Serbia Takes Three of Four on UFC Belgrade Prelims
Jovan Leka, Nina Milosevic and Borislav Nikolic all had their hands raised on the UFC Belgrade prelims. Marina Spasic was the only home fighter to lose, and she went first.
The first name on the running order was a Serbian one. Marina Spasic opened the entire card at Belgrade Arena on August 1, 2026, and she opened it moving forward: a clean right hand, then leg kicks chopping at the front leg of Brazil’s Stephanie Luciano.
Luciano answered less often but bigger. Then came a takedown Spasic never saw. The Brazilian took the back almost unopposed, slid the arm under the chin, and the rear-naked choke ended it on the first try. Per the official UFC release, the finish came at 3:30 of round one.
Spasic came into the UFC at 7-1 and now sits at 7-2. Luciano was 2-1 inside the promotion before this one and leaves Belgrade at 3-1, on a two-fight run. Ahead of the card we carried her promise that things would get wild in the Arena. Wild they got. The first bell just rang the wrong way.
The rest of the prelims squared the ledger. Of the four Serbian fighters on that portion of the card, three won: Jovan Leka, Nina Milosevic and Borislav Nikolic. Two of those wins were first-round stoppages, the third a unanimous decision after fifteen minutes.
Leka needed 2:22, and the weigh-in had already told the story
Jovan Leka drew a heavyweight who does not really live at heavyweight. Germany’s Alexander Poppeck had fought at middleweight and light heavyweight in the PFL and Oktagon MMA before signing. On the scale Leka came in at 262.5 lbs, Poppeck at 215. That gap of 47.5 lbs showed the moment they met in the middle of the cage.
Poppeck was the busier man early, working short punches and leg kicks while circling. Leka waited. When the lane opened, he put a left kick into the liver. Poppeck folded and dropped, and a short burst of punches on the floor was enough for the referee to wave it off at 2:22 of round one.
That gave Serbia its first win of the night, and it made Leka the first Serbian fighter to win a UFC bout on home soil. He is now on seven straight, the last three by stoppage.
How did Nina Milosevic finish her fight?
With a body shot, by TKO at 3:41 of round one. Nina Milosevic, the first Serbian woman to fight in the UFC, beat American Hailey Cowan at bantamweight and pushed her professional record to 9-1.
Her first words, still inside the cage and still out of breath, were these:
“Great, greaaat, I felt great! We prepared a million times for something like this.”
The win came out of homework rather than adrenaline, and she said so herself afterwards:
“We studied her properly. From head to toe.”
Asked how the night compared to what she had pictured, she kept it short:
“Better than I dreamed. The atmosphere is electric, everyone I love is here and I am thrilled.”
She added that it had begun to sink in but that she still felt like she was flying above the sky, and thanked her camp by saying she has the finest team in the world.
Nikolic lost the first round, then took the next two
Borislav Nikolic walked in as a short-notice replacement for Josias Musasa, carrying a former Brave CF bantamweight title on his resume. His first round against Mark Vologdin was the worst stretch of the night for the home corner. Vologdin dropped him with a short left hook, fired knees from a front headlock, and buckled him to his knees more than once with clean counters and spinning strikes. Late in the round Nikolic did land a takedown, only for Vologdin to put him back on a knee against the fence.
Round two belonged to Nikolic. He pressed from the bell, worked for a takedown and ended up on top briefly, while Vologdin spent energy on spinning attacks that mostly missed.
Round three settled it. Nikolic timed a leg kick and dropped Vologdin with a right hand. Vologdin went hunting for a takedown, nearly ran into a front choke and ate a knee for it. When he finally completed the takedown, the position turned on him: Nikolic tried a guillotine, moved to top position, then took the back and locked up a rear-naked choke. The horn arrived before Vologdin had to tap. All three cards read 29-27 for Nikolic.
What it adds up to
Three out of four, with two first-round finishes and a choke that missed by a second, is not a night built on luck. Leka and Milosevic settled their fights before the arena had finished watching them, and Nikolic showed the thing that tends to matter most over a career: he can lose the opening five minutes without unravelling.
Marina Spasic is the one who went home with a loss, on debut, in front of her own people. There are not many worse ways to start. There are also easier opponents than Luciano, who came in with a winning record inside the promotion and now has three wins in four UFC bouts. What comes next for all four is a matchmaking decision, and after numbers like these out of Belgrade, Leka and Milosevic will get that call sooner than any other result would have earned them.
