NAVEGANTES, Brazil – Nik Lentz continued his steady rise up the featherweight ranks with this past weekend’s UFC on FX 8 win, though he didn’t leave the fight completely unscathed.

In fact, it was a cageside doctor, not opponent Hacran Dias, who did the most damage.

“I got a couple marks on my face, but yeah, the doc butchered my thumb cutting off the hand wraps,” Lentz told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) on Sunday. “I’ll probably have to go home and get stitches, but after that, I’ll be OK.”

Lentz (24-5-2 MMA, 8-2-1 UFC), who ultimately stopped the bleeding after fulling wrap the hand with a bandage (check out a photo of his hand), survived a late rally and arm-triangle choke to pick up a unanimous-decision victory over Dias (21-2-1 MMA, 1-1 UFC) at Saturday’s event, which took place at Arena Jaragua in Jaragua do Sul, Santa Catarina, Brazil. It was the featured FUEL TV-televised prelim, which preceded the night’s FX-televised main card.

“I’m very happy with how it went, but I definitely could have done a lot of things better, especially with how well I was training and how well the training camp went,” Lentz said. “I was expecting it to be a little better, but he’s a super-talented fighter. I’ll give it to him, man. He hasn’t been around that long, but he’s going to be ranked pretty high eventually.”

Lentz won the fight via head-scratching 28-27, 29-28 and 29-28 scores (Doug Crosby issued a 10-8 score in Round 2 for Lentz and Round 3 for Dias). Since his move from lightweight to featherweight, he’s now posted three consecutive wins. Yet, in 12 UFC fights, he’s never appeared on a main card.

Lentz, who will move up to No. 13 in the USA TODAY Sports/MMMAjunkie.com MMA featherweight rankings later today, hopes that soon changes.

“The higher I’m on the card, the more money I make,” he said. “And that’s one of the reasons I’m in this sport: to take care of my family.”

Dias, of course, sported a very impressive pro record, but he didn’t have an abundance of name recognition. Lentz’s other featherweight victories came over similar opponents: Eiji Mitsuoka and Diego Nunes.

Now, with a little win streak and plenty of air miles, he knows what he wants next.

“We definitely want me to be fighting top 5 guys, preferably in the United States,” Lentz said. “I’ve been traveling a lot, like to Brazil for my past two fights, so I’ve put in my dues. I’d like to get back to the States, and I’d like it to be against a name guy.”

For the latest on UFC on FX 8, stay tuned to the UFC Events section of the site.