In a category that struggles to attract crowds, he stands out as the new heavyweight attraction of the UFC. Endowed with incredible striking power inherited from his first life in baseball, Waldo Cortes-Acosta (No. 5) can make an impression in the event of success against the stainless Derrick Lewis (No. 8), during UFC 324, in Las Vegas (live at midnight, during the night from Saturday to Sunday on RMC Sport 1). A new stage in the rise of the Dominican, who could perhaps soon cross paths with our Frenchman Ciryl Gane.
The panoply is no longer the same but the choreography continues to be performed like a lesson recited tirelessly. A painting that is broken down into several movements. The stable posture, the precise positioning of the feet, the rotation of the hips and the core muscles engaged to generate power, a consciously placed arm angle then combined with a powerful circular rotation of the shoulder to optimize speed and deliver the perfect arm gesture. The years go by, lives overlap, but Waldo Cortes-Acosta never stops doing what he knows how to do with mastery: throwing his overhand to break his opponent.
He started out as a baseball pitcher. Since then, the different areas forming the game setting and the sported cap have given way to a cage as well as bloody fighter’s gloves. “Throwing taught me timing. Fighting is exactly the same thing but closer together,” insisted recently the sole representative of the Dominican Republic in the UFC. This lethal, lightning, backfiring right allowed him to make his way within the heavyweight category and settle into the top 5. All while quietly distilling a slight feeling of fear to his competitors.
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Titanic throw at fourteen and almost deadly fight
The destiny of Waldo Cortes-Acosta in MMA does not correspond to that of a prodigy or a privileged official (16 victories including 8 by KO, 2 defeats). Mixed martial arts was not an obvious choice and presented itself to him late through a combination of circumstances. A child from the town of Fundación, located in the province of Barahona in the south of the Dominican Republic, he grew up between fights and sporting explorations. “From a very young age, I stood out in street fights. There were a lot of young people like me in the neighborhood and we had to measure ourselves against each other,” he recounted, a few weeks ago, in the podcast Death Row MMA. “I grew up in that environment but I started playing basketball until I was fourteen. I would go to the courts, except I was really skinny and no one paid attention to me. But one day a baseball coach saw me and asked me to throw a baseball. I threw it at 75 mph.”
The start of a first sporting career. A talented pitcher, the current thirty-four-year-old fighter climbed the ranks until joining the American semi-professional team of the Cincinnati Reds. Before everything suddenly changes.
“My baseball career ended because of a fight. I was disrespected. My mother was sick and one of the players was disrespectful to me. I ended up getting into a fight and almost killed him. I hit him with a hard right that hurt his ear. After that, I got penalized and had to leave.”
The Dominican has the opportunity to fly to Japan to continue his career in baseball. He chose to stay in the United States where he tried American football. Without success. “When I played baseball, I always knew that combat sports could be an opportunity for me,” he revealed during his first moves in the UFC in 2022. “My teammates told me that I was good at it.” At 24, he discovered Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Then boxing where this fan of Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield will also make ten professional fights. And, finally, MMA where his obvious and eruptive talent just needs to be polished.
“No one wanted to face me anymore, I knocked everyone out”
Waldo Cortes-Acosta himself confesses: “I was born to fight.” First amateur fight after three months of training, first knockout. The learning process turns out to be dazzling. Not without encountering some clashes. “In the space of a year, I had to fight nine times. But they wanted to put me in prison because I had destroyed a guy and the fight was illegal. The MMA commission was ready to suspend me for two years. I told them that I was not from this country and that I was not aware of that,” explained the athlete again in the Death Row MMA podcast. “After that, no one wanted to fight me anymore because I knocked out everyone I fought! In 2018, I challenged a pro fighter who was arrogant because I played American football. I grabbed him, I tackled him, I hugged him. And when I let go, I hit him with an elbow, a left hook. Boom. And I knocked him out in the first thirty seconds of the second round.”
100 mph strikes and public criticism of Dana White
The Caribbean machine is launched. After a formative interlude in the noble art due to Covid, the one nicknamed “Salsa Boy” – because of a salsa sauce that he prepared one day for his training teammates and which pushed one of them to drink milk and jump into the swimming pool to cool off because it was so spicy – continues the successes. A victory in Bellator and a heavyweight title at the Legacy Fighting Alliance open the doors to Dana White’s Contender Series in 2022. A shattering baptism of fire with a thunderous TKO after only a little over a minute and tempting promises glimpsed. “What makes me different from other heavyweights is my footwork, my speed with my hands. I am an aggressive fighter, I like to hit to the head,” he detailed at the time.
