Manel Kape ended the year in style.
The rising flyweight contender capped off the UFC’s final main event of 2025 with a first-round knockout win over one-time title challenger Brandon Royval Saturday night in Las Vegas.
After a few minutes spent finding his range and trading strikes, Kape folded Royval with a right hand and swarmed him along the cage before the referee stepped in to call a halt to the action.
The win improved Kape’s UFC record to 7-1 and moves him closer to a title shot.
The men’s 125-pound division recently saw a new champion crowned earlier this month when an unfortunate fluke injury to Alexandre Pantoja at UFC 323 resulted in Joshua Van winning the title.
It’s unclear how long Pantoja will be out of action after dislocating his elbow, so in the meantime it’s possible Van will end up defending the title before Pantoja returns.
Kape declared himself the most talented fighter in the division and called out Van during his post-fight interview. Kape is one of the most exciting and fast strikers in the UFC and his style would match up well with Van, who lands more significant strikes per minute than any fighter in UFC history.
The 32-year-old Angolan-Portuguese fighter hadn’t fought since the beginning of March and fractured his foot in June but he looked solid against Royval.
Saturday’s main event marked the third time Royval and Kape had been slated to face one another this year. They were initially scheduled to meet on March 1 in a Fight Night main event but Royval withdrew a month before the event as he recovered from symptoms of a previous concussion. Kape ended up defeating replacement opponent Asu Almabayev via third-round technical knockout.
Then they were set to meet at UFC 317 this past summer but Kape withdrew from the matchup after sustaining an injury in training. Royval ended up accepting a matchup with Van on less than two weeks’ notice and lost a decision in a Fight of the Year frontrunner.
Royval entered the weekend as the No. 2 contender in the division but will have to go back to the drawing board if he wants to get back into the title picture in 2026.
In the co-main event, Kevin Vallejos used a spinning backfist to set up a knockout finish of Giga Chikadze.
Argentina’s Vallejos was the youngest athlete on the card at just 24 but fought with a veteran savvy and hurt his 37-year-old opponent in the second round.
Vallejos followed up the spinning attack with a series of elbows on the ground before the referee stepped in.
Chikadze is the No. 15-ranked contender at featherweight, so Vallejos will likely take his spot in the official fighter rankings when they are next updated.
Vallejos is 17-1 in mixed martial arts and now 3-0 at the UFC level. His lone loss in the sport was a 2023 decision to the touted Jean Silva on Dana White’s Contender Series.
In other featherweight action, Melquizael Costa extended his winning streak and ended off his impressive 2025 campaign with an exclamation mark.
Costa landed a highlight-reel head-kick knockout on Morgan Charriere just 74 seconds into their 145-pound matchup.
The 29-year-old from Brazil has now won five in a row with four of those wins occurring in the past 10 months. He submitted Andre Fili in February and won unanimous decisions over Christian Rodriguez in March then Julian Erosa in May prior to facing Charriere.
Cezary Oleksiejczuk used frequent takedowns and ground control against fellow middleweight Cesar Almeida en route to his first UFC win. Almeida, 37, was coming off a big knockout win over Abdul Razak Alhassan in January but couldn’t keep the fight on the feet.
Oleksiejczuk, the younger brother of UFC middleweight Michael Oleksiejczuk, got a UFC contract earlier this year thanks to a 36-second knockout on the Contender Series. The 25-year-old from Poland has now won 14 of his past 15 fights overall.
Heavyweights Kennedy Nzechukwu and Marcus Buchecha fought to a draw. Nzechukwu won the first and third rounds, however he was deducted a point early in the second round after a damaging eye poke.
Buchecha, a 13-time jiu-jitsu world champion, went on to win the second round and at the end of the fight all three judges had the bout scored 28-28. Nzechukwu was coming off a 54-second submission loss to Walter Walker, while Buchecha lost his UFC debut to veteran Martin Buday via decision in July.
The main card kicked off with Bobby “King” Green getting back in the win column with a split decision over Canadian newcomer Lance Gibson Jr., who was making his UFC debut on short notice.
Saturday’s card was the 42nd and final UFC event of the year and the 12th held at the UFC Apex facility in 2025.
