UFC Fight Night: Gamrot vs Salkilld preview and predictions
Gamrot is the No. 8 lightweight and the underdog against unbeaten-in-the-UFC Quillan Salkilld. Full card picks, odds and start times for Saturday at the Apex.
The UFC is back at the Apex in Las Vegas on Saturday, August 8, with Mateusz Gamrot vs Quillan Salkilld on top of a 12 fight card. Prelims start at 5 p.m. ET and the main card follows at 8 p.m. ET, streaming on Paramount+ in the United States, TNT Sports in the UK and Ireland, and Polsat Sport Fight in Poland, which matters more than usual with a Pole in the main event. The full country by country list is on our how to watch page.
It is an Apex card in August, so nobody is pretending this is a stadium show. What it is, though, is one of the cleanest tests of a matchmaking idea I have seen on a single night: almost every fight pairs someone with Octagon mileage against someone without it. I wrote separately about what our results database says about that gap, and the short version is that it does not favor the veteran. Keep that in your pocket while you read the picks below, because it argued me out of two of them.
Mateusz Gamrot (26-4, 1 NC) vs Quillan Salkilld (12-1), lightweight
Gamrot is the No. 8 lightweight and he is the underdog. That is the whole fight in one sentence.
The Pole has been doing the hardest job in the division for five years: wrestling elite lightweights into the fence and outworking them. He lands 5.22 takedowns per 15 minutes and stuffs 83 percent of the ones aimed at him, which is a genuinely absurd pair of numbers to carry at 155 pounds. He beat Rafael dos Anjos, he knocked out Rafael Fiziev, he submitted Esteban Ribovics in April. The only recent blemish is a second round submission loss to Charles Oliveira last October, and losing to Oliveira on the mat is not a character flaw.
Salkilld is 26, ranked No. 12, and has done nothing in the UFC but hurt people. Five fights, five wins, four Performance of the Night bonuses, and four of those five ended in the first round. Anshul Jubli, Nasrat Haqparast and Jamie Mullarkey all went inside a round, and in May he took out Beneil Dariush in the opening five minutes, which is the win that moved him from prospect to problem.
Here is my honest process. I started writing this section picking Salkilld, because the price says Salkilld, the momentum says Salkilld, and the finishing pattern is real. Then I looked at what happens when Salkilld does not land the first big shot: one decision, against Yanal Ashmouz, in a fight where he was competitive rather than dominant. Gamrot has never been finished by strikes in the UFC and his entire method is to remove the phone booth from the equation inside 90 seconds. The Australian's takedown defense reads 80 percent, which is good, but he has not defended a wrestler with Gamrot's chain attack, and a 35 year old grinder with a submission win three months ago is not a man in decline.
I will take the underdog and the wrestling, and I will not enjoy the first round.
Prediction: Gamrot by unanimous decision.
Diego Ferreira (19-7) vs Billy Quarantillo (18-7), lightweight
The most fun fight on the card, and the saddest one to price. Ferreira has eight post fight bonuses in 17 UFC appearances, a rate that puts him in company with names far above his ranking, and Quarantillo has four in 11. Twelve bonuses between two men who are a combined 78 years old and both riding losing streaks.
Ferreira has dropped two straight, a decision to Grant Dawson and a second round knockout to Alexander Hernandez, and has not fought since September 2025. Quarantillo has lost two as well, a submission to Youssef Zalal and a Fight of the Night knockout loss to Cub Swanson, and has not fought since December 2024. That is 20 months of cage rust on one side of the cage and 11 on the other.
Quarantillo throws 7.44 significant strikes a minute, the highest volume on this card by a distance, and Ferreira's defense reads 57 percent takedown defense and a chin that has now been cracked twice in three fights. Volume beats a fading chin more often than not.
Prediction: Quarantillo by TKO, round two.
Darren Elkins (29-12) vs Yadier del Valle (10-1), featherweight
Elkins is 42 years old, has 30 UFC fights, and closes as roughly a +546 underdog. He opened at +430, so the market has spent the week getting more certain, not less.
I have watched this man walk through a round and a half of damage and win anyway more times than I can count, and I would love to write the sentimental pick here. But he has not fought since April 2025, when Julian Erosa knocked him out in the first round, and del Valle is a 30 year old Cuban who submitted both Isaac Dulgarian and Connor Matthews in the opening round and averages two submission attempts per 15 minutes. His only UFC loss is a decision to Jordan Leavitt.
The Damage will make it ugly. Ugly is not the same as winning.
Prediction: del Valle by submission, round two.
Amanda Lemos (15-6-1) vs Alexia Thainara (14-1), women's strawweight
Rank says No. 8 versus No. 12. Form says something else entirely. Lemos is 1-3 in her last four, with decision losses to Gillian Robertson and Tatiana Suarez sandwiching a win over Iasmin Lucindo. Thainara is 3-0 in the UFC with a first round submission of Molly McCann and decisions over Bruna Brasil and Loma Lookboonmee, and she is eight years younger.
Thainara also lands 4.62 significant strikes a minute to Lemos' 2.75 and has a 100 percent takedown defense rate through three UFC fights, small sample and all. Lemos still has the single most dangerous punch in the fight, which is the only reason the price is +215 rather than worse.
Prediction: Thainara by unanimous decision.
Ty Miller (1 UFC fight) vs Billy Ray Goff (3), welterweight
Miller is a 26 year old with 74 inches of height and a 77 inch reach in a division where that is a cheat code, and he is a -393 favorite in his second UFC appearance against a man with three. Goff switches stances and swings hard, so there is a live 15 minutes here if he closes the distance early. He probably will not.
Prediction: Miller by unanimous decision.
The prelims, briefly
Miles Johns (12 UFC fights, -159) meets debutant Jessie Rosas, which is precisely the shape of fight the data in the other piece says to be careful with, and I am picking Johns anyway, mostly on the price. Manoel Sousa is a -289 favorite over debuting Richie Miranda. Juliana Miller is -308 against Ravena Oliveira in a fight between two women who need a win badly. Diyar Nurgozhay and Bruno Lopes are the closest thing to a pick'em on the card at -151, and Louie Sutherland gets his third scheduled opponent for the night in debutant Jose Montanha after two bookings fell through. Steven Asplund and Guilherme Pat have two UFC fights each, so the heavyweight math applies: whoever lands first, wins.
And then there is GiGi Canuto against Carol Foro, two Brazilian strawweights making their UFC debuts on the same night, 23 and 29 years old, with no tape in this promotion and nothing to go on but whatever their regional careers built. That fight opens nothing and closes nothing, and it is the one I am most curious about.
Card starts at 5 p.m. ET. Our live results and full card are here, and if you want to put your own picks on the record before the walkouts, the pick'em is open. Come tell me how wrong I was about the main event.