Welcome to November. If you're seeing this, you've survived the mass of MMA for the year and it's all downhill from here as the sport begins to wind down and end 2026. We've got three UFCs, a PFL, whatever ONE's even doing these days, a RIZIN card they hastily rebranded to not sound like a developmental show, and a Ciryl Gane vs Josh Hokit title fight, because that's what we deserve.
THIS MONTH’S PUNCHSPORTS EVENTS
IS THERE ANY NEWS
In the ongoing decline of the UFC even pretending to be a legitimate sporting organization, Farid Basharat’s contract came up and the company chose to let him go. 16-0 overall, 7-0 in the company, #13 in the media rankings, #9 in the shitty robot rankings.
They knew they were gonna do it, too. In three and a half years Farid got exactly one fight off the prelims, and it was a decision win, like 6 out of his 7 appearances, and after winning said main card win they threw him right the fuck back on the prelims. The early prelims. Luke Riley and Adrian Yañez got booked over him. The company has of course no-sold this news save for Dana White making a real dopey dismissive comment about how for someone like him to get released they must have been doing bad things to deserve it.
All of it is, of course, a joke. They don’t care and they expect the fanbase not to care either, and for the most part, they’re right. They already successfully trained the audience to boo takedowns, it’s only a hop, skip and a jump from there to not caring who’s actually good or bad. Hell, they’ve finally started using the AI rankings in their press. We haven’t been in the best-in-the-world business for some time, this is just pouring cement over Jimmy Hoffa’s grave.
Remember when we talked about how Jake Paul and the big giant cannon of Netflix might be our only hope in the near future for challenging the UFC’s stranglehold on the sport?
A funny thing happened in October: Netflix didn’t grow as much as their shareholders wanted, so they fired one thousand people, notably including Bela Bajaria, the content executive who oversaw the MVP card and their contract. Word now is unless MVP can pull Francis Ngannou vs Jon Jones or something equivalent out of their hat, Netflix is out of the MMA promotion game.
Yahoo did an interview with MVP exec Nakisa Bidarian and he said the report was bullshit, but he notably didn’t have any actual counter-information to announce, and he notably moved on to talking about women’s boxing as fast as he possibly could, which sounds real unfortunate for the future of the MMA side of the sport. Particularly because they already ate the PFL, which ceases to exist on January 1.
MVP has an ESPN deal for its boxing, so it’s possible we’ll just see them keep promoting the rebranded PFL on the same schedule they’ve already been doing, but if the end of even more industry consolidation and acquisition is the PFL just continuing under a new name exactly as it already was but now attached to a company that isn’t even focused on MMA as their main attraction, we’re going from ‘maybe there’s hope’ to ‘the B-leagues are even more fucked than they already were before,’ and I wasn’t sure there was any more bottom to this barrel.
Also in tales of how silly the world currently is, the FBI--Fox Mulder’s FBI--is giving the UFC a no-bid, one-year contract to have its fighters train agents at Quantico so they can learn how to fight in empty warehouses for minimum wagebecome ultramasculine supercops so right-wing people get hard-ons about them.
I can’t take this shit seriously, and that’s the wrong answer, because we have to take this shit seriously. I made my jokes about Matt Serra yelling at junior agents to use footstomps for compliance when the news first broke, too, but in reality, this is only as ridiculous as it is terrible. Authority figures should already be using force as a last resort. Money for training programs should be going into de-escalation, not having Justin Gaethje teach starry-eyed feds-in-training how to make sure your thumb catches someone’s eye after you punch them.
This is useful for nothing but shuffling money from the government into TKO’s bank account, and in a better world everyone who ever complained about bringing politics into sports who has now conveniently shut the fuck up now that said politics align with theirs should have to write essays about Apex fight nights so I don’t have to.
WHAT HAPPENED IN OCTOBER
PFL MENA 11 happened on October 2, and this may surprise and astonish you, but the people with records like 11-3 and 25-9 beat their 5-0 and 3-0-2 opponents. The main event was the hotly-anticipated rubber match between Mostafa Abada Rashed Neda and Osama Elsaidy, who traded a win and a loss back and forth in 2016. Neda choked him out and everyone cheered.
