A member of the Dana White’s Contender Series Class of ’25, the 26-year-old native of the Democratic Republic of the Congo blew through the competition on the regional scene to earn his shot in Las Vegas last fall, where a split decision win over Otari Tanzilovi landed Musasa a place on the roster. In his promotional debut in March, “The K.O. Wizard” missed the bantamweight limit by half-a-pound and then was submitted just passed the midway point of the opening round by TUF alum Carlos Vera.

“It’s not my actual debut, but I can treat it more as a properly setup debut,” began Thicknesse, looking ahead to the weekend. “He’s an aggressive, southpaw striker who likes to throw bombs and be in your face. I think it’s just gonna be using his gameplan against him. I know where he wants to be the whole fight, I know where he’s gonna wanna put me the whole fight, so it’s firstly not letting him put me there, and if he does, it’s having the correct answers. For me, it’s a very good stylistic match.

READ: Standouts From Dana White’s Contender Series, Season 8

“Just because somebody is called ‘The K.O. Wizard’ — it was all on the regional scene. He’s fought two good guys: he lost his last one and Contender Series was a close, split decision that could have gone either way, in my opinion. It’s all well and good to have that nickname and put people out on the regional scene, but once you get to the top level, it’s very different.

“It’s almost a similar fight to the Topuria fight in a sense to where he just wants to get you backed into the fence and unleash bombs, but I don’t think he has the Fight IQ of Topuria or the same firepower necessarily, and he doesn’t have the same grappling pedigree.”