UFC 316 is in the books, and we have one new champion and one champion making a claim for all-time greatness.
On Saturday in Newark, N.J., Merab Dvalishvili successfully defended his men’s bantamweight title at UFC 316, submitting Sean O’Malley in their rematch in the main event. Now with two title defenses to his name, Dvalishvili is rapidly rising in the ranks of all-time great status, but just how far along is he?
Plus, earlier in the evening, Kayla Harrison added more hardware to her legendary trophy case, claiming the women’s bantamweight title with a second-round submission of Julianna Peña and setting up a superfight with Amanda Nunes.
So, with plenty to talk about coming off the latest pay-per-view entry, MMA Fighting once again gathered the brain trust to break down the big topics coming off of UFC 316.
1. What is your blurb review of UFC 316?
Martin: Better than anyone expected. There were a lot of groans and moans about the UFC 316 lineup, but the fights mostly played out with some great drama, and even though the main and co-main event ended as most expected, the way everything unfolded was still thrilling.
Lee: The top two fights delivered with two legitimate all-time greats putting on statement-making performances, some dark horse contenders stepped up, and a few bright prospects made an impact. Overall, a tidy night at the office for the UFC and a fine appetizer for the more star-studded June 28 pay-per-view.
Heck: One of the better cards of the year, overall. Four out of the five main card fights delivered at least a little bit of a storyline, Kayla Harrison put herself in one of the biggest fights the UFC can make right now, and Merab Dvalishvili is simply a demon.
Meshew: Surprisingly fun! Sure, the main event was still one of the most undeserving title fights in modern history, but the outcome was fun (a rarity for Dvalishvili), and the rest of the card was equally filled with meaningful, memorable performances. Rock solid offering from the UFC.
2. Is Merab Dvalishvili the bantamweight GOAT already?
Meshew: LOL. No, and I’m so sick of this. Every time a fighter wins a belt and gets one title defense, suddenly, they are the new GOAT. Dvalishvili has two title defenses, and one of those is this very silly rematch that wasn’t deserved. The man may well end up there, but prematurely crowning him is so silly and so disrespectful to long-reigning champions. Hell, Merab might not even be ahead of Aljamain Sterling right now.
If Merab can beat Cory Sandhagen, then we can at least start the conversation, and if he adds another title defense after that, he’s probably got it locked up. But there’s a big world of difference between “if” and “does,” and I’m old enough to remember when people were saying Kamaru Usman was now the welterweight GOAT. Don’t hear that one anymore because Usman lost his next fight. And that’s the thing: defending a belt is the hardest thing to do in the sport. That’s why Dominick Cruz having five title defenses is worthy of respect.
(Also, because everyone loves to point out his current run—which is great—I’d like to remind you that two of those wins were three-rounders. That is NOT a championship fight. Saying his wins over Henry Cejudo and Jose Aldo are tantamount to title defenses is completely asinine.)
So please, for the love of all things, let a fighter PROVE their GOATliness before rushing to anoint them out of desperation. If he’s as good as you believe, he’ll get there in time.
Martin: Yes, he’s the GOAT, and it all really comes down to the level of competition.
It’s never fun to build one guy up while tearing another one down, but the fact is Dvalishvili has faced stiffer opposition during his run to the championship and then subsequent title defenses than somebody like Dominick Cruz. Make no mistake, Cruz deserves mention here but the fact is many of his biggest wins in the WEC came against flyweights.
The two most glaring examples are Demetrious Johnson and Joseph Benavidez, who were 125-pounders masquerading as bantamweights because the flyweight division just didn’t exist at the time. Cruz also holds a win over Ian McCall—another true flyweight. Cruz’s biggest wins came against Urijah Faber (legit) and a contentious decision over T.J. Dillashaw.
Meanwhile, Dvalishvili has been fighting and beating straight-up savages for the past few years. Jose Aldo, Henry Cejudo, Petr Yan, Umar Nurmagomedov, and now Sean O’Malley twice. The reality is, Cruz came along when bantamweight was still largely in its infancy, and Dvalishvili gets the advantage of a very deep division that’s arguably the best in the sport right now. That’s why he’s the GOAT, and each win is only furthering the argument for Merab.
