The UFC’s bantamweight divisions are front and centre this week at UFC 316.

The men’s 135-pound title is on the line in the headliner featuring a rematch between current champion Merab Dvalishvili and former champ Sean O’Malley, while Julianna Peña will look to defend the women’s 135-pound championship against two-time Olympic gold medallist judoka Kayla Harrison in the co-main event.

Flying slightly under the radar on the main card is an absolute banger of a bantamweight bout that could have major implications on the men’s side and that’s Mario Bautista vs. Patchy Mix. 

Bautista is the No. 10-ranked contender in the UFC’s deepest division and is riding a seven-fight winning streak entering the weekend, including an October win over former UFC champion and Hall of Famer Jose Aldo. 

Mix, meanwhile, is a former Bellator MMA champion about to make his anticipated UFC debut.

We’ve seen several former Bellator champs eventually swing over to the UFC in recent years but Mix’s addition to the roster is different than say Patricio “Pitbull” Freire’s debut from earlier this year at UFC 314.

Pitbull at age 37 was past his fighting prime and had lost two of three fights prior to dropping a unanimous decision to Yair Rodriguez back in April. Pitbull’s overall strength of schedule in the Bellator featherweight division always faced scrutiny since it has always been weaker, relatively speaking, than the UFC’s 145-pound ranks.

Mix’s résumé, however, stacks up favourably to most of the ranked contenders on the UFC roster, including Bautista’s, since Bellator’s 135-pound division was generally regarded as world class.

At just 31 years old, Mix is smack dab in his prime and boasts a 20-1 pro record. His only loss was a five-round decision in a title fight he took on short notice nearly five years ago against Juan Archuleta.

Mix has strung together seven consecutive wins since his first and only setback.

“I truly, full heartedly believe I’m the best bantamweight in the world, and I need to be in the UFC to prove that,” Mix said Wednesday when speaking with reporters in New Jersey at the official UFC 316 media day.

Mix has a win over Ricky Bandejas, who’s one of four fighters to beat Dvalishvili. He defeated past UFC title challenger Kyoji Horiguchi in 2022, earned an 80-second highlight knockout of Raufeon Stots to win the Bellator Bantamweight World Grand Prix in 2023 and later that year submitted former highly ranked UFC contender Sergio Pettis to become Bellator’s undisputed 135-pound champ.

“People forget what I did in my division before coming here,” the Angola, N.Y., native told Sportsnet earlier this week. “I cleaned out my division, similar to Merab, but I finished everybody in my division.”

It has been almost 13 months since Mix last fought and his most recent appearance was not his best performance – a five-round split decision over the touted Magomed Magomedov to defend the Bellator MMA world title in May 2024. Mix also held a previous submission victory over Magomedov, a fighter who has a notable past win over former UFC champ Petr Yan.

Bautista, who was originally expected to face one-time title challenger Marlon Vera at UFC 316, ironically lost some momentum with the way in which he got his hand raised against Aldo.

At UFC 307 in October, Bautista went 0 for 10 on his takedown attempts and landed fewer significant strikes than Aldo yet he accumulated 7:15 of control time, stalling for much of the fight by pressing Aldo along the fence, and escaped with a split decision victory.

Prior to that dud against Aldo, though, Bautista was on an upward trajectory and an upset win over Mix would potentially put him one additional win away from a title shot. Bautista, who’s six weeks older than Mix with 11 UFC bouts to his name, is the listed underdog according to the betting odds.

Bautista’s active seven-fight streak is tied for the third-longest in UFC bantamweight history; Dvalishvili’s 11-fight streak in the weight class is the current record.

The winner of Bautista vs. Mix will undoubtedly keep a close eye on how the main event unfolds. Mix said he’d prefer to see Dvalishvili defend the title since he has respect for the current champion and the two have trained together in the past, but he also said of a possible future showdown with Suga Sean: “I feel I could submit O’Malley pretty easily.”

Despite the dearth of UFC experience, Mix has shown throughout his first handful of UFC media appearances that his confidence is not lacking whatsoever. How that factors into UFC 316, we’ll have to watch to find out.

“When I go fight Mario Bautista on Saturday, I don’t think it’s a step up (in competition). I think maybe he’s as good as the last five guys I’ve had, maybe he’s not. I don’t even think he beats all them, but I know it’ll validate my career when I finish him on Saturday,” Mix added on Wednesday. “I’m a surgeon. Not just in grappling but like the moves I make and I thought really thoroughly about taking this fight and what it would do to me. 

“I needed to be on this card, to be around Sean O’Malley and to be around Merab and be around this world title fight. I need to smell that. I need to see it. I need to know what it’s about. I need my head right here. I wasn’t going to watch this from home. Like, hell no. I got an opportunity to be here and I got an opportunity to take (Bautista’s) win streak and that’s what I came here for. I’m looking through Mario Bautista and the opportunities it gives me.”