Official weigh-ins for UFC Edmonton went down Friday at the UFC host hotel, the last box to check before Joaquin Buckley and Mike Malott headline Saturday night at Rogers Place. MMA Junkie had the full lineup posted Friday morning ahead of the official numbers, with the welterweight main event and the women’s flyweight bout between Erin Blanchfield and Jasmine Jasudavicius sitting at the top.
The card marks the UFC’s return to Canada. The main card starts at 8 p.m. ET on Paramount+, with prelims at 5 p.m. ET.
Buckley (21-8 MMA, 11-6 UFC) needs this one badly. The 32-year-old put himself in the title picture when he beat Colby Covington in the UFC Tampa main event in December 2024, then dropped back-to-back decisions to Kamaru Usman and Sean Brady, the Brady loss coming at UFC 328 in Newark on May 9. He’s spent fight week doing things a little differently. He told MMA Fighting he just launched a Kick streaming channel, and he’s been posting clips of what he calls the Herb Dean drill, a not-so-subtle shot at referees who let fighters stall on the fence. His verdict on the officials finally docking points at UFC Vegas 122: “What took so long?”
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Malott (14-2-1 MMA, 7-1 UFC) is coming the other direction. He’s won four straight, including wins over Kevin Holland and the recently retired Gilbert Burns at UFC Winnipeg in April. When the two faced off this week, somebody in the background was yelling profanities the whole time, as Dovy Simuliunas pointed out on X. Fitting soundtrack.
The flyweight fight with title stakes
Blanchfield (14-2 MMA, 8-1 UFC) sits at No. 9 in MMA Fighting’s pound-for-pound rankings, which tells you what Jasudavicius (15-4 MMA, 9-3 UFC) gets with a win. The Ontario native beat Karine Silva in Winnipeg in April to bounce back from a loss to Manon Fiorot, and she’s won six of her past seven. A win Saturday could have her angling for a flyweight title shot in 2027, per MMA Fighting.
That Silva win came with a bill. Jasudavicius told Full Send MMA the Manitoba Combative Sports Commission fined her $10,000 after cameras appeared to catch dip in her mouth mid-fight. She says it was peppermint gum, that it fell out on the mat, and that she told officials to go find it. They declined. Her fix for Edmonton is simple: “I’ve stopped chewing gum now.”
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The rest of the main card has Kyle Nelson vs. Cristian Perez, Marc-Andre Barriault vs. Kyle Daukaus, Timmy Cuamba vs. Louis Jourdain and Nate Landwehr vs. Mandel Nallo. The prelims are headlined by heavyweights Tanner Boser and Jhonata Diniz, which is reason enough to tune in at 5.
My take: Buckley is the bigger name, but Malott is the guy with momentum, and that’s a dangerous spot for a fighter who just lost two decisions to elite welterweights. Buckley has never needed the judges, and he shouldn’t want them Saturday. If he loses a third straight, the Covington win starts to look like the peak instead of the launchpad, and he becomes the guy the UFC uses to test prospects. Malott gets the ranked scalp he’s been building toward since Winnipeg.