Lee: I don’t think so, but I also don’t have a strong argument against it.
For the longest time, the de facto answer has been Cruz, and for good reason. In his prime, “The Dominator” was the man at 135 pounds, and his list of wins is incredible. People forget he was the only fighter to beat “Mighty Mouse” from 2012-2017! Add in his multiple wins over Faber and Benavidez, and a dubious decision over Dillashaw, and he beat nearly every one of his contemporaries (yes, there was the Cody Garbrandt loss, still weird), which is all you can ask a great to do, really. So I’m fine keeping him at No. 1 for now.
Emphasis on “for now” because the run Dvalishvili is on right now is damn near ridiculous and he doesn’t have the lost time that spoiled Cruz’s career. Before anyone else screams at me, I’ll declare now, no matter who Dvalishvili beats next (as long as it’s not O’Malley again) I’ll finally bump him to the top spot.
Heck: I’m not quite there just yet, but he’s in the on-deck circle.
Don’t get me wrong, Dvalishvili’s win streak is insane. He’s beaten several former champions, he beat Sean O’Malley for the title, submitted him in a great performance in the rematch, and handed the man many believed was the boogeyman of the division his first loss in January. To say he’s not fully in the conversation is ludicrous, in my opinion. I tried to go into this fight with O’Malley like the first fight didn’t happen, but we can’t ignore that it happened nine months ago, and O’Malley didn’t pick up a win in between the two bouts.
The gap has certainly closed in the Merab vs. Cruz discussion, but, despite the injuries and long layoffs, Cruz still defined the greatness that made this division what it is today. He has three UFC title defenses, which is one more than Dvalishvili, and rings simply matter to me in these conversations. That said, if Dvalishvili does to Cory Sandhagen what he just did to O’Malley, he becomes the bantamweight GOAT by proxy.
3. How excited are you for Kayla Harrison vs. Amanda Nunes?
Heck: Incredibly excited, and the faceoff following Harrison’s title win put it over the top as one of the coolest moments of 2025 in a year where, quite frankly, the UFC needs them.
Despite the women’s divisions lacking a whole lot of buzz at the moment, Harrison gave it a much-needed boost, and it’s a fight years in the making that many believed couldn’t happen when it first entered the fantasy matchmaking realm. Now that it’s here, it’s one of the five biggest fights the UFC can put on right now.
With the build, Nunes’ comeback, Harrison getting a lopsided stoppage win to win the gold, plus the new TV deal being a huge talking point, the possibilities to make this fight as big as it can be are endless. This could easily be the first women’s MMA fight to headline Madison Square Garden. It could headline a potential Netflix debut if the UFC makes that move. And if Harrison wins, the barber shop and bar stool conversations surrounding Harrison’s combat accolades get incredibly interesting. As a man who enjoys the best of the best fighting each other, as well as a good storyline, this one checks off all of the boxes, and then some.
Meshew: Friggin’ pumped, and honestly, I wasn’t expecting to be that way.
Heading into Saturday, I was very sure Harrison would roll through Peña, but I was pretty “meh” about the ensuing Harrison-Nunes matchup. And then they faced off in the cage, and suddenly I’m all in.
Bantamweight used to be the marquee women’s weight class in the sport, and now it’s on life support. I don’t know if this fight will save the division as a whole, but it gives it a nice boost, and it’s fun to finally be excited for a women’s bantamweight title fight again.
Martin: This is exactly the fight women’s MMA has needed, and now we just need the UFC to deliver. Ever since watching Harrison rag doll 170-pound women in the Olympics and then declaring she wanted to do the same in MMA, I’ve been leading the charge that she was the future of this sport. Now, Harrison is finally a UFC champion, and the only person standing in her way of potentially claiming GOAT status is the actual GOAT, Amanda Nunes.
Women’s MMA, and bantamweight in particular, has been pretty stagnant lately without a whole lot to get excited about, but Harrison vs. Nunes is exactly the kind of fight that can headline a major pay-per-view, and we’d all gladly plunk down $80 to watch it.
Lee: I didn’t need to see this fight, but now that it’s happening, I can’t wait for it to be officially announced.
