Road to UFC opens Thursday, May 28, at Galaxy Arena in Macau, and the bantamweight bracket already points toward one of the tournament’s most watched paths. Yunosuke Minami meets Kasib Murdoch in a quarterfinal, with the winner set to face either Rabindra Dhant or Kimbert Alintozon in the semifinals.

Dhant enters the bracket as the Matrix Fight Night bantamweight champion, a detail that gives the matchup extra weight even before the first bell. In his last fight, Chungreng Koren relinquished the Matrix Fight Night bantamweight belt to Dhant, and Koren is back in the field as well, scheduled to square off with Ryhuo Miyaguchi on the same card.

The opening rounds in Macau will sort out both the bantamweight and featherweight tournaments, and the draw leaves little room for soft starts. On the opposite side of the bantamweight bracket, Ti Haitao meets Pancrase bantamweight champion Ryo Tajima, adding another championship-level clash to the first round.

The featherweight side also gets moving with Georges Mangos against Yuito Yanagawa, and the winner of that bout advances to face the victor of Ahejiang Ailinuer vs. Lim Gwan-woo. For now, the clearest thread running through the bracket is the one tied to Dhant, whose name now sits at the center of the rabindra dhant fight conversation before the tournament has even begun.

That is the nature of this opening stage: one result can quickly redraw the path to the final, and the first round in Macau is built to do exactly that. If Dhant gets through the winner of Minami and Murdoch, the semifinals will tell whether his belt and his momentum carry into the next round.