UFC Edmonton opened as a bad night to be Canadian. A record 12 fighters from the country were on the card, and the first five of them got finished, four by submission, according to MMA Mania’s morning-after column. The fifth got knocked out in a heavyweight bout the outlet mocked as about as low-level as the division gets. That’s a brutal opening act in front of a home crowd.
Then the two teammates at the top of the card did what nobody below them could. They beat ranked opponents who were supposed to beat them. Of the two, Jasudavicius has the shorter road to a belt and Malott has the harder next assignment, and both of those facts are good news for Canada.
Winners
Jasmine Jasudavicius. She walked into the co-main as a significant underdog against Erin Blanchfield. MMA Mania called Blanchfield the most accomplished jiu-jitsu player in women’s flyweight, and she’s a full decade younger. The expected script had Blanchfield dragging the fight to the mat and owning it there. Jasudavicius flipped it. She timed her takedowns, leaned on her physicality and kept getting to the back, controlling the more credentialed grappler on her own terms. I love this kind of win, where a fighter beats a specialist at the specialist’s game instead of running from it. It was the biggest upset of the night, and she’s now won seven of her last eight. MMA Mania expects her to land in the Top Five of a division it described as wide open, and floated her as Canada’s best shot at gold in 2027. I’d go further. In a flyweight division with no fixed order, a late bloomer who just out-grappled Blanchfield is one more big win from forcing a title conversation.
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Mike Malott. At 34, signed in 2022, eight wins in nine UFC fights, Malott has been oddly hard for fans to rally behind. The Neil Magny loss is the reason, a fight he was winning until he faded in the closing seconds and got stopped. Against Joaquin Buckley he looked like a man who’d learned from it. Buckley lunges, throws hooks from strange angles, and his chaos tends to make veterans hesitate. Malott didn’t hesitate, and he didn’t rush either. He used kicks and movement to find Buckley’s range, drove knees into him in the clinch and waited until Buckley was tired. Then came the kick to the face, and Buckley’s mouthpiece went rocketing across the Octagon. That clip lives on Malott’s highlight reel forever. Composure first, damage second, the big shot once the gas tank was empty. That’s how you fight a puncher, and he did it in a main event.
Tanner Boser. Edmonton’s own “Bulldozer” finally gave the home crowd a Canadian win, and he did it with offensive wrestling on the prelims. MMA Mania was blunt that the fight doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme, and that’s fair. The building needed a hometown result anyway.
Mandel Nallo and Marc-Andre Barriault. Both picked up stoppages on the main card. Veteran action fighters getting finishes in front of a Canadian crowd is a fine night’s work, even if neither result reshapes a division.
Losers
Erin Blanchfield. For a rising grappler, losing to an older fighter in your own specialty is the worst kind of loss. She’s still young and still dangerous, but the tape of Jasudavicius controlling her from the back will be on every future opponent’s study list.
Joaquin Buckley. His style depends on opponents getting nervous. Malott stayed calm, and the erratic offense that usually unsettles people turned into wasted energy that set up the kick.
The first five Canadians. Four submissions in a row points to a grappling gap that coaches north of the border should be losing sleep over. A home card is supposed to be a gift. For them it was a long walk back to the locker room.
Where they go
MMA Mania’s column pushed Malott into the Top 10 and named former champions Belal Muhammad and Jack Della Maddalena as possible next opponents, while noting he’s still a win or two away from a title shot. Either matchup is a fair test. Muhammad would ask whether Malott’s cardio holds deep into a fight against relentless pressure, which is the exact question the Magny loss left open. Della Maddalena would be a cleaner striking test. I’d pick Muhammad, because the doubt hanging over Malott lives in the late minutes, and that fight would settle it one way or the other.
Jasudavicius should get someone already sitting in the Top Five. She took the Blanchfield fight as the underdog and won it in Blanchfield’s world, which is enough to skip a step.
As a whole, the card was two ranked matchups and a lot of filler, the kind of lineup MMA Mania compared to a regular night at the Meta Apex. What Canada got out of it was two contenders. The night started with five straight Canadians getting finished and ended with two teammates from the same gym now firmly in their divisions’ title picture.