Harrison did the damn thing perfectly on Saturday after decimating Peña, delivering a deeply personal post-fight speech and then making the callout everyone saw coming with Nunes right there to hear it. The timing couldn’t be better either, with Harrison in her prime and Nunes coming out of retirement, leaving the outcome wide open. Has Harrison leveled up enough to beat the GOAT? Will Nunes’ time off benefit or hurt her? We get to find out, no more hypotheticals! MMA is fun!
4. Who was the biggest loser at UFC 316?
Lee: I’m really glad I’m going first here because I don’t see how there can be any other answer than Patchy Mix.
What. Was. That.
Octagon jitters? Undisclosed injury? Bad style matchup? Mario Bautista just being that damn good (this is the one I want to believe)? Who knows?
Heading into his UFC debut, Mix couldn’t possibly slip on the same banana peel as fellow Bellator star Patricio Pitbull, or so we thought. It was even worse. There was no sign of his dynamic grappling game, he was a sitting duck in the standup, and later on, when he managed to land a few punches, he started throwing his arms in the air like he was daring Bautista to bring it on. My dude, you are losing!
The second-biggest loser is dorks like us who have been backing Mix for years. Just bad times all around.
Heck: To begin, it’s 100 percent Patchy Mix as AK just laid out, and any other answer is simply wrong. I said leading into this fight we would find out Mix’s UFC ceiling in 15 minutes or less in this fight, and we did. As I’ve said in many of our shows over the years, I’ve never been sold on Mix being the best bantamweight in the world, and Saturday confirmed he is one of the sport’s 10-15 best bantamweights, but he’s not going to win a UFC title. There are big gaps between good, really good, and great, and Mix is really good.
I also understand Mix took the fight on short notice. But when you put out the energy he put out, and say the types of things he said all week long leading to the fight, confidently “looking through” Mario Bautista like he was a stepping stone, that reasoning goes out the window. When pen hits paper, a choice is made, and the consequences to come with that choice must come with it.
Having said that, and to be different, I’ll go with Julianna Peña, even though it’s incorrect. Peña, at least for the short term, has a head-scratching future after getting run over by Harrison. The Nunes trilogy fight is gone, a rematch with Harrison is incredibly unlikely, and because of how thin this division is, Peña now becomes the Katlyn Cerminara of bantamweight, where she’ll have to fend off rising contenders looking for a title fight rather than competing for one herself.
The positive? Peña is a two-time UFC champion and, because of that, she’ll be a UFC Hall of Famer. She has one of the most memorable wins in UFC history, and despite her overall strange résumé, nobody can take those accomplishments away from her.
Meshew: It was very nearly Merab Dvalishvili, as during his walkout, he narrowly avoided getting squashed when part of the stands fell right next to him. Fortunately, he was OK, but I almost lost my mind at how insane that would’ve been. So instead (and because we can’t all say Patchy), I’ll go with Tom Aspinall, who had to leave Saturday with his head hanging low.
For nearly two years, Aspinall has been teased with a Jon Jones fight that’s still not here. And Saturday, even Dana White grudgingly admitted that Jones might want to retire. And if Dana is admitting that, it means this thing is completely dead.
Worse yet for Aspinall, there were rumors last week about Francis Ngannou possibly being interested in a return to the UFC. So even if Aspinall missed out on Jones, that could’ve been a massive fight for him. Alas, White completely shot that down, so now Tom Aspinall is left with Ciryl Gane, probably. Talk about a letdown.
Martin: Saying that Mix lost the most with that performance on Saturday certainly isn’t wrong, but in reality, nobody took a bigger hit at UFC 316 than Sean O’Malley.
Once positioned to become the new face of the company with all the potential to possibly ascend to Conor McGregor levels of stardom, O’Malley has now lost back-to-back fights to Merab Dvalishvili. The bantamweight title is completely out of reach and all the ways he kept people interested outside the sport—the colorful hair, the brash trash talk, the weed, the video games, etc.—are now also gone because he gave those up to deliver a better performance and still got tapped in the third round.
