After the Standup: What's Next for Nolan, Smith and the Winners of UFC Vegas 123

LAS VEGAS

Two days later, the Halloween card at the Meta APEX is still being argued about — and that argument is now part of the record Tom Nolan has to carry. The Australian's third-round TKO of Renato Moicano at UFC Vegas 123 on Saturday is the biggest win of his career, full stop. It is also a win that turned on referee Dan Miragliotta standing the fighters up in the second round while Moicano held back control with a body triangle, a restart ESPN described as a questionable decision that significantly swayed the result. Our full results report litigated the standup on the night. This is the other half of the story: what each winner does with the win, and what the UFC does with them.

Nolan: the ranking is coming, ready or not

Start with the numbers that do not care about the controversy. Nolan is 12-1 in MMA and 6-1 in the UFC, and Saturday was his sixth straight victory, according to MMA Junkie's post-event facts from UFC Fight Night 292. Moicano was a former title challenger and the biggest name on his record by a wide margin. When the lightweight rankings update this week, Nolan's name belongs in the conversation for the bottom of the top 10 — that is simply what beating Moicano does, standup or no standup.

The name already being floated for him next is Mateusz Gamrot, the Polish grappler whose game is, pointedly, everything that nearly beat Nolan on Saturday: takedowns, back control, patience. Sports Wire Live reported Gamrot as a potential next opponent in the aftermath. Nothing is booked — the UFC has announced nothing, and matchmaking talk this early is exactly that — but as a piece of logic it is almost too neat. If Nolan wants the asterisk gone, there is no better way to erase it than beating the division's most relentless grappler without any help from a referee. If the UFC wants to find out whether Saturday was a breakthrough or a bailout, same answer.

Smith: 14-0 and done being patient

Jacobe Smith's co-main event win carried no controversy at all, which is its own kind of statement. Smith took all three scorecards 30-26 against Randy Brown — a clean sweep with a 10-8 in the mix — and ran his record to 14-0 overall and 5-0 in the UFC. Per MMA Junkie, his five-fight UFC winning streak at welterweight is tied for the second-longest active streak in the division, behind only Michael Morales' six. At some point a prospect stops being a prospect. A 30-26 sweep of a veteran like Brown, on a week's reshuffled notice in a co-main event slot, is that point.

Smith seems to know it. According to Sports Wire Live, he used his post-fight moment to call out Kevin Holland, reviving a matchup that had been lined up earlier this year before it fell away. Holland is precisely the kind of name an undefeated welterweight calls out when he wants the ranked-opponent conversation to start: famous, active, dangerous, and beatable on the right night. Again — not booked, not announced, a callout. But callouts from 14-0 fighters tend to get answered in this division, because everyone above them needs an opponent too.

The rest of the winners' queue

Jean-Paul Lebosnoyani might have had the most productive night of anyone. His doctor's-stoppage win over Farman Hasanov — stopped at 2:11 of the third after Lebosnoyani opened a severe cut above Hasanov's eye — was his first UFC finish, moving him to 12-2 overall and 3-0 in the promotion, MMA Junkie reported from the APEX. He then told the media he wants Jake Matthews next. That is a sensible, winnable step up against an established Australian veteran, and it is the kind of specific, realistic callout the matchmakers actually grant.

In the women's bantamweight division, Luana Santos quietly put together the most technically complete performance on the card: five takedowns, roughly seven and a half minutes of control time, and a unanimous decision over No. 5-ranked Yana Santos for her fourth straight win, ESPN reported. The timing could hardly be better. Champion Kayla Harrison is set to defend against the returning Amanda Nunes at UFC 334 in the coming weeks, per ESPN — a megafight that restarts a division ESPN described as stagnant. Whoever wins, the next contender in line is going to be whoever built a streak while nobody was watching. Santos, now 12-2, just built hers in public. Cody Durden's unanimous decision over Ode' Osbourne, meanwhile, keeps him in the flyweight mix — useful, unglamorous, and exactly the kind of win that gets a fighter one more contract-cycle fight against a ranked name.

And the APEX does it all again Saturday

There is barely time to breathe. The UFC returns to the same building on Saturday, November 7, for UFC Vegas 124 — a card that has already lost its main event once. Sean Brady's withdrawal with a staph infection in his knee cancelled the Gabriel Bonfim headliner nine days out, Bonfim is off the card entirely, and a heavyweight bout between Waldo Cortes-Acosta and Johnny Walker has been elevated to the main event, as we covered in our report on the reshuffle. Tatiana Suarez vs. Virna Jandiroba — a strawweight fight with genuine title implications, unlike the heavyweight headliner's chaos — sits in the co-main slot.

That is the rhythm of Apex season: one card's arguments bleed straight into the next card's fight week. Nolan and Smith will be watching Saturday like everyone else, waiting for the phone to ring with the names that decide whether Halloween was their ceiling or their floor. On the evidence of Saturday night — one bailout, one beatdown, zero doubt about which was which — Smith's phone should ring first.