That night also brought us ONE Fight Night 48: Erdogan vs Elliott, a card with a grand total of two MMA bouts, one of which was the 1-0 Antônio César stopping the 1-0 (1) Joshua Perreira. But the other one was the main event! Surely, ONE's first MMA main event in in five months was a big deal! And it was, in the sense that it was a Heavyweight fight in which one corner had the undefeated Shamil Erdogan in it and the other had the 7-2 Paul Elliott, who got there by beating a man with zero professional fights. Unsurprisingly, Erdogan choked him out in two rounds.
And the triple-header concluded with RIZIN Landmark 16, which returned to the lower-key development-league stakes the Landmark series was initially built around. The first three fights were a beautiful crash course in Japanese MMA rules, as Ryota Oki soccer-kicked Daisuke Okumiya into oblivion in the opening bout, Kohei Sugiyama gave them enough time to forget about downed kicks with his split decision over Kaito Oda, and then, having forgotten about the danger of tempting fate, Seigo Yamamoto tried to stomp Alan Yamaniha while he was down, only to get instantaneously kneebarred for his trouble. And then, just to even further reinforce that this is in fact Japanese MMA, 5'8" Heavyweight Hidetaka Arato beat 39 year-old former Middleweight Ken Hasegawa--by decision. Would-be star Keito Oyama scored another win over Noeru Narita, Pancrase veteran Masatoshi Ueda got pounded out by the up-and-coming Kyohei Takagi, Hyuma Yasui ended a year of bad luck by beating former Cage Fury champion Ryan Cafaro, Viktor Kolesnik brutally mauled Koyomi Matsushima, and in the main event, Yoshinori Hori notched his first pair of back-to-back wins in five full years thanks to a ground-and-pound TKO over Sho Patrick Usami.
The 3rd promptly led to UFC 322: Silva vs Wang, one of the weirdest, weakest numbered events they've ever done, and proof that you can break the all-time single-event knockout record if you just book a bunch of horrifying mismatches. On your early prelims Eric Nolan knocked out a retiring, going-on-42 Court McGee, Ismail Naurdiev got a decision against Marvin Vettori, Alexander Hernandez punched out Rafael dos Anjos, Jacobe Smith took out Bruce Whitehead in 92 seconds, and Johnny Walker made his Heavyweight debut by knocking out Mick Parkin in one round. On the regular prelims, Anthony Wint made short work of Lucas Armand, Marcus McGhee knocked out Anthony Romero, Damian Pinas stopped Andrey Pulyaev, and in the first genuinely impressive, unexpected knockout of the night, Imanol Rodriguez put Alden Coria down in one round with an absolutely filthy front kick to the body. On the main card, Roman Kopylov stopped the Ateba Gautier hype train by counterpunching him down in three minutes, Roberto Soldić overcame a shaky first round in his UFC debut and ultimately disassembled Khaos Williams to a 29-27 decision, Esteban Ribovics stopped King Green in a round, Payton Talbott executed a largely motionless Deiveson Figueiredo, and in the main event, Natália Silva took a decision over Wang Cong to win the vacant Women's Flyweight championship.
PFL Africa: Morocco on the 10th got us halfway through the PFL's events for the month, but as is the usual case it was a pretty lopsided card and most folks didn't see it because PFL Africa has never been a well-broadcast series and even if it was, questions like "can the 13-4 UFC veteran Yanis Ghemmouri beat the 5-2 Taha Bendaoud" don't really pack them in. For the record: Yes he can. Patrick Ocheme can pick up another win, too. There was one notable upset, with the 3-1 underdog Mouhamed Ba beating the 14-3-1 Yabna N’Tchalá, and Abdoulaye Kane knocked out Badr Medkouri to round out the main event, and we'll do this one more time in December before the PFL dies, I suppose.