This is the danger of these kinds of rematches being booked because now O’Malley basically lives in limbo with two losses to the current champ. Unless he goes on an insane run through the division, he essentially has to wait for Merab to lose to get back into the title picture. O’Malley can still be a draw, but he doesn’t have rivals like McGregor did with Nate Diaz or Dustin Poirier to keep people interested in his fights without a title belt involved. O’Malley has some A-side energy left, but he better find a worthy B-side for his next fight or he might become one of the greatest “what ifs” in UFC history.
5. Outside of the two title fights, who stole the show at UFC 316?
Martin: The answer is Mario Bautista, and every other option is just wrong.
No one became more universally despised for doing nothing more than winning a fight than Bautista did for the egregious error of beating Jose Aldo. Call it controversial, call it a boring performance, but Bautista won. Somehow, that meant he became public enemy No. 1 overnight.
Fast forward to UFC 316, and all the attention was on Patchy Mix making his long-awaited UFC debut. He was already being posed as a potential title challenger to Dvalishvili because they were friends and trained together frequently. But unlike Aljamain Sterling, Mix had no problem setting friendship aside so he could become UFC champion. That all changed after Bautista beat the brakes off him for 15 consecutive minutes.
Outside of a couple of random strikes that did some damage, Bautista picked Mix apart, busted him up, and bloodied him while giving the former Bellator champion a rude welcome to his new home. Bautista looked fantastic, and you can stay mad about the Aldo fight, but give this man his due for a job well done on Saturday.
Lee: Waldo Cortes-Acosta, come on down, because you are realistically one good win away from fighting for the UFC heavyweight title.
This Jon Jones vs. Tom Aspinall nonsense will be resolved by the end of this year, one way or another, and at some point, we’re going to need fresh blood in the title picture. Cortes-Acosta currently owns the longest win streak in the division (read that again… yup) and likely gets a top 10 opponent next. If “Salsa Boy” can shimmy his way to a win over Sergei Pavlovich or Ciryl Gane, you better believe he’s fighting for a belt!
You’ve been warned.
Heck: I’m going with Kevin Holland, because not only did he steal the show, he stole the day, too.
It all started with this incredibly vague tweet that sent the MMA social media community, which showed its rear end so much, into an uproar.
Well this is fooked up
— Kevin Holland (@Trailblaze2top) June 7, 2025
Whether it was Holland or someone else running his social media, this was brilliant. Nearly 2 million impressions for five words that meant absolutely nothing. So many people took it to mean that his fight with Vicente Luque was off, and Holland became the biggest talking point for hours leading up to the event.
And then the bell rang, where Holland put a beating on Luque before tapping him in the second round, and then did the thing with a perfect callout of Colby Covington.
Holland has low-key had one of the best prize-fighting careers in the modern era. The man fights all the time, he’s saved the UFC on multiple occasions, and he’s made A LOT of money doing it. While fighters strive to be massive stars and fight for world titles and the glory that brings, Holland just wants to make bags of cash as often as possible, and he’s fun as hell, too. Holland’s “Trailblazer” nickname is perfect, because he’s certainly doing that, and more fighters should probably follow suit.
Meshew: All this talk about “Is Merab the GOAT?” and “Can Kayla become the GOAT by beating Amanda?” and nobody is talking about the biggest thing that happened on Saturday: a real GOAT emerged, Vitor “Shaolin” Ribeiro!
A multiple-time BJJ world champion and pioneer of MMA in the early 2000s, Shaolin is now an MMA referee, and on Saturday, he did something unheard of—he took a point from Julianna Peña! Even good MMA referees refuse to take points from fighters unless the offender is cheating so egregiously and frequently that they have no other choice (which is stupid), but not Shaolin. Peña socked Harrison with a pair of illegal upkicks, and Ribeiro jumped in there immediately and docked her the point. It was awesome. These are two championship-level fighters; they know what cheating is and not to do it, and Ribeiro did his job perfectly.
All hail Shaolin, the new GOAT referee. Long may he ref.
No te pierdas de las últimas noticias de MMA UFC, SmackWrestling te presenta toda la información, noticias & rumores. Síguenos en nuestras redes sociales para que no te pierdas lo ultimo en información de MMA. Recuerda que también puedes ver todo el UFC En Vivo!
