First, Mike Malott sent Gilbert Burns into retirement at a UFC Fight Night in Winnipeg, then he took his place in the rankings.
The Canadian welterweight star has gone from unranked to now being situated at No. 11 in the latest iteration of the organization's 170-pound contender rankings.
Malott defeated Burns via technical knockout at Canada Life Centre in Manitoba on Saturday night, after which Burns announced his retirement from mixed martial arts.
Burns had been a perennial welterweight contender since joining the division in 2019 and fought for the title in 2021. The soon-to-be 40-year-old from Brazil was holding onto his spot in the rankings, but his loss to Malott was his fifth in a row.
It was Malott’s first UFC main event but the 34-year-old from Burlington, Ont., looked like he belonged.
“I felt like I was in control, measuring my distance, picking my shots, not getting in there and getting into a brawl, recognizing I had 25 minutes to work,” Malott told Sportsnet’s Aaron Bronsteter in Winnipeg moments after defeating Burns. “I felt him hurt a couple of times in there, where there were a couple wobbles. … I felt like I was seeing everything.”
The loss and subsequent retirement meant Burns went from No. 11 to being unranked. The only other change at welterweight saw former interim titleholder Colby Covington also get bumped from the rankings.
Covington, 38, has lost two in a row and is only 1-3 since 2020 yet he had been holding the No. 15 spot. His most recent fight was a TKO (doctor’s stoppage) loss to Joaquin Buckley in December of 2024, but after 16 months of inactivity, he has been replaced in the rankings with Yaroslav Amosov, the former Bellator MMA champ who made a successful UFC debut by submitting Neil Magny four months ago.
“I’ve never really picked any of my fights,” Malott said when asked about a potential future matchup with Covington. “I get a message from the UFC and they tell me who I’m fighting so if they decide that’s the next fight, then that’s the next fight.”
Malott was one of nine Canadians to compete at UFC Winnipeg. Overall, athletes from Canada went 4-5 on the card.
Other notable winners from the night included No. 7 women’s flyweight Jasmine Jasudavicius and surging men’s bantamweight contender Charles Jourdain, who improved to 3-0 since dropping down to the 135-pound division in 2024. Jourdain is on the verge of breaking into the contender rankings after his closely-contested decision win over Kyler Phillips in the co-main event.
The highest-ranked Canadian fighters currently on the UFC roster are Aiemann Zahabi (No. 6 men’s bantamweight) and Gillian Robertson (No. 5 women’s strawweight), both of whom are potentially one win away from earning a title shot in their respective division.
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