The latest season of Dana White’s Contender Series continued 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. In episode one of season eight last week, four prospects moved a step closer to their title dreams on MMA’s biggest stage.
And the sophomore episode added another four talents to the UFC roster. That included Australia’s Cody Haddon, who opened proceedings with an impressive ‘club and sub’ victory over Billy Brand, dropping him with a stiff left hook before finding the rear-naked choke in the first round.
Violence continued a few fights later. After Cortavious Romious did enough across three rounds to impress White, Rizvan Kuniev left little doubt with his buzzer-beating knockout of Hugo Cunha. The outing marked the Russian’s first bout since having a win over PFL’s Renan Ferreira overturned after he tested positive for a slew of banned substances.
He’ll be looking ahead to a new chapter in his career alongside Andreas Gustafsson, who utilized hard knees in the clinch to get the better of Pat Pytlik midway through round two of the main event.
Torrez Finney’s lackluster decision win over Cam Rowston 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.
