'Not Sure He Bought a Ticket': Janicic on Bojkovic
Asked whether he expects Marko Bojkovic in the arena on Saturday, Milos Janicic said he does not even know if his rival got a ticket. Bojkovic is not on the UFC Belgrade card.
The question came from the side of the scrum in Belgrade, and it had nothing to do with the man he actually fights on Saturday. Does he expect Marko Bojkovic to be in the building, watching from the stands? Milos Janicic paused, then started the sentence over three times.
“Well, I don’t know… It’s… I don’t know if he bought a ticket… I don’t know if he could handle it”
The answer landed on July 30, two days before the first UFC event ever staged in Serbia. It did not sound like a rehearsed line built for a headline, more like a shrug at a subject that keeps coming back to him.
There is nowhere for the two of them to settle it this week. Bojkovic is not on the official card the UFC released for August 1, neither on the main program nor on the preliminaries, so the whole thing plays out through microphones and phones rather than inside the cage. We covered the opening move yesterday, when Janicic called Bojkovic out at the press conference. Today he added the second half of it, in a flatter tone but with the same message.
The Cobra from Podgorica
He was born in Podgorica, he is 29, and he is the first fighter from Montenegro to sign with the UFC. His record reads 19-3, and inside that record sits the detail that separates him from most debutants: not one of those wins went to the judges. Eleven came by knockout, eight by submission.
Eleven times the job was finished inside the first round. The last time he heard a decision read out was in 2020, and he has won eight straight since. The Cobra nickname came with those nineteen finishes, and the twentieth is the only plan he will admit to.
“I hope to score a knockout, like always. I want a great performance that night and the 20th finish of my career. A hundred percent a finish, like always”
That is not empty noise from a fighter selling tickets. A man who has not needed the scorecards in six years has earned the right to talk that way.
Why Belgrade means more to him than Riyadh
When he found out where his first UFC fight would be, the location did not match what he had pictured.
“I didn’t expect it to be in Serbia, I thought it would be somewhere like Saudi Arabia”
It worked out better. Belgrade is where he built his name through regional promotions, where crowds already know him, and the UFC says it plans to keep coming back.
“It means everything to me. This is the best fight scene in Eastern Europe, the best city for fights. I built my name here, and now the UFC is coming here for the next three or five years. It’s perfect. This is my new home”
His fight opens the main program at Belgrade Arena, unusually high placement for a debutant. He summed that up in one line.
“It’s hard to do better than that, only if I were the main event”
Gunjon is the other half of the same debut
Across from him stands Noa Gunjon, a 25-year-old Frenchman with a 9-2 record and five straight wins. He trains in Sofia, fought in Bellator before this, and walks in under the same terms as Janicic, holding a UFC contract for the first time. The bout is at lightweight.
Two debutants opening the main card means neither man can lean on a reputation built inside this promotion. It comes down to who lands first, because Gunjon rarely sees the final horn either.
What happens Saturday
The contract arrived by email, and the reaction to his own announcement surprised him.
“When I opened the email and saw the contract, it really was a great feeling.”
“My post got twice as many likes as the official UFC post.”
He reaches for that number whenever the conversation turns to how well known he is outside Montenegro. The test comes on August 1, when the main program opens at Belgrade Arena. If Janicic delivers what he promised, the Bojkovic story gets a sequel with a date and a venue attached, instead of a question about who did or did not buy a ticket.
