Saudi prospect Abdulaziz Alotaibi beat Ezra Ssailli on the Zuffa Boxing 13 undercard in Riyadh, with Turki Alalshikh announcing the result on X in both Arabic and English. He framed it as a win for the home crowd and for Riyadh Season, and that was the point of putting a local fighter on this card. Alalshikh’s post didn’t include a method or scorecards, so that part of the story has to wait.
The louder moment came from Tullo Boymatov. MiddleEasy reported that he stopped Moro Kanla at 1:29 of Round 1. The early sequence was messy: one exchange was ruled a slip, and then Boymatov scored two knockdowns that counted. Two trips to the canvas and a stoppage in 89 seconds is about as efficient as an undercard fight gets.
The rest of the card has been moving along on Paramount+ and Sky Sports, and Dana White has been posting each walkout on X as it happens. He called Ivan Ortiz vs. Dariial Kuchmenov live next a little before 1 p.m. GMT. He did the same for Butaev vs. Castro about an hour later and for Zokirov vs. Colantonio shortly before Alotaibi’s result went up. We’ll update those bouts as results are confirmed.
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The Main Event
All of this leads to Carlos Adames defending his WBC title against Welsh middleweight Gerome Warburton. Both men weighed 165 pounds on the nose, according to MiddleEasy’s weigh-in report, so neither side has a scale story to complain about.
Adames, the Dominican champion who fights as “Caballo Bronco,” is the newest elite middleweight to sign with Zuffa Boxing. His pre-fight message to UFC.com was blunt: he said he’s in Riyadh to make history. He told UFC.com he wants to prove he’s the best of the middleweights the promotion has been collecting, and the UFC News account on X pushed his line that “The best of ‘Caballo Bronco’ is yet to come.”
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Warburton is getting the biggest opportunity of his career. UFC.com described him as the man who wants to spoil the party, which is the job description for any challenger walking into Riyadh to face a champion the promotion has just signed. In Adames, the house has invested in its new star, and Warburton’s job is to make that investment look bad.
I love a card where the prelims refuse to be filler, and Boymatov delivered exactly that. He hurt Kanla, dropped him twice and got out before anyone needed a second replay. Alotaibi got the result the building wanted. If Adames is serious about the history talk, he should take the hint from his undercard and go after Warburton early, because a 12-round grind in a debut for this promotion would be a strange way to announce himself. Warburton has nothing to lose and a title to take, and that kind of challenger tends to make champions sweat.
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