Dana White needs a new errand guy. Salhahuddin “Sal” Everett, the UFC employee who has spent the last stretch of his career as White’s personal runner, put Ozzy Martin to sleep with a right hand at 1:57 of Round 1 on Tuesday night at Dana White’s Contender Series Season 10, Week 9, and left Meta APEX with a UFC contract.
The welterweight co-main went the way Everett’s record suggested it might. He came out aggressive, stuck Martin with the jab over and over, then dropped the right hand that ended it. Yahoo Sports called it one of the most brutal knockouts of the season, and nobody watching was going to argue. The UFC’s own account posted the clip on X with the caption “BUSINESS IS BUSINESS.”
White didn’t make him sweat the decision. “Everybody at the UFC loves you, you’re a great kid. This could not happen to a better person... It’s kind of weird since you’re already at the UFC, but welcome to the UFC,” White told him, in a clip shared by Championship Rounds on X.
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From the mailroom to the Octagon
Everett, 29, is now 5-0 as a pro after a 4-0 amateur run. He has finished every opponent he’s faced, and Martin makes five straight pro fights that didn’t reach the three-minute mark. That list includes a four-second knockout of former Power Slap competitor Wesley Drain in January 2026 and a first-round rear-naked choke of Armus Guyton in July.
The backstory is the part fight week couldn’t stop talking about. “I actually applied for the UFC in 2019 and didn’t get the job,” Everett told Spinnin’ Backfist. When the director of security asked where he saw himself in five years, Everett told him he’d be fighting for the UFC. He got in later through a third-party security agency, worked the mailroom and the graveyard security shift, and eventually landed the runner job. He said the matchmakers told him about his Contender Series shot while he was stocking the company refrigerator.
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White, who rarely shows up at regional shows, has been to most of Everett’s Tuff-N-Uff fights, and admitted before Tuesday that staying unbiased would be tough. Everett told MMA Junkie it was “another day in the office, bro.” He also told MMA Fighting, “By any means necessary, I’m getting that contract.”
Martin, 24, came in from New Hampshire as a Cage Titans standout with a 4-0 record, all knockouts, the latest a 30-second finish of Ryan Jett. He leaves 4-1.
Everett was one of four contract winners on the night. Preston LaGrange knocked out judoka Nell Ariano at 2:24 of Round 1 in the main event, Roque Conceicao tapped Alexander Chavez with a triangle at 3:37 of Round 1, and Mateus Soares needed 1:03 to stop Ryuho Miyaguchi. Alivia Bierley won a unanimous decision over the previously unbeaten Summer Onley (30-27, 29-28, 29-28) for her sixth straight win but didn’t get a deal.
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The easy shot is to call this the boss signing his buddy. Fine. Then explain how you deny a guy who just flattened an unbeaten knockout artist in under two minutes on the biggest night of his life. Everett earned it in the one place where who you know doesn’t help you. Somebody else is stocking the fridge at headquarters now.
