Dana White’s Contender Series, Season 10, heads into Week 3 with a bantamweight gap still to be filled

Dana White’s Contender Series, Season 10, moves into its third week Tuesday at Meta APEX, and the UFC’s own preview framing points to one clear storyline heading into the night. Through the first two weeks of the season, UFC says 10 contracts have been awarded on the men’s side while the 135-pound (bantamweight) division remains the only men’s weight class without a contract call-up so far.

The implication is simple, but it is also unusual. The show’s early-contract distribution has effectively covered every men’s division except bantamweight, and UFC attributes that absence not to any adjustment or reshuffling, but to the fact that there has yet to be a fight in the bantamweight weight class during the first two weeks of Season 10. In other words, the contract pipeline has been flowing by division, but 135 pounds has not yet received its turn in the lineup.

A similar “nearly complete” feel applies to the women’s side as well. UFC notes that, across the first two weeks, contracts have been awarded across women’s divisions except for a single category, again tied to whether the relevant weight class has appeared in matchups yet. The UFC’s preview positions Week 3 as the next chance for the season to broaden its contract coverage to include the missing class on the men’s roster picture and keep that momentum building across the broader field.

For the athletes, the Contender Series remains a high-leverage stage because the premise is tied directly to performance: fighters compete under the spotlight of a UFC opportunity, with the contract decision intended to reward what happens inside the cage rather than what a fighter has done in the past. That makes each week’s weight-class mix more consequential than it would be in a standard card, since the absence or presence of a division can determine whether that bracket gets represented in the season’s contract tally.

The Week 3 setting also matters in terms of pacing. UFC describes Tuesday’s show as the next event in a sequence that has already produced 10 men’s contracts through two weeks, indicating how quickly the season has been moving from fight night to roster opportunity. With bantamweight still without a contract allocation so far, fighters at 135 will carry extra division-specific weight, not because of any stated preferential criteria, but because the season’s published accounting has left that box unchecked.

What to watch next is whether Week 3 includes bantamweight matchups and, if it does, whether the night changes the balance of contract distribution on the men’s side. If bantamweight appears and a contract is awarded, it would complete the early-season coverage UFC has highlighted. If the division still does not appear, it would keep the season’s unique gap intact and extend the narrative of how the schedule’s weight-class mix shapes the UFC’s contract rollout in real time.