Season 7 of Dana White’s Contender Series continues down the home stretch tonight (Tues., Oct. 2, 2023) with its penultimate episode, which serves as the first of this week’s two APEX events.
The action begins, as it will for the rest of the season, at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN+.
Though Mario Piazzon went home empty-handed after his DQ win over Alexander Soldatkin, last week’s other four fights produced six new contracts. Vinicius Oliveira and Danny Barlow punched their tickets with brutal first-round finishes, while Danny Silva’s and Ernesta Kareckaite’s victorious wars with Angel Pacheco and Carli Judice sent the winners and the losers to the big show.
A year after suffering his second loss to Vitor Petrino, Brazilian Light Heavyweight Rodolfo Bellato (10-2) returns to the program to face Bahrain’s Murtaza Talha (6-0) in tonight’s main event. This season’s heavy South American push continues in the co-feature, which pits Chilean Bantamweight Eduardo Matias Torres (16-1) against Victor Hugo Silva (23-4) and his seven-year winning streak.
Talha’s KHK MMA teammate Magomed Gazhiyasulov (7-0) fights Jose Daniel Media (11-2) in further 205-pound action, while ONE and Eagle FC standout Raimond Magomedov (10-1) steps in to meet Mauricio Ruffy (8-1).
Lucas Rocha was supposed to open the broadcast in a Flyweight bout with Davi Bittencourt, but obliterated the scale at 131, so that’s been scrapped.
Contender Series news and notes, be sure to hit up our comprehensive archive right here.
