UFC 331 prelims: Tuivasa, Vera and Chikadze fight to stay

Twelve fights survived the week at UFC 331, and the flyweight title on top of it is the least interesting thing about how this card is built. Below the main card sit four men whose most recent win is older than the current ranking cycle, three of whom the betting market has walked away from since the lines opened in August. The UFC does not publish a cut list. It does publish a fight order, and a fight order tells you almost the same thing.

Saturday at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, Joshua Van defends the flyweight belt against Alexandre Pantoja, the man he took it from in 26 seconds last December. That fight sells the show. The prelims are doing different work.

The seven-fight fall

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Tai Tuivasa last had his hand raised on February 13, 2022, when he knocked out Derrick Lewis in the second round. That was 1,676 days ago. Since then: Ciryl Gane by third-round TKO, Sergei Pavlovich by first-round TKO, Alexander Volkov by second-round submission, Marcin Tybura by first-round submission, Jairzinho Rozenstruik by split decision, Tallison Teixeira by unanimous decision, and Louie Sutherland by unanimous decision in May. Seven in a row.

Look at the shape of that list rather than the length. The first four were finishes, three of them by men who were then top-five heavyweights. The last three are decisions against opponents who were not. That is the standard arc of a heavyweight whose chin has been asked too many questions: first the elite stop you, then the journeymen outpoint you. Tuivasa is 33 years old and has been in the UFC since 2017.

His opponent, Robelis Despaigne, is 38 and has not competed since October 19, 2024, a 697-day layoff that followed back-to-back decision losses to Waldo Cortes Acosta and Austen Lane. Despaigne's entire UFC ledger is one win, a 2024 first-round TKO of Josh Parisian, against two losses. Neither man has won a fight in the calendar year, and the promotion put them on the prelims of a pay-per-view opposite each other.

The market, which has no sentiment at all, tells the story in numbers. Tuivasa opened at +366 on August 8 and now sits at +499. The money has spent six weeks moving away from a former title-eliminator headliner and toward a 38-year-old who has been on the shelf for nearly two years.

The ranked underdog

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Marlon Vera is the tenth-ranked bantamweight in the UFC. He is also a +186 underdog to Charles Jourdain, who is not ranked at all, on the prelims of a card where two unranked heavyweights are on the same segment.

Vera's last win was August 20, 2023, a decision over Pedro Munhoz. That is 1,123 days. Since then he has lost a five-round title fight to Sean O'Malley, a decision to Deiveson Figueiredo, a split decision to Aiemann Zahabi and a unanimous decision to David Martinez in February. Four straight, all on the scorecards, none of them a blowout and none of them a win. In the seven fights before this one he is 1-6.

Jourdain, meanwhile, has quietly put together the best run of his career at 30: a second-round submission of Victor Henry, a first-round submission of Davey Grant, and a unanimous decision over Kyler Phillips in April. Three in a row, two of them finishes, and he arrives as the favorite over a top-ten name.

Our pick'em players are not buying it. On the UFC 331 predictor, readers are picking Vera over Jourdain 14 votes to 2, which is the largest gap between fan confidence and the betting board anywhere on the card. Fans are voting for the Vera who knocked out Dominick Cruz in 2022. The market is pricing the one who has lost four in a row.

The third strike at 38

Giga Chikadze opens the broadcast. He is 38, he has lost three straight, and his last win was August 26, 2023, six days after Vera's. Arnold Allen outpointed him, David Onama outpointed him, and last December Kevin Vallejos stopped him in the second round, the first time in his UFC career he has been finished by strikes. He faces Joanderson Brito, who is 31, and he opened at +274 and now sits at +307.

Three men, three streaks, one common feature: none of them is on the main card, and all three opened as underdogs and drifted further out. The only fighter in this group the market has moved toward is Edmen Shahbazyan, who is coming off a decision loss to Brendan Allen but had won three in a row before it. He is the control case, and he is priced as a modest favorite over Brunno Ferreira.

What the fight order is actually saying

I want to be careful here, because "fighting for his job" is the laziest sentence in this sport and it gets written about anyone who loses twice. So let me put it in the terms the promotion itself uses.

The UFC does not announce releases in advance, it does not disclose contract lengths, and it does not owe anyone an explanation when a fighter's name stops appearing on cards. What it does instead is schedule. And the schedule for Saturday puts a ranked bantamweight below two unranked heavyweights, opens the night with a 38-year-old on a three-fight skid, and books a man on a seven-fight losing run against an opponent who has not fought since 2024. Every one of those bouts is a coin flip with an obvious second consequence for the loser.

That is a reasonable way to build a card, from the promotion's side. It is cheap, the fights are competitive precisely because both fighters need one, and nobody at the top of the roster is exposed. From the other side of the fence it means four fighters are walking into a building on Saturday where a bad twelve minutes ends a career that took a decade to build.

The belt gets decided at 9 p.m. ET. The rest of it gets decided at 5:30.

Full card, start times and broadcast details are at our UFC 331 page, and the live scorecards land there on fight night.