Los Angeles has not had a UFC card since August 2018. On Saturday it gets one
with a title fight on top, a lightweight contender fight underneath it that was supposed to
be something else, and a pair of rematches separated by years and weight classes. UFC 331 runs
thirteen bouts at Crypto.com Arena. Here is what our archive says about each of them.
The main event: 26 seconds is not a fight
Joshua Van beat Alexandre Pantoja for the flyweight title in December. The record says TKO;
the record does not say that it lasted 26 seconds and ended because Pantoja's arm gave out.
Nobody — including, one suspects, Van — considers that a settled question, and Saturday
settles it.
What the interval has done is separate the two men's trajectories. Van, 24, has fought since:
a May stoppage of Tatsuro Taira by a front kick to the body — his seventh straight win, a run that
began in September 2024 and includes Tsuruya, Silva, Royval and the Pantoja result. He is 17-2. Pantoja, 36, has not competed since the injury. Before it he had
strung together four title defences — Royval, Erceg, Asakura, Kara-France — the last two by
rear-naked choke, and he sits at 30-6 with the deepest résumé in the division.
The prediction market has this closer to a coin-flip than the champion's camp would like:
54.5% Van. Our AI analysis, which never sees the market number, is considerably more
convinced — 76% Van — citing the twelve-year age gap and his striking output alongside the
December result. It is the largest gap between the two on the card.
The co-main that changed in August
Arman Tsarukyan was booked to fight Charles Oliveira, a rematch of their split decision at
UFC 300. Oliveira withdrew in early August, days after the death of his teammate Allan
Nascimento, and the promotion did not give a reason. Maurício Ruffy took the fight.
Tsarukyan, 29, is 23-3 and has won five in a row — Ismagulov, Silva, Dariush by knockout,
Oliveira, and an arm-triangle over Dan Hooker in November. It is as complete a run as anyone
at lightweight has put together without a title shot at the end of it.
Ruffy, 30, is 13-2 and the most dangerous kind of opponent for that résumé: a striker whose
wins do not go to the judges. His last three victories are a unanimous decision over James
Llontop, a spinning-wheel-kick knockout of King Green, and a January stoppage of Rafael Fiziev. The
loss in between — to Benoît St. Denis, by face crank, in September 2025 — is the fight
Tsarukyan's corner will have watched most. Our analysis makes him a 72% pick; the market
agrees almost exactly at 73.5%. The five-round distance is Tsarukyan's; the first two rounds
are where Ruffy lives.
Two rematches, nine years apart
Renato Moicano vs Brian Ortega. They met at UFC 214 in July 2017, at featherweight, and
Ortega won it with a third-round guillotine. Both are lightweights now, and both are at a
crossroads. Moicano, 37, is 21-7-1 and coming off an April face-crank finish of Chris Duncan,
which followed losses to Islam Makhachev and Beneil Dariush. Ortega, 35, is 16-5 and has lost
two straight — decisions to Diego Lopes and Aljamain Sterling — and four of his last five.
The market leans Moicano at 67%; our analysis says 71%. Ortega's last win, over Yair
Rodriguez in February 2024, came by the same arm-triangle Tsarukyan used on Hooker.
Patrício Pitbull vs Doo Ho Choi. Not a rematch, but a cross-reference: Choi's most recent
loss, in December 2019, was to Charles Jourdain — who fights three bouts down this same card.
Since then Choi, 35, has gone 3-0-1 with every win by stoppage: Algeo, Landwehr, and a May
knockout of Daniel Santos. Pitbull, 39, is 37-9 with a career built in Bellator and a UFC
run that reads 1-2: a decision over Dan Ige between losses to Yair Rodriguez and Aaron Pico.
Our analysis backs Choi at 72%, the market at 70.5% — rare agreement, and a hard read on a
39-year-old whose durability is not in question but whose decisions are.
The streaks
Cards are made of trajectories, and this one has several worth stating plainly.
Marlon Vera has lost four in a row: O'Malley, Figueiredo, Zahabi, and a February decision
to David Martinez. He is 23-12-1 at 33. Across the cage, Charles Jourdain has won three
straight, two of them by guillotine, most recently a decision over Kyler Phillips in April.
Our analysis and the market both have Jourdain around two-thirds.
Tai Tuivasa has lost seven straight, the most recent five to Volkov, Tybura, Rozenstruik,
Teixeira and Sutherland, and is 14-10. Robelis Despaigne, 38, knocked out Junior dos Santos in May. The market has
Despaigne at 83%; our analysis is notably more cautious at 68%, the second-largest
disagreement on the card and the one that cuts the other way.
Giga Chikadze has lost three straight, the last by spinning backfist to Kevin Vallejos in
December. Joanderson Brito is 18-5-1 and picked at 76% by both.
Alonzo Menifield, 38, has been knocked out in three of his last five. Iwo Baraniewski
is 8-0 with every win by stoppage. Our analysis is at 82% for the
Pole — its most confident pick of the night — against a market at 68.5%.
Edmen Shahbazyan has won three straight, capped by an October knockout of Andre Muniz;
Brunno Ferreira was knocked out by Gregory Rodrigues in March. Shahbazyan is favoured by
both, in the low seventies.
The wrestler
Gable Steveson is 3-0 as a professional, all three by knockout or stoppage. He is also an Olympic gold medallist in freestyle wrestling, which is why a 3-0
fighter is a 90.5% market favourite over Sean Sharaf (4-2, two straight stoppage losses).
Our analysis is lower at 78% — not because it doubts the wrestling, but because three fights
is three fights.
The rest
Casey O'Neill (11-2, a March knockout of Gabriella Fernandes) meets Eduarda Moura
(12-2, coming off a decision loss to Cong Wang). Ryan Gandra, 9-1 and on an eight-fight
winning streak, faces Ozzy Diaz. Joo Sang Yoo, 9-1, whose only loss came to Daniel Santos
last October, meets Michael Aswell (11-4).
What the numbers say together
Thirteen fights, and in all thirteen our AI analysis and the prediction market land on the
same fighter. The disagreements are in degree, and they point in opposite directions: the AI
is more confident than the market in the champion Van and the prospect Baraniewski, and less
confident in the veteran Despaigne. The night's defining question is
the one in the main event, and it is the one no amount of data can answer in advance:
whether 26 seconds in December told us anything at all.
*Records, fight histories and the full AI analysis for every fighter on this card are
available in the MMAHIT database. Market figures are prediction-market probabilities at the
time of writing and are not odds.*
