OKTAGON 96, ACA 209, ONE Friday Fights 176: weekend predictions

On Tuesday morning, Jessin Ayari was booked against Ion Surdu in a three-round welterweight fight on the OKTAGON 96 undercard. By midday our card log had him against Kevin Pastran instead. By the evening he had no undercard fight at all, because Felix Klinkhammer was out of the main event and Ayari was in it, with five rounds and the vacant welterweight title in front of him. Three opponents in one day, four days before the fight. OKTAGON 96 is on Halloween, and somebody changed costumes early.

That card goes on Saturday in Munich. Before it, Friday morning stacks two cards on top of each other: ACA 209 in Dushanbe at 6 a.m. ET and ONE Friday Fights 176 at Lumpinee Stadium at 7:30 a.m. ET. The UFC's Moicano vs Nolan card on Saturday night has its own coverage.

There is no model number for any of these three cards, so the picks below lean on records, OKTAGON's official rankings and the betting consensus. That consensus is thin everywhere: three to five sportsbooks on the OKTAGON bouts, one or two on ACA, one on a single ONE bout. I use the lines as a read on opinion, nothing more. Odds here are information, not betting advice.

OKTAGON 96: Gogoladze vs Ayari, rebuilt in a day

OKTAGON 96 starts at 6 p.m. CET at SAP Garden, 1 p.m. ET, and the start times and broadcast guide has the rest of the clock. The card is down to 11 bouts. Shawn Marcos da Silva vs Fayaz Haqparast is off, Hafeni Nafuka vs Ivan Klevets is on at a 72 kg catchweight, and Gökhan Aksu lost Niko Samsonidse and got Rene Runge at 73 kg.

Amiran Gogoladze (18-3) is No. 1 in OKTAGON's welterweight rankings, and the board has listed no champion since August. The 28-year-old Georgian has won four straight in OKTAGON since Darrius Flowers stopped him in the first round on the Contender Series in August 2022: decisions over Liam Etebar, Łukasz Siwiec and, on a split, Leandro Silva, then a first-round knockout of Ion Surdu at OKTAGON 86 in April. This is the second title fight in a row that has changed under him. The first, against Kaik Brito at OKTAGON 93 in September, never happened at all.

Jessin Ayari (19-6) is No. 7, and the strange part of the story is that he was supposed to fight Klinkhammer in July, at OKTAGON 91, before that bout came apart too. He has not fought since June 28, 2025, when he submitted Niklas Stolze in the second round. In those 16 months he slid from No. 3 on OKTAGON's April board to No. 7 without losing a fight. He is 34, he went 1-3 in the UFC, with the losses to Darren Till, Stevie Ray and Luigi Vendramini, and his three wins since returning in 2024 all ended inside the distance.

The market has made up its mind. Gogoladze opened at -800 and sits at -811, with Ayari at +478, about 84 percent to 16 once the margin is out. It is the longest price on the OKTAGON card. I went looking for the case against it and found one real argument: Ayari was in camp for a fight on this date anyway, so this is not a man coming off the couch. But he was in camp for 15 minutes, not 25, and Gogoladze has gone the full distance three times in his last four. Rounds four and five are where that difference should show. Prediction: Gogoladze by TKO.

The welterweight fight below it is where the line has actually moved. Ronald Paradeiser (23-11), No. 4, opened at -160 and has come in to -139, with Tyrone Pfeifer (8-1), No. 8, now at +106. That is roughly 54 to 46. Paradeiser has lost two straight, knocked out by Kaik Brito in the third round of a title fight in February and submitted by Jack Grant in the first round in June. He also lost a title fight to Losene Keita in 2024. Pfeifer, 28, has won three straight since a first-round loss in June 2025, and two of them came in OKTAGON: a third-round stoppage of Marek Bartl in March and a first-round stoppage of Stolze, the same man Ayari last beat, in June. I keep coming back to the direction of travel. One man is coming off two finishes in a row, the other off two finishes against him. Prediction: Pfeifer by TKO.

At heavyweight, No. 1 Lazar Todev (14-7) has moved from -300 to -393 against No. 6 Simon Biyong (12-6), about 75 percent. Todev has lost two five-round title fights, to Hatef Moeil and Will Fleury, and has won three straight since the second, including a second-round stoppage of Josh Parisian and a decision over Martin Buday in June. Biyong, 35, has the reach, 80 inches to 73, and knocked out Yevhenii Orlov in the first round in May, but Kasim Aras, the No. 2, outpointed him in October 2025. Prediction: Todev by decision.

Aksu (14-7-1), No. 3 at lightweight, has no line yet against Runge (13-8-1). Aksu's last three wins all ended in the first round, and so did his last fight, the wrong way round: Mateusz Legierski stopped him in the first round for the title in June. Runge has not won an MMA fight since October 2023, lost three straight decisions since, then lost a kickboxing bout by third-round TKO in May. Prediction: Aksu by TKO.

