MMA & BJJ Weekly: Malott Finishes Burns, ADCC Trials, UFC BJJ 8 Locked In

The Canadian crowd got a coronation, a veteran got a send-off, and an American jiu-jitsu champion got his next assignment — all inside 72 hours. UFC Winnipeg crackled Saturday night, the ADCC West Coast Trials ran live across the weekend in Pomona, and the promotional machines behind UFC Vegas 116 and the Netflix MVP card both kicked into full gear. If you blinked, you missed half of it. Here’s the week that was in MMA and grappling, and why it matters for anyone who trains.

Mike Malott Ends Gilbert Burns — And Possibly His Career

Canadian welterweight Mike Malott didn’t just win the UFC Winnipeg main event. He ended an era. In front of a deafening Canada Life Centre crowd, Malott spent the first round eating Burns’s trademark pressure before finding an uppercut in round two that visibly shook the former title challenger. By 2:08 of round three, another uppercut dropped Burns flat and Malott swarmed for a right hand and ground-and-pound until referee Mark Smith stepped in. Malott improves to 14-2-1, with 13 of those wins coming by stoppage.

For Burns, the night felt like the last one. After the loss, the 39-year-old Brazilian sat cage-side with an ice pack on his jaw, thanked his Brazilian Top Team coaches and Sanford MMA mentors, and told Joe Rogan his daughter had asked him to stop. He declined to say the word “retirement” outright, but he’s now 22-10 with three straight losses, and his BJJ black belt career in the cage looks closed. If you want the deep breakdown of what this fight means for both men and for the welterweight contender picture, our UFC Winnipeg roundup from last night unpacks the welterweight rankings shake-up in detail.

Burns Walks Away as One of BJJ’s Greatest MMA Exports

If Saturday was the goodbye, the legacy is secure. Burns is an IBJJF world champion at black belt. He submitted Demian Maia — the man many call the greatest BJJ player in UFC history — in the same cage he just lost in. He took Kamaru Usman into deep waters for the welterweight belt in 2021. He finished Tyron Woodley and Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson. For a generation of grapplers who watched Durinho chain takedowns into back control against world-class wrestlers and strikers, he was the proof that grappling-first MMA still works at the highest level.

There is no clear heir at 170 pounds. Ian Machado Garry, Shavkat Rakhmonov, and now Malott himself all lean heavily on grappling, but none blends black-belt mechanics with cage pressure quite like Burns did. Expect a commentary booth or a coaching chair next — Sanford MMA has already hinted both doors are open.

Air Jourdain Flies Into the Bantamweight Rankings

The co-main was the fight of the night. Kyler Phillips controlled the opening round with a takedown and top pressure, but Charles Jourdain adjusted at the bell and started picking him apart on the feet. In the third, Jourdain launched a flying knee that split Phillips’s left eyelid open and turned the fight into a one-way shootout. All three judges scored it 29-28 for Jourdain, who takes a third straight win to 18-8-1. Phillips, a legitimate top-10 prospect 18 months ago, has now lost three in a row.

What makes the win stand out for the jiu-jitsu audience: Jourdain is a purple-belt-level grappler who has spent the past two years drilling with Tristar in Montreal on defensive wrestling. He didn’t panic off the first takedown, he scrambled to full guard, hunted a high-elbow guillotine, and used hip movement to create the standup he wanted. That’s the unglamorous BJJ that keeps strikers in fights — and it’s exactly the kind of layered skillset we covered in our UFC BJJ 7 takeaways piece.

ADCC West Coast Trials: 700 Grapplers, Eight Slots

While UFC fans were in Canada, the grappling world was in Southern California. The ADCC West Coast Trials ran Saturday and Sunday at the Fairplex Expo Hall, with more than 700 competitors fighting for just eight invitations to ADCC 2026. Day one closed out with the top 16 in every division advancing, and day two’s finals were wrapping up as this piece was being written — the FloGrappling day-one recap has the full bracket breakdowns.

Names to watch: Sarah Galvao entered the women’s -65 kg bracket chasing a rookie Super Grand Slam. She beat the reigning ADCC world champion in the division at CJI 2 last year, and she’s the clear favorite to punch her ticket here. On the men’s side, Gianni Grippo came in as the most experienced competitor in the -66 kg group. Elder Cruz and Devhonte Johnson also loaded up divisions thick with prospects. Trials weekends like this are where the next crop of grappling stars surfaces — three-quarters of the 2024 ADCC podium lineup came through a similar Trials cycle.

