UFC: The Best Fights of the Month

Last Updated on August 31, 2026 7:42 pm by Erwin Noguera

Umar Nurmagomedov walked into Shanghai unbeaten, ranked at the top of the bantamweight division, and priced at -450.

Song Yadong knocked him out with an uppercut in the second round.

That is how UFC August closed, and it was the right ending for a month in which the favourites kept losing, and the finishes kept coming. Four events, one title fight, and a main event that went five rounds without either man getting a moment’s rest.

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Here are the fights that mattered.

Fight of the Month: Song Yadong def. Umar Nurmagomedov

KO (uppercut), Round 2, 1:48 — UFC Shanghai, 29 August

The most consequential ninety seconds of the month.

Nurmagomedov arrived as the division’s obvious next title challenger, with the surname, the record and a price that told you the market considered this a formality. Song caught him with a clean uppercut early in the second and ended it there.

It is comfortably the biggest win of Song’s career, and it reorders the entire bantamweight picture. A contender who looked inevitable is now a fighter with a knockout loss on his record, and the man who beat him did it in front of his own crowd in China.

Why it tops the list: upset, finish, and a division rearranged in one punch. Very few fights do all three.

The Best Fight Nobody Won Easily: Gregory Rodrigues def. Anthony Hernandez

Unanimous decision — UFC Sacramento, 22 August

If Song produced the moment, this produced the fight.

Rodrigues looked close to finishing it in the second, chopping down Hernandez’s lead leg and landing heavy shots that would have stopped most middleweights. Hernandez survived, then took the third outright and looked like the man who would close the show.

Rodrigues found a second wind in the fourth. Over the final five minutes, Hernandez repeatedly tried to close the distance and get it to the mat, and Rodrigues defended it every time while continuing to land the harder shots.

All three judges scored it for “Robocop.” It is his fourth consecutive win, and it was earned across twenty-five minutes in which the momentum changed hands at least three times.

Why it matters: decisions rarely make a best-of list. This one belongs on any of them.

The Most Historic: Islam Makhachev def. Ian Machado Garry

Unanimous decision, 49-46, 49-46, 48-47 — UFC 330, Philadelphia, 15 August

The only title fight of the month, and the record book took most of the story.

Makhachev retained with a clear, if not spectacular decision, and in doing so recorded his 17th consecutive UFC win and became only the fifth two-division champion to successfully defend titles in both weight classes.

Machado Garry took a round on one card and was competitive for stretches. He was also comprehensively out-managed over the distance, which has become the pattern with Makhachev: opponents are not usually destroyed; they are simply never allowed to do the thing they do well.

Why it matters: seventeen straight puts him in a conversation with very few fighters in the sport’s history, and he is not obviously slowing down.

The Breakout: Quillan Salkilld def. Mateusz Gamrot

Submission, Round 1 — UFC Vegas, 8 August

The month’s clearest arrival.

Salkilld was handed his first UFC main event against Gamrot, a fighter who has spent years hovering around the lightweight top ten and is known specifically for being extremely difficult to submit. Salkilld submitted him in the first round.

Diego Ferreira’s dominant win over Billy Quarantillo was the other standout on a card that did its job.

Why it matters: finishing a gatekeeper of that quality in one round, in a first headline assignment, changes a career immediately.

The Changing of the Guard: Esteban Ribovics def. Edson Barboza

TKO, Round 2 — UFC 330

Barboza has been one of the most exciting fighters in the UFC for well over a decade. Ribovics stopped him with punches in the second.

It was part of a genuinely violent UFC 330 undercard: five of the seven preliminary bouts ended inside the distance, including two third-round submissions and a first-round knockout from Donte Johnson. Chidi Njokuani closed the prelims with a clean technical decision over Joel Álvarez, the best win of his career to date.

Elsewhere on the main card, Jalin Turner stopped Kauê Fernandes in the first, and Dustin Stoltzfus submitted Mansur Abdul-Malik with a rear-naked choke in the second.

The Upsets Nobody Priced

Two more results from Shanghai deserve their own entry, because both ended a favourite’s night early.

Denise Gomes def. Yan Xiaonan: TKO by elbows and punches at 4:49 of the first. Yan was the ranked fighter, the better-established striker and the home favourite. She was finished inside a round.

Julia Polastri def. Xiong Jingnan: KO by head kick at 3:06 of the first. Xiong is a former champion and one of the most recognisable fighters in Chinese MMA. She was knocked out cold in her own building.

The Shanghai card also produced Kai Asakura’s 34-second second-round knockout of Aoriqileng and Liu Ce’s first-round right hook against Levi Rodrigues Jr. Three fighters (André Lima, Xiong Jingnan and Julia Polastri) missed weight.

How Our Shanghai Picks Did

We published thirteen free picks for the Shanghai card. They went 4-8, with one no-play.

The winners: Asakura inside the distance, Bilal Hasan, André Lima, and Rei Tsuruya. The no-play was the Liu Ce fight, where we said the under was the more defensible position without posting a side; it ended in the first round.

The losses were worse than the number suggests, because they were all the same loss.

We leaned on home advantage across the whole card. We took Xiong Jingnan at +180 as “the best underdog value on the card, a fighter of her calibre at plus money in front of her own crowd.” We took Ding Meng at +115 with the reasoning “take the free points on the man the building wants to win.” We took Xiao Long at -300 because “the crowd, the experience, and the price all point the same way.”

Xiong was head-kicked unconscious. Ding Meng lost a unanimous decision. Xiao Long was stopped in sixty seconds. Yan Xiaonan was finished in a round. Lawrence Lui was knocked out.

The Chinese fighters went badly at home almost across the board, with one enormous exception. Song Yadong, the only local fighter we picked against, produced the knockout of the month.

The lesson is not subtle. Crowd support is not a handicapping factor, and we applied it as one on seven separate fights.

What August Set Up

Bantamweight has a new problem. Nurmagomedov was the clear challenger and now is not. Song has the win that puts him in that conversation instead.

Makhachev has run out of obvious opponents. Seventeen straight and defences in two divisions leave the matchmakers looking for someone with a plausible route to beating him, and there is no consensus answer.

Rodrigues is four wins deep and has just beaten a top-ten middleweight in a fight he could have lost twice. That should be worth a ranked opponent with something at stake.

Salkilld is the name to watch. One round, one submission, one gatekeeper removed.

August produced a title defence for the history books and a knockout that undid two years of divisional planning. The knockout was the better story.