“I like to hurt my opponents. Not many are able to survive my punching force, I have too much power in my fists. I throw strikes at 160km/h with my right arm.”
But it takes more, much more to convince the impassive Dana White. Despite several decision victories, including one against former category champion Andrei Arlovski and a stunning knockout against Łukasz Brzeski, he publicly incurred the wrath of the UFC boss in May 2024, after an inconclusive success against Robelis Despaigne. “When you have an atmosphere like that and fans like here in St. Louis, it pushes everyone to surpass themselves… except for this fight. If you were reviewing the card and I had to give a bonus for the lamest fight of the night, who would you give it to? Yes, everyone agrees that it would be this one.” A scathing, unfiltered outing, which at least has the merit of calling the Dominican into question and shaking his certainties.
Eye poke and eye patch
If his rise among the heavyweights was somewhat hampered by a close loss to the decision against Sergei Pavlovich, “Salsa Boy” had an ultra-prolific 2025 exercise which gave him certain credit in the eyes of the organization. With five fights during the year, he has impressed. By his admirable resilience during his confrontation against Ante Delija last November. First declared the loser by the referee before the latter realized that he had been the victim of an eye poke, Cortes-Acosta agreed to return to war with a largely impaired field of vision. Result: a monumental knockout inflicted on Tom Aspinall’s training partner which stunned the confidential audience at the UFC Apex.
“I felt a finger go deep into my eye. The referee said stop, so I stopped,” he explained after his breathtaking victory. “But I decided to continue because I felt capable, even if I only saw 20% with my eye. I’m crazy, I’m Dominican. It’s in my blood. I want to come back, I want to become world champion.” An unfailing determination hailed in unison, which took on greater depth after the champion of the British division gave up against Ciryl Gane due to an eye poke and attracted a litany of jeers for having dramatized the incident. Mischievous, the father of nine children had fun on stage by wearing an eye patch after beating Shamil Gaziev two months ago.
30 hours of flight and $50,000 bonus
A ninth victory in the UFC with a resounding echo since it came three weeks after that against Delija and he only had 72 hours to prepare. Three days before having to cross swords with Gaziev, Serghei Spivac withdraws. “I get a call from my manager saying, ‘Hey, do you want to fight in Qatar?’ I said ‘what?’ …And then I said, ‘OK, let me talk to my wife about what’s going on.’ I’m talking to my wife, and she says to me: ‘You’re at the weight, you’re ready, go for it. It’s like a sign from God.'” Cortes-Acosta was then on the other side of the world, in the Dominican Republic. Above all, he must deal with a delicate family situation since his daughter born prematurely finds herself incubated in Arizona, where they live.
After a first nine-hour flight to see that his child is doing well, he then heads to Qatar. 21 hours later, here he is in Al Rayyan. “When I arrived, I was all bloated and I arrived only a few hours before the weigh-in,” he recently told MMA Junkie. “I was a kilo overweight, so I had to train as soon as I got off the plane. I lost weight, I weighed myself and I was very happy. Then we went to eat a steak and went to bed so that we would be in shape for the fight the next day. The rest is history.” A knockout in 82 seconds and a bonus of 50,000 dollars for the performance of the evening.
“Gane or anyone, I’ll rip their heads off”
This bulimia and this insatiable appetite for combat stem from the late arrival of the Caribbean in the microcosm of MMA. A professional at 27, he now peaks at 34 and has no time to lose in his ultimate quest: the heavyweight belt. This weekend, on the main card of UFC 324 in Las Vegas, a major obstacle faces him. Derrick Lewis (ranked No. 8), major figure and record KO holder in the history of the prestigious MMA league (16), represents the ideal reference to calibrate his level among the elite. “It’s a fight that I’ve been waiting for for a long time. He was one of my favorite fighters when I started MMA. I’m going to knock him out quickly and send him to the ground,” he promised on the microphone of the Ariel Helwani Show.
Before the final step and a title shot for the undisputed or interim crown? “Something will happen after this fight. People want to see a more active heavyweight category,” the Dominican further assured Home of Fightwho aims to fight six times in 2026. “For the future, Gane or Volkov, it doesn’t matter who, it doesn’t matter when. The objective is to knock out anyone and rip their head off.” Behind the overhands and knockouts dealt, there is also this claimed intention to mark his era: “I want to be someone great in this sport, I want to make history and be remembered for my name in a hundred years.” The next ones have been warned, the “Salsa Boy” sauce promises to be spicy for a while longer.