We went right back to the Apex for UFC Fight Night: Allen vs Duncan la ter that day, and it was most definitely an Apex card. Melissa Gatto and Ernesta Kareckaitė went to a majority draw thanks to Ernesta losing a point over fence grabs, Alice Pereira destroyed Daria Zhelezniakova, Allen Frye Jr knocked out RJ Harris in one of the least technical Heavyweight fights in recent memory, Brendson Ribeiro choked out Felipe Franco, Niko Price barnstormed Leon Shahbazyan and crushed him in one round, Francisco Prado elbowed a badly overweight Ismael Bonfim out, and Julius Walker knocked out a retiring Gerald Meerschaert. Up top, Otari Tanzilovi knocked out a falling Malcolm Wellmaker, Andre Fili headkicked Kai Kamaka III in 6 minutes, Loopy Godinez decisioned Ketlen Souza, Jai Herbert got a 29-28 over Matheus Camilo, and the main event was an exceedingly unnecessary fight between Brendan Allen and Christian Leroy Duncan, and, shockingly, Allen won after getting the rear naked choke in the fifth round.
PFL finished its month on the 16th with PFL Chicago: Carmouche vs Bishop 2. I gotta be honest: Talking about the PFL at all feels uncomfortable right now. What do you do with it? Does Paulina Wiśniewska beating Chelsea Hackett have ramifications when the company is being eaten alive in two months? Does ANY of this matter now that Netflix apparently wants out of the MMA game unless they can get a Jon Jones-level star for the brand? What happens to MVP MMA without it? Am I, in truth, just salty because Liz Carmouche lost the main event and the chance to be a champion again? It's all of the above, as always. But Shannon Clark pounded out Lucero Acosta, and that was cool, and Emiliano Sordi and his terrible hair knocked out Abraham Bably, and Savarjon Kahmidov made short work of Rafael do Nascimento, and Timur Khizriev and Gabriel Braga ran back their 2024 fight, where Khizriev won an extremely narrow split decision, with a 2026 rematch in which Khizriev once again won an extremely narrow split decision, and yes, Jena Bishop won the PFL Women's Flyweight Championship over Carmouche and I'm still sad about it.
ONE Samurai 4 was on the 17th, and as always it was mostly kickboxing so my eyes glazed over. Which is sad, because Masaaki Noiri won again, and I've been watching that dude since he was a teenager competing in the K-1 Koshien league, but there's just only so much I can do. I hope he wins ONE's tournament, I guess. Itsuki Hirata beat Jihin Radzuan and Jonathan Haggerty knockd out Hiroki Akimoto. Congratulations.
The 17th also saw the UFC return to Canada for UFC Fight Night: Buckley vs Malott, and the prelims did not go well for the old country. Su-young You and Chelsea Chandler both nabbed kimuras over their Canadian counterparts, Steven Koslow choked out Chad Anheliger, Katlyn Cerminara recorded her first-ever UFC finish by knocking out Mackenzie Stiller, Joel Faglier upset Canadian Heavyweight prospect Javad Mahjoub when Javad completely gassed out after seven minutes, and Nick Galanti tapped out Julien Leblanc, but Tanner Boser stopped a full Canadian rout by pounding out Jhonata Diniz in the third round. The main card was much more of a back-and-forth for its Canadians. Mandel Nallo knocked out an overmatched Nate Landwehr, but Timmy Cuamba tapped out Louis Jourdain. Marc-André Barriault brought home the win after stopping Kyle Daukaus in a round, but Cristian Pérez punched out Kyle Nelson in under thirty seconds. The co-main event saw your one and only decision of the night, as Jasmine Jasudavicius got the 29-28 nod over Erin Blanchfield, and the main event brought back the finish when Mike Malott flatlined Joaquin Buckley in a round and a half with a knee upside the jaw.
UFC 333: Volkanovski vs Evloev hit on the 24th, and it was actually pretty great. Down on your early prelims, Iasmin Lucindo dominated Nicolle Caliari, Kody Steele walked through Noan Gugnon with a first-round knockout, Daniel Santos took a decision over Bolaji Oki, Abubakar Vagaev outwrestled Jacob Malkoun, and Colby Thicknesse got a narrow split over the much-hyped Asaf Chopurov. On your regular prelims, Grant Dawson got the nod against Nurullo Aliev, Abus Magomedov choked out Cam Rowston, Abdul-Rakhman Yakhyaev made predictably short work of Nikita Krylov and Dominick Reyes knocked out a collapsing Azamat Murzakanov in the first round. The main card opened with Aaron Pico knocking out Losene Keita in barely over a minute, then Alexander Volkov defended his top Heavyweight contendership for the third straight time against Rizvan Kuniev and Lone'er Kavanagh knocked out Ramazan Temirov with a gorgeous uppercut. Your co-main event was the rubber match between Petr Yan and Merab Dvalishvili, and it was much closer this time, but Yan still took over in the championship rounds and walked away with a unanimous 48-47 decision, the trilogy, and his first-ever defense of a UFC title. And the main event saw Alexander Volkanovski turn back the clock and defend his Featherweight championship by not just beating but knocking out the undefeated Movsar Evloev in two rounds.
