Vlasto Cepo: My Partizan socks stay in the bag

Before every fight of his career, Vlastislav Cepo pulled the same pair of socks out of his bag. Black and white, Partizan colours. He would put them on, walk out, and finish the job before the final bell. On Saturday night at Belgrade Arena, nobody in the building will see them.

This is not superstition and it is not the fighter’s call. It is the rulebook. The UFC issues its fighters a complete official kit and inspects it before they step into the octagon, so a private piece of clothing does not get through, not even one carrying the crest of the club a fighter supports.

“I wore Partizan socks before every fight. But there are checks. Everything has to be UFC. I can’t walk out in my own gear.”

Cepo said this on July 29, two days out from the event, and it is the first time he has explained in public where the ritual came from and why it ends this weekend.

What survives the kit check

Two things the rulebook does not touch: the music and the flags. On August 1 he walks out to “Djurdjevdan”, a song he has been dragging into arenas across central Europe for years.

“The biggest rush is walking out in front of a home crowd to Djurdjevdan. In the Czech Republic and Slovakia I taught people that song.”

Two flags come with it, Serbian and Slovak. His mother is Slovak, he has lived in Slovakia for two decades, and he is only the second fighter from that country to reach the UFC, after Ludovit Klajn.

“I always carry two flags, Serbia and Slovakia. My mother is Slovak. I have been living in Slovakia for 20 years. I love both countries the same.”

None of that was cooked up for a Belgrade fight week. He does it at events where the home support in the stands runs to about ten people.

Who is Gilbert Urbina, and why this is no gimme

Across from him on Saturday stands the American Gilbert Urbina, 7-4. Urbina reached a wider audience as a finalist on season 29 of The Ultimate Fighter, the show the UFC uses to sift through fighters before handing out contracts.

The bout sits on the main card, which is a step up on its own. Local fighters at big shows usually end up on the prelims, working in front of a half-empty hall while the crowd is still filing in from the car park.

The numbers behind the name

Cepo is 31 and fights at middleweight. His professional record says more than the raw figure suggests:

• 14 wins and 3 losses
• every win by finish, none on the judges’ scorecards
• two straight wins heading into Belgrade Arena
• an amateur boxing record of 15-1 before he switched to MMA

A fighter who has never once been handed a decision has a clear profile. He hunts the finish rather than managing rounds. Against Urbina that points to an early exchange more open than any careful tactician would like.

Before all of it he was a goalkeeper on a football pitch, then an amateur boxer, then a man who entered his first MMA tournament with no training in the sport and won by first-round knockout.

The ninth name on the list

We have already written about how many Serbian fighters are on this card: nine, with Aleksandar Rakic at the top and five of them making their debuts. Medic, Rakic and Janicic have spoken so far. Cepo is the rest of that story, a fighter who reached Belgrade through Slovak gyms and Slovak halls rather than the domestic scene.

“Honestly, this is a dream come true. I can’t believe it, and I won’t until I walk into the cage.”

He was not expecting the call. In an earlier interview with Arena Sport he said he had never even counted on it until it landed.

“No, I wasn’t hoping for it. But it happened, to my great fortune. I have fulfilled the most important goal of my career.”

The event at Belgrade Arena is on Saturday, August 1, 2026, with Cepo and Urbina on the main card. If a fighter who has finished every opponent he has beaten does it again in front of a home crowd, nobody in the arena will be asking what he had on under the official kit.