Fast facts
- Division: Flyweight (has also fought at bantamweight and at a 130-pound catchweight)
- Record: 7-9-1 in the UFC, by his fight-by-fight results
- Nationality: American
- Team/gym: Not named in available sources. He began training after longtime friend and fighter Travis Knight invited him to a gym
- Notable wins: Matt Schnell (anaconda choke, Performance of the Night), Jake Hadley, Jafel Filho, JP Buys (first-round TKO), Charles Johnson, Carlos Mota
Somewhere around the eighth grade, Cody Durden’s body made a decision for him. He had been a baseball kid, the type who played whatever sport was in season, and then he stopped growing. So he walked away from the diamond completely and went to the one sport where a small kid gets sorted onto a scale and matched against someone his own size.
It worked. By the time he graduated from Eastside High School in 2009, he had gone 121-31 under coach Michael Smith-Foot, collected four area championships and two sectional titles, reached the state final as a senior, and helped carry the Eagles to two state championships. Smith-Foot’s name doesn’t show up on any UFC broadcast, but every scramble Durden has won since started in that room.
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Then life got in the way, the ordinary way it does. His son arrived in 2011, and Durden went to work instead of going to school. There’s no college wrestling chapter here, no redshirt year, no Olympic trials. There’s a young father with a paycheck to earn until his friend Travis Knight, a mixed martial artist himself, asked him to come train. Durden started showing up regularly around age 21.
The long road in
His amateur debut in 2014 was a loss to Francisco Quijada under the National Fighting Championship banner. He answered with five straight wins in the NFC and turned pro. He won his first four professional fights, dropped back-to-back bouts to Jared Scoggins and Ryan Hollis, and then ran off seven consecutive wins, every one of them a stoppage. Somewhere in that stretch he won the Valor Fighting Challenge bantamweight title.
The UFC called the way it often calls guys like Durden, with someone else’s fight. He replaced Luke Sanders against Chris Gutiérrez at UFC Fight Night 173 on August 1, 2020, and the bout ended in a draw. He dropped to flyweight afterward, then got scratched from a December 5 date with Jimmy Flick because of conjunctivitis. Pink eye, of all things. The fight moved to December 19 at UFC Fight Night 183, and Flick caught him with a flying triangle in Round 1.
The run, and the walls
Durden beat Aori Qileng by unanimous decision in November 2021, then ran into Muhammad Mokaev in March 2022 and lost to a first-round guillotine. What came next was the best stretch of his career. He stopped JP Buys in the first round at UFC on ESPN 38 in June 2022. He outpointed Carlos Mota, the LFA flyweight champion who took the fight on four days’ notice when Kleydson Rodrigues withdrew. He decisioned Charles Johnson in April 2023. And in August 2023 he jumped onto UFC on ESPN: Sandhagen vs. Font to face Jake Hadley after Tagir Ulanbekov couldn’t compete, and won another decision.
Four straight. Then the UFC booked him against Ulanbekov himself at UFC 296 on December 16, 2023, and Ulanbekov finished him with a face crank in Round 2. The man Durden had replaced was the man who ended his streak.
2024 got stranger. Durden was pulled from a UFC 303 fight with Carlos Hernandez, and he later explained in an interview that the issue was a banned substance from a possibly contaminated supplement. He was exonerated. He came back in July and lost to Bruno Gustavo da Silva by second-round TKO.
Seven weeks later came the defining night. On under a week’s notice, replacing an injured Alessandro Costa, Durden moved up to bantamweight to face Matt Schnell at UFC Fight Night 242 on September 7, 2024. He finished Schnell with an anaconda choke in Round 2 and earned his first Performance of the Night bonus. It was a short-notice veteran beating a veteran, up a weight class, with a choke that wrestlers love because it rewards the scramble.
The hard part
The last two years have been rough, and the record shows it honestly. A unanimous decision loss to Joshua Van at UFC 310. A second-round knockout loss to Jose Ochoa in June 2025. A second-round anaconda choke loss to Allan Nascimento at 130 pounds in November 2025, a fight he took when Rafael Estevam withdrew. A decision loss to Nyamjargal Tumendemberel at UFC 326 in March 2026.
Then, in April, he did the Durden thing again. On six days’ notice, replacing Lucas Rocha, he went up to bantamweight against Jafel Filho at UFC Fight Night 274 and won a unanimous decision.
The Osbourne fight was supposed to come next, on July 11 at UFC 329. Osbourne pulled out with an injury, and the replacement was Alessandro Costa, the same fighter whose injury had opened the door to the Schnell win. Costa submitted Durden with a rear-naked choke in Round 2.
Add it up and Durden is 2-6 over his last eight. Five of his UFC losses have come by submission, which is a strange line for a high school wrestler with 121 wins. My read is that he fights in the places a wrestler wants to fight, the scrambles and the front headlocks, and at this level the other guy wants to be there too. The same willingness that gets him into those positions got him the Schnell choke.
What I keep coming back to is how often his name has been the answer to someone else’s problem. Luke Sanders out, Durden in. Ulanbekov out, Durden in. Costa out, Durden in. Estevam out, Rocha out, Durden in. He said yes to Filho with less than a week to prepare and won. That availability has kept him on the roster for six years, and it has also put him in front of Mokaev, Van and a parade of people who had full camps.
What’s next
This time the fight is his. Durden, 35, faces Ode’ Osbourne on October 31, 2026, at UFC Fight Night 292 (also billed as UFC Vegas 123) at the Meta Apex in Las Vegas, according to cards published by MMA Junkie and MMA Mania. Renato Moicano and Tom Nolan headline, and Randy Brown meets Jacobe Smith in the reshuffled co-main. Championship Rounds flagged the Osbourne bout on X this week as one of the weekend’s fights.
Durden is a father, a stepfather to his wife’s daughter, and the kid who stopped growing and found a mat. On Saturday he finally gets the opponent he signed up for back in the summer, at a full camp’s distance, on the night everybody else is wearing a costume.
