Preview: UFC Paris Prelims

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Heading into the final third of 2025 and the end of an era, the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s road show is hitting on all cylinders.

With the UFC’s broadcast agreement with ESPN set to expire, fans can expect some shakeup in the industry leader’s offerings starting in 2026. It may mean an end to the pattern of the last five years, during which the promotion’s contractual obligations to its broadcast partner led to 20 or more shows per year in the small, quiet confines of the Apex in Las Vegas. That would no doubt come as a welcome change to many fans, but the endless cavalcade of “UFC Vegas [number]” cards did make the destination Fight Night events feel more like…well, events.

The UFC is set to rack up some frequent flyer miles between now and the end of the year; there are only two or three Apex shows left on the books, and this week’s offering in Paris is a prime example of a great free card. The Nassourdine Imavov-Caio Borralho headliner is practically the Platonic ideal of a Fight Night main event, featuring a native star as the A-side of a well-matched bout with immediate title implications. The rest of the 14-fight slate offers solid contenders, reliable action fighters, several promising up-and-comers, and pretty much every notable French fighter on roster besides Manon Fiorot.

While it’s fun and fashionable to bash some of the UFC’s practices, this card is about as solid as they come. The only reasonable criticism is over the bout order, but when the prelims and main card are all on the same channel anyway, prelims vs. main card is pretty much a distinction without a difference anyway.

Let us get on to the preview for the undercard for UFC Fight Night 258, also known as UFC Paris:

Featherweights

William Gomis (14-3) vs. Robert Ruchala (11-1)

Odds: Gomis (-230); Ruchala (+180)

Gomis will look to bounce back from his first UFC setback—and his first loss in nearly nine years—while spoiling the Octagon debut of a pretty good European prospect and reaffirming his own status as a future contender. “The Jaguar” landed in the UFC in 2022 after a fantastic run in European and Middle Eastern regional shows and won his first four fights in the promotion, culminating in a split decision victory over Joanderson Brito a year ago. That win left him well positioned to move into the Top 10 this year, but he came up short, again by split decision, against Hyder Amil in March.

The loss to Amil was not a death knell for the 28-year-old’s aspirations but it did highlight some of the issues with his otherwise promising skill set. At his best, Gomis is a tall, rangy, athletic featherweight with accurate striking, decent power and a surprisingly solid ground game that flies under the radar. However, he has a tendency, not uncommon in young, slick strikers, to spend too much time either trying to line up the perfect strike or admiring his own defensive work. It is an approach that can make it difficult to win close rounds if the kill shot never materializes.

Against the likes of Jarno Errens and Yanis Ghemmouri, Gomis’ deliberate pace didn’t cost him the win, but Amil, a fellow striker by preference, sewed up the victory simply by coming forward and throwing more punches and kicks. In the debuting Ruchala, Gomis will have the opportunity to show that he learned from the experience.

Ruchala is reminiscent of Gomis in some ways; both are lanky European 20-somethings who prefer a kickboxing match at distance but are more than capable of taking care of themselves on the ground if called upon to do so. The 27-year-old Pole comes to the UFC as a former KSW champ, and aficionados of that promotion will be unsurprised to discover that he has an extravagant highlight reel and quite a few defensive liabilities.

Chief among those liabilities is Ruchala’s predilection for spinning strikes. Look no further than his lone career loss, against KSW double-champ Salahdine Parnasse two years ago. He briefly floored Parnasse with a spinning back elbow in Round 1—maybe the high-water mark of his career so far—but was out of ideas after that, going back to the well several more times as Parnasse gradually overwhelmed him. Parnasse was simply a better fighter everywhere, especially at the time, but Ruchala’s dependence on those techniques only exacerbates his struggles with fighters who crowd him and deny him the space to work.

Against Gomis, Ruchala will at least have an opponent who prefers to work from the same range and at a similar pace. However, Gomis is more effective there, and has made his game work against a higher level of opposition. The pick here is that the Frenchman will come out ahead in a moderately paced, middle to long-range kickboxing battle that threatens to break out the fireworks but never quite does. Gomis by decision.



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