Mandel Nallo waited a long time for his first UFC win, and when it arrived at Rogers Place on Saturday night it took him less than a round and a half. Nallo chopped Nate Landwehr down with leg kicks and finished him by TKO 47 seconds into round two in the opening bout of the UFC Edmonton main card.
Nallo is 37, fights out of Tristar Gym in Montreal, and was born in North Vancouver. He is also now 15-4 as a pro, with his first UFC victory finally on the board after a rough start to his run in the promotion.
Nallo Needed This More Than Anyone on the Card
Nallo earned his contract on Dana White’s Contender Series in September 2025, stopping Samuel Silva in the first round. Then he debuted in Winnipeg in April and got stopped by Jai Herbert in a little over two minutes. For a guy who had already spent years grinding through the Canadian regional scene, that is a brutal way to be introduced to a UFC audience.
Saturday was the correction. He attacked the lead leg from the opening bell, took the sting out of Landwehr’s pressure, and made the referee’s job easy once Landwehr could no longer stand on it properly. Leg kicks rarely get the highlight treatment they deserve, but a fight that ends because a man cannot bear weight is as decisive as any head kick.
At 37, Nallo does not have a long runway, and that is exactly why this mattered. One loss into a UFC tenure at that age, a second defeat usually means the end of the road. Instead he gets a real foothold at lightweight and a chance to be the kind of late-arriving veteran who hangs around because he finishes people.
What It Means for Landwehr
This one hurts to watch if you have followed Landwehr’s career. The Train is 38, he is one of the most relentlessly entertaining fighters the UFC has had at featherweight, and he has now lost four fights in a row.
The skid started with a third-round TKO loss to Choi Doo-ho at UFC 310 in December 2024. Then came a third-round knockout loss to Morgan Charriere in July 2025, a first-round TKO loss to Cub Swanson in April, and now Nallo. His overall record sits at 18-9, and his UFC ledger is 5-7.
The move up to lightweight was supposed to be the reset. Landwehr has spent his entire UFC run at featherweight, and the UFC spent fight week selling his qualities at 155 pounds as disciplined and mean. That reset lasted one outing.
Four straight losses, every one of them by stoppage, is the kind of sequence that normally ends a UFC contract. Whether the promotion keeps him around is on Dana White and the matchmakers, and nobody official has said anything yet. But Landwehr has earned the right to have the conversation go the other way too. Fighters with his style and his damage history should be asked what they want, not just told.
The Bigger Picture in Edmonton
Canadian fighters got a loud night in Alberta, and Nallo gave the building its first real roar on the main card. The rest of the card ran late into the evening, with Joaquin Buckley and Mike Malott headlining and Erin Blanchfield meeting Jasmine Jasudavicius in the co-main event.
For Nallo, none of that matters much. He came in needing to prove he belonged, he got the finish, and he walks out of his home country with a UFC win he will not have to explain to anybody.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.