The final UFC event of 2025 took place at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas yet there was a strong contingent of Canadian fighters featured.
Squamish, B.C.’s Jamey-Lyn Horth kicked of the preliminary card with a first-round win over fellow flyweight Tereza Bleda.
Horth had gone the distance in each of her first five UFC appearances but needed only two minutes to earn a technical knockout of Bleda.
It was Horth’s first stoppage victory since winning a title in the Legacy Fighting Alliance organization in 2021. The 35-year-old now carries momentum heading into 2026 after going 2-0 in 2025. She also won a decision over Vanessa Demopoulos in June.
Calgary’s Melissa Croden was unable to build off a third-round TKO win over Tainara Lisbosa in her UFC debut in Vancouver in October, losing a unanimous decision to Luana Santos in bantamweight action.
Brazil’s Lisbosa was able to secure one takedown in each round and she accumulated more than nine minutes of control time in the 15-minute bout. Lisbosa entered the weekend as the No. 15-ranked contender in the women’s 135-pound division and should maintain her spot in the rankings.
Also on the card, Lance Gibson Jr., of Port Moody, B.C., made his UFC debut on the main card against Bobby “King” Green but was on the losing side of a three-round split decision.
Gibson, the son of two-time UFC competitor Lance Gibson Sr., accepted the matchup on short notice. The 30-year-old fought six times under the Bellator MMA banner between 2019 and 2023. Both he and Green typically compete in the lightweight division at 155 pounds but due to the short-notice nature of the matchup they agreed to a 160-pound catchweight.
The Gibsons became the third father-son pairing to compete in the UFC, joining Gilbert and Elijah Smith and Randy and Ryan Couture.
Green, 39, had lost two in a row and three of his past four prior to his win over Gibson.
There were supposed to be four Canadians on the card, however a scheduled strawweight matchup between Niagara Falls, Ont.’s Gillian Robertson and Brazil’s Amanda Lemos was cancelled hours before the event due to a medical issue with Lemos.
In other preliminary card action, Steven Asplund and Sean Sharaf went toe-to-toe in a bloody heavyweight brawl with Asplund getting a second-round TKO win.
Asplund earned a UFC contract with a 16-second knockout win on Dana White’s Contender Series in September and managed to land 170 significant strikes in just 8:49 of total fight time against Sharaf.
Former Bellator MMA welterweight champion Yaroslav Amosov impressed with a submission win over Neil Magny in his UFC debut.
Australia’s Isaac Thomson had an impressive short-notice UFC debut albeit in a losing effort against Brazil’s Joanderson Brito in a featherweight bout.
Thomson replaced an injured Melsik Baghdasaryan on a couple days’ notice and the 23-year-old looked like he belongs in the UFC but ended up losing a unanimous decision. The 30-year-old is one of the more underrated 145-pounders on the UFC roster and holds a previous win over title challenger Diego Lopes. Brito snapped a two-fight losing streak.