The rest, quickly. Brian Manning opened even with Marek Bartl and is now the -130 favorite. Christian Mach meets Endrit Brajshori (-161), nearly four years after Aksu stopped Mach in the first round at BRAVE CF 68. And the Nafuka vs Klevets add-on has a common thread: Klevets knocked out Kevin Enz in the first round on August 1, ten months after Nafuka had submitted the same man, on a night Nafuka lost a decision to Tomáš Mudroch.

ACA 209: Odilov at home, and a lot of short prices

ACA 209 opens at 3 p.m. in Dushanbe, and the ACA 209 start times post has the full card. Thirteen of its 16 bouts have a line, though most rest on one or two sportsbooks.

Faridun Odilov (21-4-2), from Tajikistan, gets a five-round middleweight main event in his own capital against Artem Frolov (21-7). Odilov went four rounds with Adlan Ibragimov for the ACA middleweight title in December 2024 and was submitted, and has gone 3-1 since, all four by unanimous decision: wins over Leonardo Silva, Dauren Ermekov and, in August, Altynbek Mamashov, with a loss to Elmar Gasanov in between. Frolov, 35, lost a decision to Ramazan Emeev in January and then stopped Mark Hulme in the second round in June.

The line has drifted a touch toward the local man, from -155 to -167, about 59 percent. That is a narrower number than the setting suggests, and I think it is narrow for a reason: Frolov has finished seven of his nine wins in our records, and Odilov's last four fights all went to the scorecards. Five rounds favors the man who has lived on the scorecards. Prediction: Odilov by decision.

Viskhan Kadirov (17-4) is the cleanest form on the card. He is 27, has won eight straight since a TKO loss in November 2022, and finished three of the last three: rear-naked chokes over John Teixeira and Luis Laurentino, then a first-round knockout of Khafiz Sakibekov in August. Sakibekov is on the prelims of this card, against Nikita Podkovalnikov. Bekhruz Zukhurov (18-9) has gone to a decision in each of his last four, two wins and two losses. Kadirov is -349, about 72 percent. Prediction: Kadirov by submission.

Alexey Makhno (29-17) has lost three straight, all inside the distance: two first-round TKOs in 2025 and a third-round guillotine against Aurel Pirtea in December. Kuat Khamitov (28-8-2) is 38, two years older, and has won his last two MMA fights by unanimous decision, including Anatoliy Boyko at ACA 194. He is -264, about 67 percent. Prediction: Khamitov by decision.

Briefly: Azam Gaforov (16-5) is -475 against UFC veteran Felipe Bunes (14-9), who lost his last two UFC fights on the cards. And the biggest favorite of the whole weekend is on the ACA prelims, where unbeaten Alikhan Musaev (11-0) is -850 against Jahongir Saidjamolov (16-5). Our records have no fight for Saidjamolov since January 2022.

ONE Friday Fights 176: one line, and it is close

ONE Friday Fights 176 starts at 6:30 p.m. at Lumpinee, and the ONE Friday Fights 176 guide has the times. Of its 14 bouts, ten are Muay Thai, two are kickboxing and two are MMA, so most of what follows is not an MMA prediction at all.

Only the Muay Thai main event has a price, and only from one sportsbook. Rambong Sor Therapat is -135 and Jacob Thompson -105, about 53 to 47. Rambong is 11-5 in ONE, and his 2026 tells you how tight his fights run: three straight wins by split, majority and split decision, then a unanimous decision loss to Chartpayak Saksatoon on August 28. Two of his 2025 fights ended with him knocked out. Thompson is 2-2 in ONE, all four went the full three rounds, and he is listed five inches taller, 68 to 63. A shorter fighter who keeps winning by one judge's card is the one I trust least in a coin flip. Prediction: Thompson by decision.

Numsurin Chor Ketwina (7-2 in ONE) went five rounds with Nadaka at ONE 173 last November and lost a decision. He meets Akram Hamidi (3-2 in ONE), who comes down from strawweight to atomweight after a decision win over Watcharaphon Laochokcharoen in July. Prediction: Numsurin by decision.

On the MMA side, New Zealand's Ethan Brockett is 4-0 as a pro and 2-0 in ONE, three of those wins on the scorecards. His opponent, Pedro Duarte, has no professional MMA fight in our records. Prediction: Brockett by decision.

Make your picks

Every pick above is on the record from now, and each card has its own pick'em: OKTAGON 96, ACA 209 and ONE Friday Fights 176. Results land on each event page as the fights end. Ayari has had four days to get ready for a title fight he did not have on Monday. Is that enough to make the longest price on Saturday look silly?