Jeremiah Wells Opens UFC 330 at Home in Philly Against Orolbai

Jeremiah Wells gets the assignment he's wanted his whole career: the opening bout of UFC 330 on Saturday, inside Philadelphia's Xfinity Mobile Arena, in the city where he was born. The unranked welterweight (13-4-1, 5 KO, 4 SUB) draws Kyrgyzstan's Myktybek Orolbai in the curtain-raiser, with the main card headlined by Islam Makhachev against Ian Machado Garry.

For Wells, this is more than a hometown perk. He arrives on the back of a single win — a unanimous decision over Themba Gorimbo last November 1 — that ended a rough stretch of his career, and he's been handed the honor of getting a numbered event moving in front of a crowd he's part of. Wells said fighting in Philly is a dream come true, and joked that the city will need to grease the poles again if the locals get a result.

The Slide Before the Reset

Wells hit the UFC running after signing in 2020, having won the CFFC welterweight title in September 2019. He stopped his first three opponents — two by knockout, one submission — then pushed his streak to four with a split decision over Matthew Semelsberger in April 2023. Then it fell apart. Back-to-back losses to Carlston Harris and Max Griffin, followed by injuries and scrapped bookings, kept him out until that Gorimbo fight last fall.

That layoff forced a rethink. Wells said he had to slow everything down — stop rushing training, recovery and nutrition — and dig into his own head to keep the doubts from eating him alive. It paid off against Gorimbo, where he weathered a fast start and leaned on his work rate down the stretch, taking the final round when it mattered most.

He was originally slated to return in May against former Cage Warriors champ Nicolas Dalby, but a Dane injury killed that matchup. This time Wells stayed healthy, got rebooked fast, and landed the ideal consolation prize: a hometown slot on a pay-per-view.

Fireworks Expected

Wells is pitching this as a firefight, calling Orolbai a dog who brings it as much as he does. He wouldn't predict a method — five career KOs, four submissions, and plenty of decisions on the ledger mean he's genuinely unsure how it ends. What he is sure of, he said, is that if he lands clean, Orolbai goes to sleep, and either way his hand gets raised. The early prelims start at 5pm ET, with the full card streaming on Paramount+.