{"id":198908,"date":"2025-10-09T01:19:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T01:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/198908\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T01:19:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T01:19:07","slug":"before-ufc-rio-hits-brazil-revisit-maia-vs-laflare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/198908\/","title":{"rendered":"Before UFC Rio hits Brazil, revisit Maia vs. LaFlare"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is headed back to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, this weekend (Sat., Oct. 11, 2025) for its first Fight Night event in the city in nearly a decade. In the main event of UFC Rio<\/a>, former Lightweight champion Charles Oliveira collides with No. 8-ranked contender<\/a> Mateusz Gamrot in what promises to be a grappler\u2019s delight.<\/p>\n

Rio has long been the beating heart of Brazilian MMA. The UFC has visited the city 12 times, more than any other location in the country \u2014 and 11 of those events were pay-per-view (PPV) cards<\/a>. Excluding this weekend\u2019s return, there\u2019s been only one UFC Fight Night in Rio\u2019s history. Do you remember which one?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s rewind to what went down that night nearly ten years ago.<\/p>\n

In the main event, two-time title challenger Demian Maia dominated Ryan LaFlare over five rounds. It was classic Maia \u2014 relentless grappling, heavy top control, and suffocating jiu-jitsu. To be fair, the fifth round was rough, as Maia completely gassed, but by then the fight was all but over. The performance wasn\u2019t flashy, but it was vintage Maia.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re curious, a few grainy clips of his takedowns are still floating around on YouTube.<\/p>\n

In the co-main event, Erick Silva (remember him?) took on Josh Koscheck (who took the fight on short notice) and tapped him in the first round with a guillotine choke.<\/p>\n

The rest of the main card featured some memorable moments \u2014 and future legends. Amanda Nunes, still early in her career and coming off her first UFC loss, blasted Shayna Baszler with brutal leg kicks for a first-round TKO. Gilbert Burns submitted Alex Oliveira in his third Octagon appearance, and Godofredo Pepey pulled off a wild flying triangle choke against Andre Fili that remains one of the slickest finishes in Rio history.<\/p>\n

The only other super notable fight on the card was the night\u2019s biggest controversy, which was Leandro Silva vs. Drew Dober.<\/p>\n

In Round 2, Dober escaped a guillotine and landed on top, only for referee Eduardo Herdy to suddenly stop the fight, mistakenly thinking Dober was unconscious. The bizarre call sparked outrage \u2014 and the result was later overturned to a no-contest. (watch it here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

On paper, UFC Fight Night: Maia vs. LaFlare wasn\u2019t the deepest card, but it delivered plenty of action and chaos \u2014 the kind of unpredictable energy that Brazilian crowds live for. If history repeats itself, this weekend\u2019s UFC Rio could bring that same wild, violent magic back to the \u201cCidade Maravilhosa.\u201d<\/p>\n

Remember that MMAmania.com<\/a> will deliver LIVE round-by-round, blow-by-blow coverage of the entire UFC Rio fight card<\/a>, starting with the ESPN+<\/a> \u201cPrelims\u201d matches online, which are scheduled to begin at 4 p.m. ET, before the main card start time at 7 p.m. ET (also on ESPN+<\/a>).<\/p>\n

To checkout the latest and greatest UFC Rio: \u201cOliveira vs. Gamrot\u201d news and notes be sure to hit up our comprehensive event archive right here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is headed back to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, this weekend (Sat., Oct. 11, 2025)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198909,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,33601,638,82,702,9468,3194],"class_list":["post-198908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-news","tag-ufc-videos","tag-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}