Uroš Medić Headlines at Home as UFC Lands in Serbia for First Time

Belgrade Arena becomes the 170th city and 33rd country on the UFC's map this Saturday, and the promotion picked a fitting local face to headline the debut. Uroš Medić — the only ranked Serbian on the roster — gets his first main event, at home, against durable Californian Daniel Rodriguez in a welterweight scrap that reads as power versus precision on paper.

Medić is 13-3 overall and has maintained a perfect 100-percent finish rate across his career, a stat that makes his 5-2 run since moving up to 170 pounds look a lot scarier than the raw record suggests. He hit another gear late last year with dominant finishes of Gilbert Urbina and Muslim Salikhov, then walked into Houston in February and sparked Geoff Neal. He's on a three-fight tear and hunting the finish from the opening bell.

Rodriguez brings his own three-fight streak and a reputation for refusing to break. The 39-year-old is 7-3 over his last 10 and hasn't fought since outpointing Kevin Holland at UFC 318 in New Orleans last July. He's the technical grinder here — the guy who wears you down rather than blows you away. Whether he can drag a partisan Belgrade crowd's favorite into deep water is the whole fight.

Błachowicz's Crossroads

The co-main slot was supposed to be a Jan Błachowicz–Bogdan Guskov rematch. A reshuffle of the light heavyweight deck handed the spot to Navajo Stirling instead, and it drops the former champion into a genuinely awkward spot. Błachowicz is 0-2-2 over his last four, with his only win in that stretch coming via an injury stoppage in a fight he was already leading.

That said, the 43-year-old took Carlos Ulberg — now the division's champion at 15-1 — and Alex Pereira the distance in competitive fights, and weathered Guskov the first time out. Stirling, meanwhile, is a City Kickboxing product surging with two stoppage wins already in 2026. As his confidence grows, so does his pressure. A win here puts him firmly in the 205-pound conversation.

Rakic's Leap of Faith

The main card's boldest gamble belongs to Aleksandar Rakic, who's abandoning light heavyweight after 20 starts to test the heavyweight waters against Polish veteran Marcin Tybura. Rakic (14-6) has lost four straight since his knee gave out against Błachowicz, most recently a first-round KO to Azamat Murzakanov, and he's added mass to fit the new frame.

Tybura is the perfect measuring stick — 10-5 over his last 15, with every loss coming to a fighter ranked ahead of him. He doesn't wilt under early pressure and he doesn't go away. If Rakic's athleticism translates up a division, this gets interesting fast. If it doesn't, Tybura is exactly the kind of steady veteran who exposes that in real time.