“It’s been 11 years in the making, and I always knew I could get here,” the 28-year-old said at Wednesday’s media day.
The fishing part is real. “I’m probably the only licensed fishing charter captain in the UFC,” Chovancek told Cageside Press. “That’s a big accolade in my fishing career. I won the local Niagara Steelhead division this year, the Spring Derby, and one back home too.” Home is Petrolia, a small town outside Sarnia in southwestern Ontario, and Chovancek is quick to note what Saturday means there: “I’m the first one out of Lambton County to ever get to the UFC.”
The fighting part is the reason he is on the card. Chovancek is 9-0, a former Unified MMA bantamweight champion who won and defended that title before getting the call to Dana White’s Contender Series. In September 2025 he knocked out previously unbeaten Raphael Uchegbu ten seconds into the third round to earn his contract. What almost nobody knew at the time was that he had been carrying a knee injury into that fight, suffered five weeks earlier and aggravated during the win. “That was really trying me, man, going through that injury,” he said. The knee cost him a planned debut in Winnipeg in April and stretched his layoff to 396 days. He has spent the time rehabbing and training at Niagara Top Team alongside Mike Malott and Jasmine Jasudavicius, and, by his own account, out on the water.
His opponent is not the soft landing an opening slot sometimes implies. SuYoung You of South Korea is a 20-fight veteran who won the bantamweight tournament on Season 3 of Road to UFC, then took decisions over AJ Cunningham and Xiao Long in his first two Octagon appearances before being submitted by prospect Elijah Smith earlier this year. UFC.com called it a tough initial assignment, and it is: an experienced, tournament-tested opponent who needs a win to avoid the first back-to-back losses of his career, against a debutant who has not competed in more than a year.
That combination is the open question. Octagon debuts carry their own pressure even for fighters who arrive on schedule, and a long injury layoff adds another unknown. Against that, Chovancek has an undefeated record, a finish rate of roughly two-thirds, and the experience of delivering under pressure on the night his career was decided.
A win on Saturday would put Lambton County on a UFC results page for the first time and give Canada’s crowded bantamweight ranks another name to watch. Either way, Chovancek will be back on a charter boat when the steelhead run again.
