Darby leads five UFC signings after Contender Series Week 4

Five winners, five contracts

Published September 2, 2026, at 21:38 UTC. UFC has confirmed contracts for all five winners from the September 1 edition of Dana White’s Contender Series at Meta APEX in Las Vegas. Adam Darby, Modestino Rodrigues, Silvestre Sanchez, Gabriel Lourenco and Adam Livingston join the promotion following their Week 4 victories.

Darby closes the card; Rodrigues needs 15 seconds

Darby defeated Patrick Rivera by a third-round doctor stoppage at 2:42 in the welterweight main event. Rodrigues stopped Brandon Holmes with punches 15 seconds into their middleweight bout, the shortest contest on the five-fight card.

At heavyweight, Lourenco finished Charlie Cleveland with an elbow and follow-up punches at 2:02 of round one. The UFC articles spell the winner’s surname Lorenco; the Sherdog event record uses Lourenco. Fight Atlas retains the latter spelling for this event-only identity.

A late finish and the only decision

Sanchez stopped Liam McCracken with strikes at 2:44 of round three. Livingston beat Hunter Smith by split decision after three rounds, with two judges scoring it 29–28 for Livingston and the third returning 29–28 for Smith.

The card therefore ended with four stoppages and one decision. These are event results, not a claim that the new signees already have a scheduled UFC debut.

What remains unresolved

UFC’s result heading classifies Sanchez–McCracken as a TKO, while Sherdog records a KO. Both sources agree on the winner, round and time. The event desk shows the agreed strike finish and explicitly leaves its KO/TKO classification unconfirmed rather than choosing one source silently. No title status, championship lineage or unverified career totals have been changed.