UFC 310 is in the books, and Alexandre Pantoja remains the flyweight champion of the world.
On Saturday in Las Vegas, Pantoja secured the third defense of his 125-pound title with a second-round submission over Kai Asakura in the main event of UFC 310. Earlier in the evening, Shavkat Rakhmonov kept his undefeated streak alive with a hard-fought win over Ian Machado Garry, setting himself up for a welterweight title shot in 2025.
So with so much to talk about, we gathered the MMA Fighting brain trust to break down the biggest topics from UFC 310.
1. What is your blurb review of UFC 310?
Lee: It wasn’t the card the UFC wanted, but it was certainly the card they and us deserved.
Overall, it’s been a kick-ass year for the UFC, with the good outweighing the bad, and that applies to Saturday’s event, too. We got another pantheon performance from Alexandre Pantoja, Shavkat Rakhmanov and Ian Machado Garry both raised their stock in different ways, and Bryce Mitchell vs. Kron Gracie delivered the weirdness we expected with a satisfying finish as a bonus.
We won’t be gushing over the action from this event anytime soon, but in terms of storylines, it was a season finale.
Meshew: An enjoyable evening for hardcore MMA fans.
Heading into the event, I said that, on paper, it was the third-best pay-per-view of the year, top to bottom. That action didn’t quite live up to that, but it was pretty good all around, with some notable performances on the undercard and then a main card that simultaneously underwhelmed and delivered. Ultimately, what we got was a fun but flawed card with a couple of very significant moments, which should be more than enough for the deeply invested fan base.
Heck: UFC 310 is a middle-of-the-pack at best card, but it showed the highest of highs and lowest of lows the sport has to offer. For every Movsar Evloev vs. Aljamain Sterling, we got Eryk Anders running over Chris Weidman. For the testicular fortitude that Shavkat Rakhmonov and Ian Machado Garry displayed, we got Anthony Smith getting uncomfortably hit 100-plus unanswered times.
But we also got the cementing of Alexandre Pantoja as not just a pound-for-pound great, but the second-best UFC flyweight of all-time. Pantoja had the best performance of his career and put Kai Asakura to sleep in his third title defense.
Martin: A pay-per-view that won’t be remembered very long.
The year-end show wasn’t exactly star-studded, but the card took a big hit when Belal Muhammad was forced out of his title fight against Shavkat Rakhmonov. The UFC has largely had an incredible year filled with unbelievable memories, but it’s safe to assume that this show won’t go down as a “best of” for anybody when those lists start rolling out to cap off 2024. Pantoja beating a guy most casual fans didn’t know until he signed with the UFC didn’t help matters much, and the most anticipated fight between Rakhmonov and Garry was a compelling chess match, but not the barnburner many expected. Outside of that, none of the results really truly impact the future unless you count Dana White preparing to hand out gold watches to Chris Weidman, Anthony Smith, and Clay Guida as parting gifts for years of service to the UFC.
2. What was the best moment of UFC 310?
Heck: The actual correct answer is Pantoja being the freaking man, but I’ll go with Movsar Evloev vs. Aljamain Sterling. It was buried on the prelims, and many fans defended that decision, and the fight delivered in spades.
The two “boring” fighters sent fans on a fun roller-coaster ride of high-level grappling mixed in with Evloev’s underrated striking. When Evloev hit Sterling, the former bantamweight champ accepted it, but he sure didn’t like it. In the end, the one thing that ultimately hurts this fight from aging as well as it should is the scorecards — although I believe the judges got it right, especially during a Sunday morning rewatch. Control against only control, Sterling wins, but Evloev landed strikes, tried to, and did inflict at least some damage in the close rounds. If you scored it for Aljo, I respect it, but I don’t agree. What a terrific fight, either way!
Lee: Age-appropriate matchmaking for the win!
Now, not every pairing of over-30 competitors turned out well (the less said about Dominick Reyes drubbing Anthony Smith just weeks after Smith lost his close friend and coach Scott Morton, and Eryk Anders battering former UFC champion Chris Weidman the better), but Michael Chiesa vs. Max Griffin was a sharp booking.
Chiesa’s dual role of fighter and analyst has endeared him to the promotion, and Griffin has been putting on his UFC hard hat since 2016, so both guys deserve a fair matchup as opposed to being thrown to a young contender. In this instance, Chiesa was given the chance to put on a vintage performance on his birthday, and add another rear-naked choke to the résumé. Even better, he’s now perfectly set up to compete in his home state with the UFC announcing a return to Seattle on Feb. 22.
Martin: Does Vicente Luque sleeping Themba Gorimbo and not Nick Diaz count?
Well, that’s the highlight because sometimes it’s easy to forget the way some fighters entertain us for years but then are suddenly forgotten after a couple of tough performances. Luque was in that position after going 1-3 over four fights, with his lone victory not exactly providing any lasting memories. That changed on Saturday after Luque dropped Gorimbo with a punch and immediately locked on an anaconda choke that put The Rock’s favorite fighter to sleep. To his credit, Gorimbo seems to be handling the loss with grace, and he still has plenty of time to bounce back. It’s tough to imagine anybody would be feeling the same way if that happened to Diaz, whose best years are long since behind him and concerns about his overall well-being should trump any more talk about another comeback.
Meshew: Yeah, you’re all insane. The best moment of UFC 310 was pretty clearly everything about Alexandre Pantoja.
On one of our recent Rankings Shows, I argued that Pantoja is the most underrated fighter in the UFC and tragically underrated by even our own pound-for-pound rankings panel. Well, I don’t think that’s going to be an issue anymore. After demolishing Kai Asakura like he did, I expect people may finally start to put some respect on the champion’s name.
