Fighters on the Rise | UFC Shanghai

It’s hard to express the level of intrigue and excitement that exists around Zhang as he heads into his first UFC main event this weekend opposite divisional stalwart Johnny Walker.

For starters, he just turned 27 last week, and yet he comes into this contest with a 19-6 professional record, a 3-0 mark in the UFC with three straight first-round finishes, and a dozen consecutive first-round stoppage wins overall. At one point, Zhang was 7-6 and had lost three of his previous five fights, but he’s unbeaten since then, morphing into one of the more fascinating light heavyweight prospects to blow through the Octagon in quite some time.

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The Chinese standout first stood out in the very first bout to take place on a Road to UFC event, where he absolutely clobbered Tuko Tokkos, who has since worked his way onto the roster and is coming off an impressive upset win last time out. It was more than a year later that Zhang made his promotional debut, dispatching Brendson Ribeiro at UFC 298 before doing the same to Ozzy Diaz last November when the UFC returned to Macau.

Earlier this year, Zhang was the one that faced off with Anthony “Lionheart” Smith in the veteran’s farewell bout in Kansas City, pummelling the former title challenger to earn his third straight Performance of the Night bonus.

This one honestly feels long overdue.

Cortes Acosta is 7-1 in the UFC since earning his place on the roster with a first-round stoppage win on the sixth season of Dana White’s Contender Series (DWCS) back in 2022. His lone setback came in his third Octagon appearance against Marcos Rogerio de Lima in a fight where “Pezao” played to his strengths and the Dominican’s weakness, wrestling him to the canvas and basically keeping him there for long enough stretches to collect a win.

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“Salsa Boy” never really got mentioned in this space in the past because — and I’m going to be brutally honest here — he was largely earning decision wins over struggling competitors and I just assumed another veteran or more skilled foe would halt his run of success, thereby showing where his ceiling in the division rests. But after knocking out Ryan Spann earlier this year, the 33-year-old out-worked Serghei Spivac at UFC 316 in June, showing improved ring generalship and awareness, as well as good takedown defense in pushing his winning streak to five.

Situations like this come up from time-to-time in this sport — someone starts building a winning streak and the consensus opinion is that they will only climb so high in their division. But then they pass that point, and the next point, and that’s where we are with Cortes Acosta as he heads into this weekend’s fight with Sergei Pavlovich. He’s stationed at No. 6 in the rankings, and if he topples the third-ranked Russian on Saturday, he enters the title conversation.

If you’ve followed this series or any of the DWCS coverage here on the website over the last year, you know that I am profoundly high on last year’s graduating class, which includes the unbeaten Kavanagh, who makes his third UFC appearance — and second start in China — against veteran Charles Johnson on Saturday.

Kavanagh opened Season 8 with a first-round knockout win over fellow unbeaten prospect An Tuan Ho, who has since bounced back with a quick finish of his own and is slated to return to the UFC APEX later in Season 9. He earned a win in his debut over Jose Ochoa, who then knocked out Cody Durden and gave Asu Almabayev plenty to deal with on short notice a couple weeks ago, before getting the better of Felipe dos Santos on the scorecards last time out.

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Training out of GB Top Team alongside the likes of Nathaniel Wood, the unbeaten 26-year-old is technically sharp with a fluid and diverse striking game, utilizing a lot of kicks, a lot of movement, and packing sneaky power as well, as exhibited by his walk-off win over Ho. Some would likely argue that the performances haven’t been as impressive as expected thus far, but personally, I feel like expectations were a little high coming off his DWCS win and his first two victories will continue to age nicely as both he and his past opponents continue to advance in their careers.

Saturday will be a good measuring stick moment for Kavanagh, as he steps in with Johnson, a 34-year-old veteran with a history of having success against promising, young fighters.

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Though he comes in off a loss to Ramazan Temirov in March, “InnerG” had won four straight prior to that, including handing Azat Maksum his first loss and stopping current No. 1 contender Joshua Van. The former LFA champ is a good wrestler, has strong conditioning, and doesn’t go away easily in the Octagon.

How Kavanagh acquits himself here will go a long way in determining whether those initial expectations were too high, too low, or just right, and if he adds another win to his resume on the weekend, the British prospect will take another step towards the rankings in the flyweight division.