We closed out the month on Halloween with UFC Fight Night: Moicano vs Nolan. Lucia Szabová, maybe the best Women's Bantamweight outside of the UFC, made her debut--at 125, which is concerning--and grounded out Tainara Lisboa in the third, Piera Rodríguez shut out Talita Alencar despite the lighting rig turning off in mid-fight, Joe Kropschot tapped Nick Klein with a pretty neat inverted triangle armbar, Zach Reese got a pretty uninspiring decision over Mickey Gall, Julian Erosa ended his career with a big ol' knockout over Lee Jeong-yeong, Rodrigo Sezinando busted Theodor Berggren's face, and Dakota Hope got a real close split decision over Francis Marshall. Up top, Jean-Paul Lebosnoyani earned a doctor's stoppage for ripping open Farman Hasanov's eye, Luana Santos, Cody Durden and Jacobe Smith all won decisions by wrestling the crap out of their opponents, and Renato Moicano was easily outgrappling Tom Nolan in the main event until referee Dan Miragliotta completely inexplicably stood them up while Moicano had Nolan's back and was actively hitting him and working for a choke, and with the standup opportunity, Nolan, the striker, hurt Moicano so badly that he still hadn't recovered by the next round and Nolan was able to blast him out in short order. Fuck this bullshit sport.
WHAT'S COMING IN NOVEMBER
We're starting off with ONE and their weird fucking event schedule on November 6. We haven't talked about it much, but over the last few months ONE has adopted what's technically a double-event schedule, where one will be their Friday Fights/Inner Circle, available to their subscribers, and the other a ONE Fight Night, their usual fare. This is already silly because you have three separate events names for two events which are using two broadcasting solutions in one day. Ordinarily, we've been able to ignore it because they wisely don't put much of real note on the Inner Circle, because it airs at 6:30 in the morning. In this case, it's even sillier. ONE Fight Night 49, which airs in primetime, has your usual array of people most of the world hasn't heard of: Vick Souza vs Magdalena Czaban, Lee Seung Choel vs Nazareth Lalthazuala, and a main event between Lucas Gabriel and Magomed Magomedov which is so low-key that they don't even have a headshot for Magomedov's profile. The Friday Fights/Inner Circle portion has one fight announced: Christian Lee, one of the company's biggest stars, defending the Lightweight MMA championship against grappling ace Tye Ruotolo. That goes on the show that's unwatchable to most of their audience. I don't fucking get ONE's business model.
The 7th brings us UFC Fight Night: Cortes-Acosta vs Walker. This was supposed to be Gabriel Bonfim vs Sean Brady, but a week and a half out Brady got an infection in his knee, and rather than find another Welterweight--or promote co-main event Tatiana Suarez vs Virna Jandiroba, both of whom have competed for the world championship--they rush-booked the big boys. Luckily this was a really strong card, with supporting attractions like, uh, Davey Grant vs Elijah Smith, and Seokhyeon Ko vs Wellington Turman, and Billy Elekana vs Lucas Fernando, and Gabi Fernandes vs Karine Silva. Hey, guess where it's being held! Go on, guess.
