The latest season of Dana White’s Contender Series kicked off with some memorable highlights on Tuesday night in Las Vegas.
DWCS, the inaugural season of which took place back in 2017, sees some of the top prospects in mixed martial arts enter the cage in front of White and the matchmakers, looking to put in a performance worthy of a place on the UFC roster.
Last year’s edition saw 46 fighters bag a deal with the sport’s premier promotion across 10 events, up on the 43 from 2022. And episode one of season eight this week saw four prospects move a step closer to their title dreams on MMA’s biggest stage.
The return of DWCS began in violent fashion courtesy of former Cage Warriors standout Lone’er Kavanagh, who landed a short left hook to brutally knock out the highly touted An Tuan Ho in the very first round.
Flyweights set the pace, and the featherweights soon matched it. Continuing the trend of vicious stoppages, MMA Lab’s Jose Delgado landed a flush knee to the head of Ernie Juarez to get things done in round two.
The other two victors to land finishes, light heavyweight Bruno Lopes and middleweight Mansur Abdul-Malik, were also rewarded with contracts, although the decision to grant the former one caused considerable debate on social media.
Rami Hamed’s lackluster decision win over Meng Ding marked the only fight not to produce a new UFC athlete on Tuesday night.
With that in mind, see below for the moments that landed four athletes contracts with the UFC.