And thank god for that. Pantoja is one of the rare fighters who is almost universally beloved. He’s not to the Max Holloway or Dustin Poirier level because, frankly, flyweights are doomed to forever be afterthoughts, but nobody has a bad thing to say about the champion, and he does everything the right way. So to see a guy like that pick up his third title defense and cement himself as the clear-cut second-greatest flyweight of all time (and when the No. 1 guy is Demetrious Johnson, well, two ain’t that bad), that’s a feel-good moment.
3. What was the worst moment of UFC 310?
Lee: Everything to do with Merab Dvalishvili heading into UFC 311.
You have to give Dvalishvili credit, his strategy of making himself immensely dislikable ahead of his first title defense is a bold one and to what end this is expected to pay off, only he knows. From doing everything in his power to discredit Umar Nurmagomedov, a challenger that everyone has embraced as the No. 1 contender for months now, and continuing to mix it up with fans (again, to what end, Merab???), the once-respected underdog has truly completed a heel turn that no one was asking for.
January can’t come soon enough.
Heck: I prefaced it earlier, but it was the sadness surrounding Chris Weidman and Anthony Smith’s losses. I truly don’t like to play the, “Yeah, he needs to probably call it a career card,” but we’re pretty much ringing the doorbell if not fully opening the door.
Weidman will go down as the man who dethroned Anderson Silva to become middleweight champ, but also the guy who came back from one of the most catastrophic injuries in UFC history. Anders, to me, was the perfect opponent to answer the “should he, or shouldn’t he” question, and outside of a flash knockdown in Round 1, Anders bodied Weidman.
Smith is one of the greatest overachievers in UFC history, and to see what he has been able to accomplish is truly incredible. As a fighter, he’s done more than enough. Time to be on the desk, or in the color commentator chair for the rest of his career — because he’s going to be phenomenal there as well.
Meshew: Mike is probably right in that there was a good deal of sadness on this card, but honestly, outside of that, nothing was really bad, per se. So, in light of that, I’ll be the hipster and acknowledge that Shavkat Rakhmonov vs. Ian Machado Garry was a huge disappointment.
Look, Rakhmonov—Garry was a solid, extremely high-level fight with ebbs and flows and major stakes, and we learned some important things, but it was not a great watch. And considering the high hopes we all had for it, I’ll admit that while watching it, I was a little bummed out. For the first time in his career, we saw Rakhmonov fight cautiously as if acknowledging that there was real risk in this matchup. That’s probably wise, and it did work out for him, but it led to large swaths of time where both men were fighting not to lose rather than fighting to win, and that wasn’t my favorite thing.
Martin: Heavyweight in shambles.
When Ciryl Gane got booked for a rematch against Alexander Volkov, it almost felt like an inevitability that the winner would then move on to challenge interim champion Tom Aspinall. As much as Aspinall wants the Jon Jones fight, he has to know, at best, that might happen in late 2025, so unless he wants to sit out for well over a year, he probably needs to start thinking about another title defense. The UFC loves giving Gane title shots, so it was all set up for him to grab that brass ring, but then he struggled to impress before ultimately winning a highly controversial split decision. While that probably gave Jones even more negotiating power to demand whatever he wants, it left Aspinall stuck in limbo without the fight he wants or at least a legitimate No. 1 contender to keep him busy in the meantime.
4. What’s your biggest takeaway from UFC 310?
Lee: Ian Machado Garry is way better than people were giving him credit for.
Heading into the battle of undefeateds, Garry was a sizable underdog, hovering around 3-to-1 on most books, with the prevailing theory being that once Rakhmonov got his hands on him, it would be suplex city and Garry would be tapping out in no time. After all, Rakhmonov was already supposed to be fighting Muhammad for the UFC welterweight title, and Garry was just a speed bump.
That’s not how it played out, with Garry giving Rakhmonov his toughest challenge yet and gaining a lot in defeat, especially with how he handled his post-fight media scrum. Garry touted the virtues of his performance while continuing to put over Rakhmonov as the most dangerous fighter in the division, which is exactly how you should sell a loss like that. I still don’t know if Garry has what it takes to actually get gold around his waist, but he’s got the champion swagger down should that day come.
Heck: Flyweight rocks!
Pantoja is so, so good and could hold on to the title for a long time. Sure, Pantoja has fought a lot of the top guys already, but I don’t care at all. Fight them again and again and again.
Not only did this generation shine at 125, but so did the next one. Joshua Van is only 23, and he put a grown man beatdown on a super tough and game Cody Durden. Van is going to be a problem in this division for the next decade and will probably wear UFC gold at some point.
Give the flyweights the respect they deserve because this is one of those divisions that has a ton of talent but also very rarely — if ever — lets you down.
Martin: Shavkat is human.
To expand on what my esteemed colleague Alexander K. Lee rightfully said praising Garry for his performance on Saturday, the opposite is somewhat true for Rakhmonov. His reputation as a devastating finisher made him seem nearly unbeatable, which is why he was such a heavy favorite going into UFC 310. But expectations weigh heavy in this sport, and Rakhmonov’s clinch-heavy, grind-him-against-the-cage strategy didn’t exactly wow anybody. Sure, he proved he can go five rounds, but it almost seemed like Rakhmonov was resigned to winning by points from the start. Maybe that was always the strategy, but that game plan won’t work against somebody like Belal Muhammad, who has a never-ending gas tank and applies pressure the first second of a fight until the last.
Meshew: Do not spit in the face of the Gods.
When the Gods give you the precious gift of hair like THIS,
you don’t disrespect them by doing THIS to it!
A classic tale of tragic hubris. Volkov brought this loss on himself.
