Thiago 'Marreta' Santos meets Polish veteran Michal Materla at UFC Gdansk

A veteran Polish fighter will make his UFC debut in front of his home-country fans this fall.

Michal Materla (24-5 MMA, 0-0 UFC) will make his promotional debut against Brazil’s Thiago “Marreta” Santos (15-5 MMA, 7-4 UFC) at UFC Fight Night 118. A UFC official confirmed the booking to MMAjunkie following an initial report from Brazilian news outlet Combate.com, though the promotion has not yet made an official announcement.

Although the report says the middleweight bout will be the card’s headliner, it is not yet known where the fight will fall on the card.

UFC Fight Night 118 takes place Oct. 21 at Ergo Arena in Gdansk, Poland. The event will stream live on UFC Fight Pass.

The 33-year-old Materla will fight for the 30th time as a pro, dating back to 2003. The bulk of his fights have been under Poland’s KSW promotional banner, for which he has fought 18 of his past 19 bouts. When he steps in the cage against Santos, though, it will be for the first time in more than a year.

In October 2016, he knocked out feared Brazilian submission artist and UFC and WSOF veteran Rousimar Palhares in the second round, giving him five wins in his past six fights. His resume also includes wins over UFC and Bellator veterans Jay Silva, Kendall Grove, Rodney Wallace and Matt Horwich, as well as UFC vet Tomasz Drwal. He has 18 of his 24 wins by stoppage, including a dozen submissions.

Santos will try to make it a perfect 3-0 in 2017 when he takes on Materla. He has back-to-back second-round TKO wins over Jack Marshman and Gerald Meerschaert and won a $50,000 bonus for the finish of Marshman in February in Nova Scotia, Canada. Those wins snapped a two-fight skid of stoppage setbacks to Gegard Mousasi and Eric Spicely.

Prior to those losses, he had a four-fight winning streak, including first-round knockouts of Andy Enz, Steve Bosse (in 29 seconds for another bonus) and Nate Marquardt, plus a decision over Elias Theodorou.

With the addition, the latest UFC Fight Night 118 card now includes:

• Ramazan Emeev vs. Trevor Smith
• Jan Blachowicz vs. Devin Clark
• Oskar Piechota vs. Jonathan Wilson
• Andre Fili vs. Artem Lobov
• Dmitrii Smoliakov vs. Adam Wieczorek
• Marcin Held vs. Teemu Packalen
• Michal Materla vs. Thiago “Marreta” Santos

For more on UFC Fight Night 118, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.