Michael Dufort wasn’t on the UFC Edmonton card, so he did the next best thing and shook Dana White’s hand. The 18-6 lightweight, attending Friday’s ceremonial weigh-ins as a fan, pulled the UFC boss aside and pitched himself for a contract. Video of the exchange spread Saturday, and Bloody Elbow ran the full back-and-forth.
Dufort opened with a number. “264 days of asking Dana White to sign me to the UFC,” he said mid-handshake. A friend standing with him handled the hype, telling White, “He’s the number one in Canada, the best pound-for-pound fighter,” which is a line every regional fighter’s buddy has delivered in a hotel lobby at least once.
White asked about weight. “155lbs, I’d be ready for it,” Dufort said. White then wanted to know whether Dufort knew matchmakers Sean Shelby and Mick Maynard and whether he’d been talking to them, before landing the line of the night: “How the f were you not on the Contender Series?”
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Dufort gave him the short version. “I don’t know, I tried, I’m 18-6, I’ve won my last five fights, I’m 32,” he said.
“Okay, I’ll talk to the boys about it,” White replied.
The resume
Dufort, 32, holds the lightweight titles in Cage Titans and Samurai MMA and rides a five-fight win streak. Along the way he has beaten three former UFC fighters in Joe Giannetti, Mads Burnell and Luis Pena. His most recent win came by a rare pretzel submission, which had fans online calling for the UFC to sign him.
X user @zaclikesmma posted that all five wins in the streak came by finish, and offered a blunt answer to White’s question: “Easy, the UFC barely actually scouts for that.”
The timing stings a little. The 10th season of Dana White’s Contender Series wrapped Tuesday, and White’s team handed out 46 contracts, tying the show’s single-season record. Dufort wasn’t among them. Age is probably part of the story. White has historically been candid about signing fighters over 30, and fighters that age rarely show up on DWCS.
There’s precedent for the ambush pitch, and it isn’t great. At the UFC 308 press conference, undefeated Dorobshokh Nabotov hijacked the proceedings to ask for a contract, and White brought him up on stage. Nabotov didn’t get a UFC deal. White instead got him a fight on The Korean Zombie’s promotion, where he lost a unanimous decision and went unsigned.
Meanwhile, the actual card goes on Saturday in Edmonton. Joaquin Buckley and Mike Malott headline at welterweight, and Jasmine Jasudavicius meets Erin Blanchfield in a co-main that could put her in line for a title shot.
My take: “I’ll talk to the boys” is the polite way Dana ends a conversation, and plenty of guys have heard it and never gotten a call. But Dufort brought more than a friend with a megaphone. He brought three former UFC names on his record, two belts and a streak of finishes. That’s a guy Shelby and Maynard should have on a short-notice list at 155 right now, because the first time a lightweight falls off a card on fight week, Dufort is the exact kind of fighter who takes the call and shows up.