Musumeci-Dantzler Locked In for UFC BJJ 8 on May 21

Mikey Musumeci is back in the saddle. The five-time IBJJF black-belt world champion and inaugural UFC BJJ bantamweight titleholder will defend his strap on May 21 at the Meta APEX in Las Vegas against CFFC BJJ standout Kevin Dantzler. It’s the eighth card in the series and it streams free on the UFC BJJ YouTube channel at 8 p.m. ET. Undercard bouts include Cassia Moura vs. Bianca Basilio, Danilo Moreira vs. Ethan Crelinstein, William Tackett vs. Enrico Said, and Azamat Bakytov vs. Thomas David — a stacked lineup that mixes IBJJF veterans and Polaris-circuit strikers.

The matchup has drawn some criticism from the grappling media who wanted to see Musumeci face a bigger name, but Dantzler is a legitimate threat at 135 pounds — he’s a CFFC champion with a dangerous guillotine and the best cardio of anyone Musumeci has faced inside the UFC BJJ format. For context on how Musumeci approaches these non-traditional match-ups, revisit our Musumeci vs. Tsarukyan breakdown.

Rousey, Carano, and the Netflix Spotlight

The most-watched press conference in women’s MMA this year ran Tuesday at The Palladium in New York. Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano came face to face for the first time since they agreed to headline Most Valuable Promotions’ May 16 card at Intuit Dome — the first live MMA event Netflix has ever carried. Rousey (12-2) returns after a nearly ten-year absence. Carano (7-1) hasn’t fought since 2009. It’s a spectacle booking, but the undercard is legitimate: Nate Diaz vs. Mike Perry, Francis Ngannou vs. Phillipe Lins, and three women’s boxing title fights featuring Amanda Serrano and Alycia Baumgardner.

The real news from the presser wasn’t about Carano. Rousey revealed her MVP base pay is roughly four times what she made in the UFC at her peak, then took direct shots at UFC fighter pay and at current bantamweight champion Kayla Harrison. Harrison responded on social media within hours. Nate Diaz jumped in to praise the Netflix card format and rip the UFC’s exclusive contracts. Whatever you think about the fight itself, the business story here is the most interesting thing in MMA right now — a legitimate non-UFC promotion writing eight-figure paychecks and landing a streaming deal that puts MMA in front of 300 million Netflix subscribers.

Next Saturday: Sterling vs. Zalal Headlines UFC Vegas 116

The UFC doesn’t take a week off. Next Saturday, April 25, former bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling (25-5) meets Morocco’s Youssef Zalal (18-5-1) in a featherweight main event at the Meta APEX. Sterling is ranked No. 5, Zalal No. 7, and the winner moves to the front of the line for either Diego Lopes or whoever emerges from the Volkanovski-Evloev chapter. Full preview on the official UFC Vegas 116 event page.

What grapplers should watch for: Sterling’s rear-naked choke finishes of Cejudo and Dillashaw are part of how he climbed to champion status. His back-take off the single leg is textbook. Zalal, meanwhile, has one of the most improved top-pressure games in the featherweight division — his win over Josh Emmett last year was built on wall wrestling and shoulder pressure. The co-main features Arnold Allen vs. Melquizael Costa, another featherweight bout with title implications.

Light Heavyweight Division on Fire After UFC 327

Carlos Ulberg’s first-round knockout of Jirí Procházka at UFC 327 in Miami still has the 205-pound division buzzing a week later. Ulberg is now the first New Zealander to wear a UFC title, and the contender picture behind him is the most interesting it has been in five years. Azamat Murzakanov, Alex Pereira (if he moves back up), Magomed Ankalaev, and Jamahal Hill are all in the mix. If you missed the Miami card, the UFC 327 results rundown covers the full night.

Procházka, for his part, was released from the hospital the day after the fight with no lasting damage beyond a concussion. His team says he plans to return in the fall. A rematch isn’t out of the question, but the UFC has been clear that Murzakanov has earned the next shot if he’s healthy.

What to Train This Week

Three takeaways for people on the mats:

• Drill the uppercut out of a clinch break. Malott found Burns with one in round two and closed the show with one in round three. If your training partners are throwing level-changing shots, upper-body head movement and the short uppercut are underused in BJJ-heavy striking games.
• Scramble up, don’t wait. Jourdain went from flat on his back in round one to winning the fight. Guard retention and wall-walks aren’t enough — hip movement into a standup has to be drilled under fatigue.
• Watch the Trials finals. ADCC Trials brackets are the best free grappling content on the internet right now. You’ll see more scrambles in one weekend than in a month of highlight reels. FloGrappling has the replays.

For more BJJ in MMA breakdowns, our IBJJF Pans 2026 recap covers the standouts from the Pans who are now on the UFC BJJ radar, and there’s plenty of overlap between that pool and the names at UFC BJJ 8 on May 21. You can also catch the Rousey vs. Carano card on Netflix on May 16.

Below is MMA Fighting’s post-show breakdown of UFC Winnipeg with Alexander K. Lee and Jed Meshew — worth 45 minutes of your Sunday if you want the full welterweight division picture after Saturday night.

Train smart, train often. See you on the mats in Taipei.