Special Feature
Montreal In For A Treat At UFC 315
For The First Time In A Decade, The Octagon Returns To Montreal With Two Titles On The Line
Next month, the UFC returns to Montreal for the first time in just over decade with a stacked UFC 315 pay-per-view fittingly headlined by a welterweight title clash between Belal Muhammad and Jack Della Maddalena, with Valentina Shevchenko defending her flyweight title against top contender Manon Fiorot in the co-main event.
I say fittingly because the first event at Centre Bell was headlined by a welterweight title fight, as Matt Serra bravely ventured north of the border for his title unification bout with interim champ and Montreal native Georges St-Pierre at UFC 83.
The event was a complete sell-out, setting, at the time, a record for the largest attendance in UFC history, a mark that would be broken the following year when the promotion returned to La Belle Province for the second time. The third trip to Montreal reset the attendance record one more time, upping the mark by nearly two thousand spectators, the vast majority of whom went home elated after GSP jabbed the face off Josh Koscheck to successfully retain his title.
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A couple more events followed, but by that time, the rest of Canada had finally come on board with sanctioning mixed martial arts events, opening the door for trips to Vancouver and Toronto, before Calgary, Winnipeg and several others all followed. While the sport has spread across this vast land I call home, and the Octagon has bounced from coast-to-coast and various points in between, its pending return to Montreal feels like a return to a city that means so much to the fabric of this sport here in Canada.
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For an entire generation of MMA hopefuls in Canada, Montreal is where you needed to go in order to really prove you had what it takes to compete with the absolute best in the world.
While there were events and promotions that popped up throughout the country, the premier organization in the early days of the 21st century was Universal Combat Challenge (UCC), which eventually transitioned into TKO, headed by Stephane Patry. The majority of the athletes that found their way into the Octagon as the UFC emerged from the “dark ages” all made the trek to Montreal to compete.
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St-Pierre, David Loiseau, and Patrick Cote all logged early appearances with the promotion, while the late Shawn Tompkins not only competed there himself, but also brought a collection of promising fighters, including future UFC competitors Mark Hominick, Sam Stout, and Chris Clements to compete there as well.
But it wasn’t just Ontario and Quebec-based athletes that competed in Montreal. Nova Scotia-born, Alberta-based Jason MacDonald, who went on to have a 15-fight UFC career, turned up on a TKO show as he tried to work his way to the big leagues, as did British Columbians Bill “The Butcher” Mahood, John Alessio, and Sarah Kaufman.
A handful of talented non-Canadians passed through the city as well, underscoring just how much of an epicenter for the sport Montreal was at the time.
Less than a year before making his UFC debut, Rich Franklin competed at UCC 10, which took place in Hull, Quebec, defeating Yan Pellerin. “Big Frog” Jeff Curran defeated Ivan Menjivar on that card as well, while Urijah Faber defeated the Montreal-based El Salvadoran in his final fight prior to joining the WEC and becoming one of the biggest stars in the sport. Japanese standout Hatsu Hioki went 3-0 under the TKO banner as well, beating Hominick (twice) and Thierry Quenneville in championship bouts.
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Those were the days where you fought to get experience, and competitors actively sought out tough matchups and big opportunities. It didn’t necessarily matter if you lost, as long as you got better because of it, and all the athletes that passed through there clearly did, because they all went on to compete on the biggest stage in the sport.
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The emergence of St-Pierre changed everything, and turned the global MMA spotlight on Montreal.
At first, it was a Canadian thing and a hardcore, tape-trader thing — only those plugged into the sport knew that the beautiful, old city on the St. Lawrence was the spot in this country to find the best mixed martial artists — but once GSP rose to the top of the welterweight division, the attention on the city increased, and Tristar Gym became a destination for those wanting to learn alongside the French-Canadian champ and from his coach, Firas Zahabi.
Tristar wasn’t the first and certainly wasn't the last gym that experienced a massive influx of interest and talent coming through the door in the years that St-Pierre ruled the 170-pound ranks, but it’s important to note that this isn’t some state-of-the-art facility or warehouse stationed on the outskirts of town that suddenly had a magnetic pull for dozens of world-class mixed martial artists.
The gym is housed on the third floor of a dreary, disheveled looking building a couple blocks from Gibeau Orange Julep. You wouldn’t know it’s there if you didn’t know to look for the stars in the windows, and when you climb the stairs and step into the space, you quickly see that everything has been built around the existing infrastructure.
