Carlos Ulberg’s Nickname Came From His Days As A Traveling Stripper

Move over, Vanessa Demopoulos. You’re not the only stripper-turned-fighter on the UFC Vegas 57 card.

Nicknames are easy to gain and tough to get rid of. Bring a can of beans to school one day and you could end up known as “Beans” for the next 20 years. Become a male stripper for a hot minute and you better believe they’re calling you “Ladies’ Night” for the rest of your life.

Thus is the case with New Zealand fighter Carlos Ulberg, just the latest City Kickboxing gym member to become a promising prospect in the UFC. After winning a spot on the roster via Dana White’s Contender series in 2020, Ulberg started his UFC career with a KO loss. He turned things around with a decision win over Fabio Cherant at UFC 271, and now he’s getting himself on a roll with a first round TKO win against Tafon Nchukwi at UFC Vegas 57 (watch the highlights here).

Ulberg has a preferred nickname: “Black Jag.” But at the UFC Vegas 57 post-fight press conference he admitted his true nickname was “Ladies Night.”

“I used to do ‘ladies nights’ in Australia,” Ulberg said. “I used to travel around Australia and New Zealand doing ladies nights and strip, pretty much. And then a guy, one of the announcers back home, local, heard of that and gave me that name.”

“I was a rugby player and I needed a bit of extra money and I found that this was … more than extra money. I was traveling, they put me on billboards and all that sort of thing. It was similar to the Thunder From Down Under that they have here. So I was doing that, partying, getting paid, I was loving it, I was young, until I found that I was good at fighting. So I gave that up pretty quickly.”

Thunder From Down Under is basically the Australian-themed Chippendales show that goes down in Las Vegas featuring a bunch of buff, handsome Aussies. As a shredded light heavyweight who was approached multiple times to appear on the Australian version of The Bachelor, Ulberg certainly could have tried out for that if he hadn’t made it through the Contender Series two years ago.

Unfortunately for the ladies, Ulberg’s future with the UFC seems bright, especially with close teammates Israel Adesanya and Alexander Volkanovski taking him under their wing. Immediately after “Ladies Night” finished his promotional duties at the UFC Apex, the City Kickboxing team rolled out … straight into a training practice that Ulberg participated in.