UFC Belgrade: First Bell at 4 p.m., Medic Closes
A day out from the event the card is locked at 14 bouts. Prelims start at 4 p.m. Belgrade time, the main card at 7 p.m., with TV Arena Fight and Paramount+ carrying it.
The octagon was already bolted together inside Belgrade Arena before anyone stepped on the scale, the stage and the video wall were up, and crews were still rigging sound and support gear on July 27. Once the official weigh-in finished, nothing moved. No bout was scratched, none was turned into a catchweight, and the running order UFC published earlier in the week holds down to the last line.
The card is locked at 14 fights, six on the main card and eight on the prelims. It is the same order we listed when we wrote that Medic would headline over five rounds, except now every name has a clock next to it.
Who opens and who closes
The first bell is at 4 p.m. Belgrade time, and it belongs to Marina Spasic and Stephanie Luciano at strawweight. The main card follows at 7 p.m. and ends with Uros Medic against Daniel Rodriguez at welterweight, booked for five rounds. The co-main is at light heavyweight: Jan Blachowicz against Navajo Stirling, who carries a 10-0 record and has never lost a professional fight.
Where can you watch it?
Inside Serbia the broadcast runs on TV Arena Fight. Everywhere else it sits on Paramount+, where the prelims go live at 10 a.m. ET and the main card at 1 p.m. ET. The six-hour gap means American viewers get the whole thing over lunch instead of late at night.
Main card, first fight to last:
- Milos Janicic vs Noah Gugnon, lightweight
- Vlasto Cepo vs Gilbert Urbina, middleweight
- Dusko Todorovic vs Robert Valentin, middleweight
- Aleksandar Rakic vs Marcin Tybura, heavyweight
- Blachowicz vs Stirling, light heavyweight
- Medic vs Rodriguez, welterweight, five rounds
Prelims, in the same order:
- Spasic vs Luciano, strawweight
- Jovan Leka vs Aleksander Popek, heavyweight
- Nina Nikolija Milosevic vs Hailey Cowan, bantamweight
- Mateusz Rebecki vs Kyle Prepolec, lightweight
- Dennis Buzukja vs Bogdan Grad, featherweight
- Borislav Nikolic vs Mark Vologdin, bantamweight
- Oban Elliott vs Michael Oliveira, welterweight
- Ludovit Klein vs Tofiq Musayev, lightweight
How the card got down to 14
It started at fifteen bouts and reached this schedule through four changes. Ante Delija pulled out injured, UFC could not find a short-notice replacement for Johnny Walker, and Walker came off the event entirely. That dropped the count to fourteen, where it stayed.
Blachowicz lost his opponent on July 13, when Bogdan Guskov was moved into the main event in Abu Dhabi against Magomed Ankalaev after Khalil Rountree Jr. got hurt. The Pole got a new name with under three weeks to go, and that name has no losses on it.
The last two swaps landed a day apart. Max Gimenis withdrew injured on July 23, so Popek steps in against Leka on his UFC debut. On July 24, Josias Musasa pulled out for undisclosed reasons and Nikolic, the Brave CF bantamweight champion, took the slot.
Four holes patched in three weeks and not a single new one after the scale, which is about the best this card could have hoped for going into the first UFC event ever held in Serbia. First bell is Saturday, August 1, at 4 p.m.
