DWCS Season 10 Finale: Visconde Swept the Main Event 30-27 on Every Card — and Still Left Without a UFC Contract

Winning is supposed to be the whole point. On Tuesday night at the Meta APEX in Las Vegas, Erick Visconde won everything a fighter can win inside the cage — every round, on every scorecard — and still walked out without the one thing the night was actually for. Visconde swept Ilias Bulaid by unanimous decision, 30-27 across all three cards, in the featherweight main event of Dana White's Contender Series 96, and when Dana White handed out the Season 10 finale's UFC contracts, the headliner's name was not among them. Four contracts went out. The man who won the main event was not one of the four.

This report completes the night we previewed in our earlier story on the DWCS Season 10 finale at the Meta Apex — the card ran Tuesday, streamed on Paramount+, and closed the season with the strangest possible headline: a clean sweep that earned a handshake instead of a deal.

The Main Event That Was Not Enough

There was history baked into the matchup before a punch was thrown. According to MMA Junkie's live results, the Visconde-Bulaid fight was a rebooking — illness had postponed it from Week 8, which meant both men had spent extra weeks preparing for exactly each other. Visconde made that preparation count. A 30-27 sweep means no judge gave Bulaid a single round; it is the most complete decision win the format produces.

And yet. Anyone who has watched the Contender Series for ten seasons knows the show's unwritten rule: White does not reward winning, he rewards the kind of performance that makes him stand up. Decisions — even dominant ones — are a gamble on this stage, because the contract decisions are not a scoring exercise. They are an audition judgment, made by one man, in the minutes after the card ends. Visconde controlled his fight from bell to bell and still learned the hardest lesson the series teaches: on this show, you can do everything right on the scorecards and leave with nothing but the win.

The Four Who Got the Call

The contracts, per MMA Junkie, went to Greg Foster, Douglas da Lapa, Luis Francischinelli and Smilla Sundell — four of the night's five winners. Look at how they won, and White's logic is not hard to trace. Francischinelli needed just 2:18 of the first round to stop Will Rentz by TKO with punches. Da Lapa's finish of Davi Cabral came even faster in its round — a TKO only 19 seconds into the third. Finishes talk on this show, and those two shouted.

Foster and Sundell earned theirs the longer way. Foster beat Jason Asher by unanimous decision, 29-28 on all three cards — a tighter fight than Visconde's, which makes his contract an interesting counterpoint: not every decision was punished on Tuesday, just, apparently, the one in the main event. Sundell's win may have been the most meaningful of the night. She beat Aline Pereira by unanimous decision, 29-28 across the board, in a women's bantamweight bout layered with story: Sundell arrived as a former ONE strawweight Muay Thai champion testing herself in a new sport, and Pereira is the younger sister of Alex Pereira. Beating that name, in that spotlight, in a debut discipline — that is the sort of resume line White has historically rewarded, and he did.

The Season, By the Numbers

Zoom out, and the finale capped a prolific season. As UFC.com noted, 42 fighters had already earned contracts through the season's first nine weeks — and Tuesday's four brought the Season 10 total to 46. Forty-six new UFC fighters from a single season of a Tuesday-night show in a nearly empty Las Vegas production facility is a remarkable pipeline, whatever you think of the format. It has become one of the UFC's primary talent engines, and nights like Tuesday are why: the standard is not simply to win, it is to win in a way that cannot be ignored.

That standard is also, inevitably, cruel at the margins. Five fighters won on Tuesday. Four of them changed their careers. The fifth — the one whose name sat at the top of the poster — goes home with a perfect scorecard and an open question about what more he could have done. The honest answer may be: nothing, except finish. On the Contender Series, that distinction is everything, and Visconde now owns the season's most painful illustration of it.

What Comes Next for the Winners — and for Visconde

For Foster, da Lapa, Francischinelli and Sundell, the work changes completely now. A contract turns a prospect into a UFC fighter with a debut to prepare for, and each of the four arrives with a clear identity: two finishers who ended their auditions early, a grinder who won a close one, and a decorated Muay Thai champion crossing over with real momentum. Sundell, in particular, will draw attention in a women's bantamweight division that loves a new storyline, and hers — a former ONE champion who beat a Pereira in her audition — writes itself.

Visconde's path is murkier, and that is the story that will linger from this finale. A 30-27 win over a rebooked opponent, in a main event, in the season finale, is not a performance that disappears. Fighters have returned from Contender Series snubs to earn contracts later, and a record that includes a clean sweep at the APEX will keep his name in conversations. But on the night itself, there is no softening it: he headlined, he dominated, and the show moved on without him.

That is the Contender Series in one evening — five winners, four contracts, and a reminder that at the Meta APEX, the scorecards are only ever half the exam. For the wider heavyweight picture and what White's matchmakers are doing next, read our look at the questions around the heavyweight title booking, and keep the Sports front open for whatever the UFC announces next.