Opinion: Tom Nolan should fight Mateusz Gamrot next

On Saturday Tom Nolan spent 7:17 underneath Renato Moicano and knocked him out anyway, at 1:28 of round three in the main event of UFC Fight Night: Moicano vs Nolan. He is 26, he has won six straight, and our projected rankings move him from No. 14 to No. 12 at lightweight, swapping places with the man he just beat.

So who's next? The easy answer is a striker, because Nolan is a striker and strikers make good fights. The right answer is a wrestler, and there's one sitting two spots above him with no fight booked.

Give Tom Nolan Mateusz Gamrot.

The question Saturday didn't answer

Photo: Roger Gor / CC BY 3.0

Nolan didn't stop Moicano's takedowns. Moicano landed three of five, and no one has ever held Nolan down longer. What Nolan did was make the position worthless: Moicano landed nine significant strikes all night, and Nolan landed 101 total strikes in round two alone, a round in which Moicano had three minutes of control. Before the fight I laid out how Nolan beats Moicano and got the "being held" part wrong. I'm happy to have been wrong.

But a 37-year-old who attempted 12 significant strikes in 11:28 isn't the final exam for that skill. Moicano has landed 10 takedowns in seven UFC fights since the start of 2024, Saturday included. That's a man who gets one good entry a round and needs it to count.

Gamrot is a different animal. Since 2024 he has landed 27 takedowns on 53 attempts in six UFC fights, and controlled opponents for 28:55 in 66:32 of cage time. Per 15 minutes that's six takedowns and six and a half minutes on top. He took Rafael dos Anjos down 11 times in a single fight in March 2024. Nolan's survival trick works when the man on top stops working. Gamrot does not stop. Nobody has ever accused him of stopping.

That's the question Nolan has left. He's answered "can he strike" (69 of 92 significant strikes on Saturday) and "can he get up or make it pointless" against one version of the problem. Gamrot is the version that comes back for the next shot four seconds after the last one.

The case for a striker, and why I'll only half concede it

Photo: SPORTS UZ / CC BY 3.0

The other name on the board is Rafael Fiziev, projected No. 11, coming off a second-round knockout of Manuel Torres in June and also unbooked. It's an obvious fight and a great one to watch. It also has the narrative gift-wrapped: Fiziev knocked Moicano out in the first round at UFC 256 in December 2020, so the poster writes itself.

I'll concede this much: if you want the most fun fight, it's Fiziev. And there's an argument that you build a 26-year-old's confidence in his strongest lane before you send him into the deep end.

Here's why I don't buy it. Nolan has already shown the lane. He threw 176 significant strikes at Alex Reyes and 175 at Viacheslav Borshchev. A kickboxing match with Fiziev tells the matchmakers something they know. A fight with Gamrot tells them whether the ceiling is No. 10 or No. 3, and in a division where Salahdine Parnasse went from his UFC debut to projected No. 9 off one first-round knockout of Dan Hooker, the ceiling is the only question worth paying to answer.

There's a second, quieter reason. Every opponent Nolan has had across the Contender Series and the UFC, eight of them now, has fought out of an orthodox stance. Gamrot is a southpaw. So is Parnasse. Fiziev is listed as switch. Sooner or later Nolan has to solve a mirror-image opponent, and I'd rather he solve it against a wrestler who will punish every mistake on the mat.

Gamrot's side of the deal makes sense too. He's 35, he's 9-5 in the UFC, and he lost by first-round submission to Quillan Salkilld in August. His last six fights alternate win, loss, win, loss, win, loss with almost comic regularity. A win over the hottest name below him is the fastest way back up. A loss to Nolan isn't an embarrassment, it's a passing of the torch to a man nine years younger.

And Moicano?

Here's where the promotion has to be careful, and where I'd ask it to be decent.

Moicano is 37. He has lost three of his last four: Islam Makhachev, Beneil Dariush, then a win over Chris Duncan in April, then Saturday. It's the first time since that Fiziev fight in 2020 that he's been stopped by strikes. He is still projected to stay on the board at No. 14, and he is still a nightmare for any lightweight who can't stop a takedown.

The lazy booking is to turn him into a step on someone else's staircase: hand him the next 26-year-old prospect with a highlight reel and let the cycle repeat. I'd hate that. Moicano has earned better than being a résumé line.

The honest fight is the one directly below him: Dariush, projected No. 15. They were born 15 days apart in May 1989. Dariush beat him by decision at UFC 317 in June 2025, and since then Dariush has been knocked out twice in a row, by Benoit Saint Denis and Salkilld. Neither man is going to be the champion. Both are good enough to deserve a fight that means something, and "the winner keeps a place in the top 15" means something.

Is a rematch the most exciting idea in the world? No. But both men are coming off losses, both are the same age, and the rematch is the one booking on the table where neither of them is cast as the speed bump.

Make the fight

You can play with the options yourself on the lightweight matchmaker. But Saturday told us what Nolan can do when he's underneath a man who's stopped working. The next fight should tell us what he does when the man on top never stops.

Gamrot. Book it for early next year. If Nolan is what Saturday suggested, we'll know by the end of round one.