Dana White’s Contender Series: Season 8 Signee Rankings

Dana White’s Contender Series: Season 8 Signee Rankings

Dana White’s Contender Series: Season 8 produced 42 new UFC fights. The signees represent a vast range of potential outcomes. On one hand, there are blue-chip prospects that can reach the rankings while others will go winless and get cut. The goal today is to look at every signee from this season and determine which end of the scale they fall on.

Tiers Explanation

This post will rank every signee from one to 42. On top of that, we will use tiers to help provide some context to those rankings. Here are the seven tiers that will be used to help rank these fighters.

Elite Prospects: The top tier is reserved for elite prospects. This group of fighters is filled with fighters who have already shown highly impressive skills for their age. These fighters can win fights in the UFC and are the most likely to climb the rankings. This group only includes fighters that immediately become one of the best prospects in their division.

Near-Elite/Elite Upside: The second tier is the near-elite and high upside tier. This group of fighters can include two different types of fights. The near-elite tier fighter is someone who has shown a serious level of skill for their age. Although, those fighters were not quite as impressive as fighters included in the top tier.

Elite upside fighters represent fighters with a lot of room to grow. These fighters have improvements to make; however, a few improvements would make them sensational prospects. This is the type of fighter that can boom or bust. That said, this tier is reserved for fighters who are more likely to hit the boom outcome.

Quality Fighters/High-Upside Projects: The next tier is reserved for quality fighters and high-upside prospects. This tier is very similar to the previous tier. It is just a slight level down. The fighters that make up the quality fighter portion of the rankings are athletes who should have the ability to get UFC wins. This makes them clearly better than lower-end tier, but also undeserving of elite prospect status.

The second part of this ranking includes fighters with a ridiculous amount of upside. This is fighters with specific elite skills or traits, but they are less likely to reach their top status in comparison to the fighters tiered above them. It will take a lot of work. That’s why they are projects. That said, a few will hit and fly up prospect rankings.

This seems like polar opposite types of fighters to have tier together; however, there is a reasoning behind it. A decent amount of these high-upside fighters can lean on their clear elite skill to get wins. In a way, this gives them the potential to pick up a few wins. That makes them better than the lower-ranked fighters and puts them toward the middle of the rankings.

Reason for Interest: The next tier of fighter is the reason for interest tier. This is the middle ground and average tier. The fighters in this tier do not hold elite skills like the aforementioned fighters. At the same time, they are less likely to pick up wins than the quality fighters. Overall, these are fighters who can get UFC wins, but they are less likely to win and eventually become ranked. This is the fighter that you will see on the prelims with a middling record, but you don’t expect them to beat high-quality opponents. This is the most common type of fighter to get signed.

Fun With Little UFC Impact: This tier is reserved for fighters who will be fun to watch, but will not be great fighters. This is the type of fighter that goes 2-2 and gets kept around because they had four fun fights. Obviously, matchmaking could make their record a little better or worse, but the point stands.

Who Cares?: This tier is fighters that will probably not win at the UFC level. At the end of their tenure, not many fans with recognize their name. These fighters do not have elite skills and they do not have anything that provides optimism that they can grow into a quality prospect. Unfortunately, these are fighters that you will see on the prelims and have zero interest in watching.

Really Bad: The final prospect tier includes fighters that are flat-out bad. It would be a shock to see these fighters win UFC fights. If they do, it will be a result of luck or matchmaking that books them against another awful fighter. That is how most of these fighters won on DWCS to earn a contract.

The Rankings

It has to be emphasized that these rankings are a reflection of each fighter’s UFC potential. A fighter can be trash and knock out another bun on DWCS. These rankings reflect UFC potential.

Here are the final rankings for DWCS Season 8 signees. If you want more information on a specific fighter, you can click on the link with their name which will direct you to the recap of their DWCS fight. This will provide a recap of their fight and a deep dive into their skills.

Elite Prospects:

1. Kevin Vallejos– Featherweight

2. Lone’er Kavanagh-Flyweight

3. Cody Haddon-Bantamweight

4. Jacobe Smith-Welterweight

5. Elijah Smith– Bantamweight

6. Kody Steele– Lightweight

Near Elite/Elite Upside

7. Artem Vakhitov-Light Heavyweight

8. Malcolm Wellmaker-Bantamweight

9. Josias Musasa– Bantamweight

10. Rizvan Kuniev– Heavyweight

11. Diyar Nurgozhay– Light Heavyweight

12. Islam Dulatov– Welterweight

13. Austin Bashi– Featherweight

Quality Fighter/High-Upside Projects

14. Ateba Gautier– Middleweight 

15. Navajo Sterling– Light Heavyweight

16. Andrey Pulyaev– Middleweight 

17. Mansur Abdul-Malik– Middleweight

18. Jose Delgado– Featherweight

19. Mario Pinto– Heavyweight

Reason for Interest

20. Quinllan Salkilld– Lightweight

21. Yadier del Valle– Featherweight

22. Marco Tulio-Middleweight 

23. Cortavious Romious– Bantamweight 

24. Luis Gurule– Flyweight

25. Jonathan Micallef– Welterweight

26. David Martinez– Bantamweight Bout

27. Nicolle Caliari– Women’s Flyweight

28. Torrez Finney– Middleweight 

29. Alberto Montes– Featherweight

30. Alexia Thainara– Women’s Strawweight

Fun With Little UFC Impact

31. Tallison Teixeira-Heavyweight 

32. Andreas Gustafsson– Middleweight

33. Bogdan Grad– Featherweight

Who Cares?

34. Seok Hyun Ko– Welterweight

35. Daniel Frunza-Welterweight

36. Djordan Santos– Middleweight

37. Bruno Lopes– Light Heavyweight

Really Bad

38. Nick Klein– Middleweight

39. Danylo Voievodkin– Heavyweight

40. Ahmad Hassanzada– Lightweight

41. Kevin Christian– Light Heavyweight 

42. Yunisey Duben-Women’s Flyweight 

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