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Pillars wrapped in pads dot the mats. There is a complete Octagon, but there is also a caged-in section along the back wall that worked as the best option available before getting hold of a full-sized cage for your gym was as comparatively easy as it is now. Overhead fluorescent lights illuminate everything. To this day, there are sections where you’re still just doing work on a concrete floor.
But for a number of years, Tristar was the place people wanted to go train, and a litany of stars made the trip there, soaking in whatever knowledge Zahabi and the all-star cast of fighters and coaches assembled there were willing to dole out.
Several athletes from the Jackson-Winklejohn team in Albuquerque made the gym their second home, as did former WEC champ Miguel Torres. Young phenom Rory MacDonald moved to Montreal to train at Tristar full time as he started to work his way up the welterweight ranks, while the TUF Nations crew of Chad Laprise, the late Elias Theodorou, Olivier Aubin-Mercier, and Kajan Johnson, as well as TUF 20 alum Randa Markos, all had stretches where they did their camps in Montreal, at Tristar.
While the team at Tristar never usurped Les Canadiens as the most beloved sport franchise in town, there was a clear current of energy that spread throughout the city based on its ascension as an MMA hotbed. Not only could you see it in the attendance numbers each time the UFC came into town, but you could feel it by how many people flocked there in order to up their games.
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That had never happened before in this country, and it hasn’t happened again since.
To this day, Tristar remains at the vanguard when it comes to MMA in Canada, and after a cooling off period, Montreal itself returned to being a pipeline for talent looking to graduate to the UFC.
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TKO returned to the MMA landscape in 2016 and quickly resumed serving as a launch pad for top talent in this country and elsewhere to compete.
Charles Jourdain and Marc-Andre Barriault each became two-weight champions with the promotion before getting the call to the Octagon. Malcolm Gordon and Nate Maness both won gold there as well, while a host of Dana White’s Contender Series alums, including TJ Laramie, Alex Morgan, Corinne Laframboise and Mateo Vogel all logged multiple appearances with the the resurrected fight organization.
Former interim UFC heavyweight champion Ciryl Gane made his pro debut in Montreal, defeating Bobby Sullivan, claiming the vacant heavyweight title in the process. He successfully defended his title twice to move to 3-0 and then was signed by the UFC.
Even now, with TKO once again having closed its door, Montreal remains one of the most integral cities in sport in Canada, with Samourai MMA standing as one of the top regional promotions in the nation, and bantamweight Aiemann Zahabi carrying a lengthy winning streak into his UFC 315 clash with UFC Hall of Famer Jose Aldo next month.
Zahabi isn’t the only streaking Canadian on the show either, as St. Catharines native Jasmine Jasudavicius puts her four-fight winning streak on the line against former strawweight champ Jessica Andrade, and Mike Malott returns to face off with “Chuck Buffalo,” Charles Radtke, while Barriault gets to compete in his home province for the first time in his UFC career when he squares off with Bruno Silva.
That’s a big part of why this feels special, too: because guys like Barriault and Zahabi are going to get to fight at home.
Jasudavicius, Malott, and Brad Katona are going to get a hero’s welcome from the partisan crowd, simply because they’re Canadians fighting on Canadian soil. It happens everywhere they fight in Canada, surely, but there is something different about 20,000 fans packing the Bell Centre, going berserk that is going to resonate in an entirely different way.
And after a decade without playing host to an event, you can be sure that the promotional attendance record in that building will be in jeopardy on May 10.
Montreal is the type of city where the buzz for an event is palpable and I can assure you that it will be electric throughout fight week next month, even if the Canadiens advance in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
As much as it is a hockey town, Montreal is a fight town, too — arguably the best and most storied in this country, at least when it comes to MMA — and everyone is going to feel that when the UFC finally rolls back into town next month.
Someone be sure to go to Schwartz’s Deli for me when they’re there — smoked meat, medium fat, side of fries, two pickles, and a Coke. Thanks.
UFC 315: Muhammad vs Della Maddalena took place live from Bell Centre in Montréal, Québec, Canada on May 10, 2025. See the final Prelim & Main Card Results, Official Scorecards and Who Won Bonuses - and relive the action on UFC FIGHT PASS!
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