary Card

Raoni Barcelos def. Payton Talbott by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 30-26)

Azamat Bekoev def. Zachary Reese by KO (punches), 3:04, Round 1

Bogdan Guskov def. Billy Elekana by submission (guillotine choke), 3:33, Round 2

Grant Dawson def. Diego Ferreira by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 30-27)

Early Preliminary Card

Ailin Perez def. Karol Rosa by unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 30-27)

Muin Gafurov def. Rinya Nakamura by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 30-27)

Bernardo Sopaj def. Ricky Turcios by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 29-28)

Tagir Ulanbekov def. Clayton Carpenter by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 29-28)