Carlos Ulberg Record, stats and next fight

Background

Carlos Sao Murry Ulberg was born on November 17, 1990, in Auckland, New Zealand, to parents of Samoan, Māori and German descent. Placed with a foster family in South Auckland at age four, he attended Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate and first played rugby league.

He then built a kickboxing career, with nineteen wins, twelve of them stoppages, against two losses. He won the King in the Ring 220 lb (100 kg) tournament in 2017, then the 203 lb (92 kg) tournament in 2019, scoring three stoppages on the same night. He trains at City Kickboxing in Auckland under Eugene Bareman.

UFC Career

After a first professional MMA fight back in 2011, Ulberg earned his UFC contract by beating Bruno Oliveira on Dana White’s Contender Series in November 2020. His debut in the organization, on March 6, 2021, at UFC 259, was cut short: Kennedy Nzechukwu knocked him out in the second round in a bout named Fight of the Night. It remains his only loss to date.

He then won ten in a row. First Fabio Cherant, Tafon Nchukwi and Nicolae Negumereanu, then Ihor Potieria and Jung Da-un, submitted with a rear-naked choke eleven seconds before the end of the fight at UFC 293. In May 2024, he stopped Alonzo Menifield in twelve seconds, the fourth-fastest finish in division history. Two unanimous decisions followed, against Volkan Oezdemir in Macau in November 2024 and against Jan Błachowicz in London in March 2025.

On September 28, 2025, in Perth, he knocked out Dominick Reyes in the first round. On April 11, 2026, at UFC 327 in Miami, he won the vacant light heavyweight title by stopping Jiří Procházka with a flurry of punches at 3:45 of the first round.

The title made him the first New Zealand light heavyweight champion in the UFC. His ten-fight winning streak is the second-longest in division history, behind that of Jon Jones. Four of those wins earned him the Performance of the Night bonus, against Potieria, Menifield, Reyes and Procházka, in addition to the Fight of the Night bonus he received in his debut loss.

Fighting Style

Ulberg is a striker with a kickboxing background who keeps his distance and fires as opponents step in. Nine of his fourteen wins have come by KO or TKO. Official UFC statistics credit him with the highest significant strike output per minute in light heavyweight history, 6.58, and the second-lowest time spent on his back in the division, thirteen seconds in total.