Preview: UFC on ESPN 38 Prelims

The UFC's one-week pit stop to the Apex has a solid, if unremarkable, six-fight slate of prelims. Light heavyweights take the featured spot, with high-upside prospects Carlos Ulberg and Tafon Nchukwi each looking to figure some things out for a potential breakout win here. Past that, there are two particularly exciting bantamweight fights - Brian Kelleher's back on prospect-testing duty against Mario Bautista, and Raulian Paiva should have a guaranteed scrap with Sergey Morozov. Add in a fun featherweight fight involving T.J. Brown and a weird strawweight bout to open things up, and this should be a breezy watch.

Light Heavyweights

Carlos Ulberg (4-1) vs. Tafon Nchukwi (6-2)
Odds: Ulberg (-115), Nchukwi (-105)

Two raw prospects hope to figure some things out here. Ulberg made his UFC debut in 2021 with a solid amount of hype; a former rugby player and kickboxer, the City Kickboxing product looked the part in a scintillating win on the Contender Series the year prior. With the New Zealander's good looks and charisma supplementing an exciting fight style, the hope was that Ulberg could continually show enough progress to realize his star potential. Well, best laid plans and all that. "Black Jag" looked excellent early on in that debut in Kennedy Nzechukwu, but fell apart badly as soon as Nzechukwu refused to go away, gassing terribly and leaving himself open for a second-round finish. Ulberg returned nearly a year later for a February win over Fabio Cherant, which saw him overcompensate for that loss in a degree that became unwatchable; Cherant offered nearly nothing for Ulberg, who decided to peck at Cherant from range for fifteen interminable minutes. Ulberg is still an obvious talent, but he's clearly a work in progress, so hopefully he shows some new wrinkles here against Nchukwi. Nchukwi looked like an absolute terror early on in his career - which, admittedly, was only three years ago; "Da Don" is a tank of a human with the ability to obliterate anyone who eats one of his strikes cleanly. But there's been some rough going in his UFC career to date; his decision to cut down to middleweight was absolutely baffling and made him ineffectively slow, and he still hasn't shown much ability to set a pace even with his move back up to 205 pounds. That leaves some openings for Ulberg to pick him apart here, but Nchukwi has at least shown a willingness to close distance and turn things into an absolute grind; given Ulberg's seeming overconfidence in his own defensive abilities, there's a good chance that Nchukwi can bull him against the fence and turn this into the type of fight that the Kiwi will absolutely hate. Nchukwi has tired in those types of fights himself, but Ulberg has gassed much quicker and much worse - if things reach that point for Ulberg, this could turn into some easy work for Nchukwi that ends in brutal fashion. The pick is Nchukwi via second-round knockout.

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Ulberg vs. Nchukwi
Shayilan vs. Brown
Paiva vs. Morozov
Buys vs. Durden
Kelleher vs. Bautista
Demopoulos vs. Frey