Five fighters on UFC 331 this Saturday are riding losing streaks serious enough to put their UFC roster spot in real doubt. The UFC doesn't publish a hard rule for how many straight losses gets a fighter cut, but two or three in a row without a signature win is usually the point where a promotion starts looking elsewhere, and several fighters on this card are well past that line.
Why losing streaks end careers, not just fights
A UFC contract isn't guaranteed for a set number of years — it's built around a set number of fights, and the promotion has wide discretion to simply not book another one. A fighter who keeps losing stops getting matched against ranked opponents, stops getting big paydays, and eventually stops getting booked at all. There's no announcement when it happens; a fighter just doesn't appear on a card again.
That makes a losing streak categorically different from a bad quarter at a normal job. There's no severance, no guaranteed next assignment, and the fighter's leverage to negotiate a new deal disappears along with the win column. For fighters already deep into a skid, Saturday isn't about rankings or a title shot — it's about whether they get to keep fighting for a living at all.
Tai Tuivasa: one loss from history he doesn't want
Australian heavyweight Tai Tuivasa has lost seven of his last eight UFC fights, most recently a decision to Louie Sutherland in May 2026. That skid puts him one loss away from the UFC's all-time record for consecutive defeats — not a stat any fighter wants attached to their name, let alone one who was headlining pay-per-views and finishing top contenders as recently as 2022.
Tuivasa faces Cuban heavyweight Robelis Despaigne, a taller, longer opponent with a perfect knockout record and an Olympic taekwondo pedigree. Tuivasa has relocated his training camp to American Top Team in Florida specifically to try to reset the skid, which tells you how seriously his camp is treating this fight. A loss here wouldn't be one bad fight in a long career — it would be the eighth in nine, against an opponent built almost perfectly to extend it.
Marlon Vera: still ranked, still winless since 2023
Marlon Vera is a genuinely unusual case: he's dropped four straight fights and hasn't won since a 2023 decision over Pedro Munhoz, yet he remains ranked No. 10 in the UFC's official bantamweight rankings as of this week. That's a reminder that rankings reflect a fighter's full body of work and quality of opposition, not just their most recent form — Vera's last four losses have come against Deiveson Figueiredo, Aiemann Zahabi, and David Martinez, all ranked opponents themselves.
Being ranked buys some patience, but not unlimited patience. A fifth straight loss, especially to an unranked opponent, is a much harder result to explain away than the four that came before it. His opponent, Charles Jourdain, has won three straight since dropping to bantamweight and would move into the rankings conversation himself with a win — meaning this fight carries real stakes for both men, just from opposite directions.
Giga Chikadze and the cost of a highlight-reel loss
Featherweight Giga Chikadze has dropped three consecutive fights, the most recent a spinning-backfist knockout loss to Kevin Vallejos in December 2025. Chikadze was once considered a legitimate title contender on the strength of his kickboxing, and he remains unranked in a stacked featherweight division after the skid. At 38, he doesn't have the luxury of treating this as a rebuilding fight — a fourth straight loss, against a finisher on a two-fight win streak in Joanderson Brito, would be difficult for any promotion to keep paying for.
Brunno Ferreira and Michael Aswell Jr.: shorter streaks, same stakes
Not every fighter on this list needs a career-threatening skid to be fighting for something real. Middleweight Brunno Ferreira has lost his last two, both finishes, after a signature decision win over former title challenger Marvin Vettori in December 2025 suggested he was heading the other direction. Two losses isn't yet a crisis, but a third — against a fellow slumping veteran in Edmen Shahbazyan — starts to look like a pattern rather than a rough patch.
Featherweight Michael Aswell Jr. is in a similar spot, having dropped back-to-back decisions after opening his UFC run with a knockout win. He faces South Korean prospect Joo Sang Yoo, himself trying to rebound from the first stoppage loss of his career, in a genuine swing fight for both men's momentum.
What actually separates these situations
The gap between "concerning skid" and "roster in jeopardy" mostly comes down to two things: whether recent losses came against ranked, credible opposition, and whether a fighter still has a finishing style that keeps them booked as an exciting name even while losing. Vera's rankings status buys him room that Chikadze's unranked status doesn't. Tuivasa's popularity as a knockout artist and shoe-chugging fan favorite has likely extended his run further than a similar record would for a less marketable fighter — but even fan favorites run out of runway eventually.
The takeaway
A single loss rarely ends a UFC career, but the fighters on this card carrying two, three, four, or seven-of-eight skids into Saturday are past the point where the next result is just about the win column. For Tuivasa, Vera, Chikadze, Ferreira, and Aswell, this fight is less about climbing the rankings and more about whether they're still on the roster the next time a card gets booked.