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Events · UFC Fight Night: Leavitt vs Valle · Chidi Njokuani vs Carlos Leal
Red corner ChidiNjokuani“Bang Bang”Las Vegas, Nevada
VSSettled
Blue corner CarlosLeal“The Lion”Thai Brasil · Curitiba, Parana
Welterweight Bout3 rounds21 Feb 2026
The story going in
  • Has finished 3 of 5 UFC wins.
  • Lands 3.6 more significant strikes a minute than Njokuani.
  • 9 UFC bouts deep — 6 more than Leal.
26-12
Record
23-7
37
Age
−6 yr31
+4″6' 3"
Height
5' 11"
+6″80″
Reach
74″
Orthodox
Stance
Orthodox
+69
UFC bouts
3
3/560% of wins
Finishes
1/1100% of wins
Las Vegas, Nevada
From
Curitiba, Parana
Vitals, record, nickname and camp come from the public UFC fighter register and are current, not a snapshot of fight night. UFC bouts, finish rate and every storyline line are counted off the official UFC fight record. A tick marks the side holding the raw edge in that row — longer reach, taller, younger, more bouts, a higher finish rate. It is a fact about the tape, not a prediction, and rows with no clean comparison (record, stance, gym, hometown) carry no tick at all. Any row we cannot fill on both sides is left out rather than half-drawn. Streaks, bout counts and finish rates are as they stood going into this fight — this bout and everything after it is excluded from the count.

The call vs the fight

What we published before the card, next to what happened in the cage.

Our call
Carlos Leal
54.6% confidentTOSS-UP
Method calledKO/TKO 47%
Vs the market−0.2pp
Market had our pick at55%
The fight
Carlos Leal
WIN
How it endedDEC
Round3 of 3
Clock5:00
Called it We called Carlos Leal at 54.6% and Carlos Leal won. The method call missed.
Graded against the official UFC result, from the same record every other page on this site is graded from. The tick beside the verdict is the method call — a correct winner with a wrong method is a partial hit and reads as one. See the full public record →

Round by round

Every round the fight went, shaded by where the significant strikes actually landed — and the takedowns, control time and knockdowns beside them.

UFCStats · per round

3 rounds of tape

Round 15:00 of action
Chidi Njokuani46 sig landed
HEAD17%8 of 23BODY41%19 of 27LEGS41%19 of 20
Carlos Leal60 sig landed
HEAD47%28 of 95BODY35%21 of 25LEGS18%11 of 11
46 of 70
Sig.
strikes
60 of 131
0 of 0
Take-
downs
0 of 0
0:00
Control
0:00
Distance 39Clinch 7Ground 0
Where it
happened
Distance 58Clinch 2Ground 0
Round 25:00 of action
Chidi Njokuani22 sig landed
HEAD27%6 of 16BODY41%9 of 11LEGS32%7 of 8
Carlos Leal5 sig landed
HEAD80%4 of 19BODY0%0 landedLEGS20%1 of 1
22 of 35
Sig.
strikes
5 of 20
0 of 1
Take-
downs
0 of 4
0:04
Control
2:17
Distance 17Clinch 5Ground 0
Where it
happened
Distance 5Clinch 0Ground 0
Round 35:00 of actionEnded 5:00
Chidi Njokuani52 sig landed
HEAD60%31 of 71BODY21%11 of 19LEGS19%10 of 10
Carlos Leal50 sig landed
HEAD78%39 of 112BODY16%8 of 10LEGS6%3 of 3
52 of 100
Sig.
strikes
50 of 125
0 of 1
Take-
downs
0 of 1
0:02
Control
0:03
Distance 49Clinch 2Ground 1
Where it
happened
Distance 49Clinch 1Ground 0

Significant strikes, takedowns, control time, knockdowns and submission attempts exactly as UFCStats recorded them for this bout, round by round. Zone percentages are that round’s landed head, body and leg counts over their own total — raw arithmetic, nothing modelled or smoothed. A round in which a fighter landed nothing shades empty and reads zero; it is never filled in from the round before.

Judges’ scorecards

Every judge’s round, the media’s cards beside them, and how these judges usually score.

Official card

Unanimous Decision

Referee · Kerry Hatley
Chidi NjokuaniCarlos Leal
Official card — Chidi Njokuani first
JudgeR1R2R3Total
Junichiro Kamijo2.0 avg spread · 43% wide9–109–109–1027–30
Chris Lee2.0 avg spread · 44% wide9–109–1010–928–29
Jeff Rexroad9–109–1010–928–29

Media cards — 11 scored, Chidi Njokuani first · unofficial

Keith Shillan Sherdog.com27–30
Zane Simon The MMA Vivisection27–30
Tristen Critchfield Sherdog.com27–30
Brian Knapp Sherdog.com27–30
Ryan Frederick WrestlingObserver.com28–29
Ben Duffy Sherdog.com28–29
Combat Press.com28–29
Steve Duncan mma.uno28–29
Dayne Fox Sherdog.com28–29
Danny Segura MMAJunkie.com28–29
Tyler Treese Sherdog.com28–29

Fan vote · unofficial

29-28 Leal · 66%30-27 Leal · 28%29-28 Njokuani · 7%

29 fan cards submitted to MMA Decisions.

Official cards come from the UFCStats fight record and MMA Decisions. Media cards and the fan vote are MMA Decisions’ own collection and are not official. Judge tendency figures are that judge’s whole recorded history, not this bout — they are context for how a card was scored, never a claim that it was scored wrongly.

Still to come on this page

Named rather than hidden. It is built from data already on disk and lands in the next pass of this build-out.

The market story coming in this build-out

What the price did in the week before the cage door shut, with the moment our pick was frozen marked on it. Where we captured no price history for a bout, this panel will say so rather than draw a line that was never there.

← Back to the public record