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Philadelphia vs. Penn State on the UFC White House Card
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It felt like we waited an eternity for the UFC White House card, which finally dropped on Saturday night:
That’s Bo Nickal vs. Kyle Daukaus as the second fight on a six-bout card. Penn State wrestling vs. Philadelphia MMA, a really unique fight with some local interest for combat sports fans in this area.
Kyle is a good story, which we’ve shared on the site before. He’s a Northeast Philly kid who came up through the regional circuit, won the Cage Fury Middleweight title, and earned a UFC contract. He went 2-4 with a no contest, then his contract expired and returned to Cage Fury with a four-fight win streak in which he reclaimed the belt. He then returned to UFC with a short-notice win against Michel Pereira last August before subbing Gerald Meerschaert in November.
Nickal was a 3x national champion at PSU and was recently seen as one of the UFC’s top prospects, starting 7-0 before losing to Reinier de Ridder in 2025. He came back with a win against Rodolfo Vieira on the same card as Daukaus and Meerschaert to improve to 8-1.
It’s a good fight. Bo is obviously elite on the mat, though only one of his last four wins was a submission. Kyle has a strong ground game and a ton of career finishes with his favored D’Arce choke.
The reaction to the White House card itself has been mostly disappointment, at least what I’ve seen so far. There was all sorts of chatter about doing it big for a special event, like Jon Jones or Conor McGregor or a bunch of title fights or whatever, but nothing materialized there. This entire card is only six fights, but they’re all good fights. The two title fights are absolute bangers, no grapplers or guys who are going to shoot for takedowns and lay on the other guy for 25 minutes. The O’Malley fight is okay Ruffy vs. Chandler will be sneaky good. Lopes vs. Garcia will be good as well.
This feels like one of those cards that the hardcore MMA fans will probably appreciate more than the casuals, and/or we just set our expectations way too high for what we thought was gonna be announced.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com