RIZIN 55 comes on the 8th. You know our recurring discussions of RIZIN's Landmark series of more low-key, developmentally-focused events? This was originally going to be Landmark 17 before they rebranded it as a mainline show, and when you look at the card breakdown you can kinda tell. 20-14-1 Taichi Nakajima vs 4-0 Tsukasa Mizoguchi. 14-8 Tatsuya Saika vs 8-3 Daigo Kuramoto. Rikiya Matsuzawa, who is 14-13, vs Rio Kimura, who is 2-1. Their attempt to make Kaleo Meheula pay for missing weight and still knocking out ol' Kenka Bancho by having him fight undefeated DEEP wrecking machine Kazuki Aimoto. They even threw Naoki Inoue vs Yrysbek Tilenov on this to try to give it the extra pop it needs to be a numbered event. But your main fights are still Ryuya Fukuda vs Soo Chul Kim and Makoto Shinryu defending Rizin's Flyweight title against mulleted Canadian throwback Tony Laramie.
On November 14, we return to the waning days of the Professional Fighters League for PFL Dubai: Nemkov vs Bilostenniy. Hey, remember PFL's Heavyweight champion? Good news! They finally remembered him, too. They're cramming 15 fights onto this card, the highlights of the prelims include Rhys McKee, Denis Goltsov, Khasan Magomedsharipov vs Ádám Borics and, inexplicably, Shem Rock still getting high bookings as the preliminary headliner against Connor Hughes. The main card's a banger, though. Sergio Pettis vs Joji Goto, Abubakara Nurmagomedov vs David Martinez, Oleg Popov vs Pouya Rahmani (okay, it's mostly bangers), Patrick Habirora vs Omar El Dafrawy, and in the main event, Vadim Nemkov tries to record one single title defense against Sergey Bilostenniy before the PFL dies at the end of the year.
Arguably, the UFC has the worse Heavyweight title fight that day, which is impressive. UFC 334: Gane vs Hokit is just a goddamn mess. As of this writing we're two weeks out and there are only ten fights booked: Macy Chiasson vs Bia Mesquita, Donte Johnson vs César Almeida, Jim Miller vs Terrance McKinney, Drew Dober vs Chris Duncan and Stephen Thompson vs Charlie Radtke round out the prelims. The main card? Bilal Hasan vs Luis Gurule, Uroš Medić vs Kevin Holland, Caio Borralho vs Yousri Belgaroui, because the rankings don't mean anything, and Kayla Harrison, the best Women's Bantamweight in the world, vs Amanda Nunes, the best women's fighter of all time, in the co-main event, while Ciryl Gane defends the Heavyweight title he never actually won in the main event against Josh fucking Hokit.
ONE's ongoing Samurai series returns on the 18th for ONE Samurai 5, and, hey: It has MMA on it. I give them enough shit, I must acknowledge when they do the thing. Granted, one of those is a Heavyweight bout between the 5-3 Ryugo Takeuchi and professional can crusher Brandon Hashimoto that will be much funnier than it is good, but it's Heavyweight, what're you gonna do. You've also got a bout between Tatsumitsu Wada and former champ Jarred Brooks, possibly to see who has next for the winner of the main event, as Joshua Pacio defends ONE's Strawweight title against Keito Yamakita.
And we end the month back in Qatar for UFC Fight Night: Procházka vs Stirling on November 21. The card's still coming together, but as with all of their middle eastern financier-appeal shows, they're throwing a lot more at it than their American road shows tend to get. Aleksandre Topuria vs Santiago Luna, Jacqueline Cavalcanti vs Michelle Montague, Asu Almabayev vs Kyoji Horiguchi, Shamil Gaziev vs Tallison Teixeira, Jared Cannonier vs Ikram Aliskerov, Dan Hooker vs Brian Ortega, Aljamain Sterling vs Kevin Vallejos and Jiří Procházka vs Navajo Stirling round out the event.
CURRENT UFC CHAMPIONS
Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs
Ciryl Gane - 14-2 (1), 0 Defenses
Five years ago, the UFC ran into issues with their undisputed Heavyweight champion and chose to end-run around them by putting an interim title on Ciryl Gane. It is 2026, and nothing has changed. With Tom out thanks to Ciryl’s fingertips piercing his eyeballs, Ciryl was rewarded with a big fight against Alex Pereira for the interim belt--again--at the UFC’s big, terrible White House super-event, in the not-so-subtle hopes that the UFC’s continuing attempts to put all their eggs in the Alex Pereira basket would pay off in the form of their first-ever three-division champion. Instead, Ciryl beat the crap out of him. At 205 pounds, Alex was a monster; at 265 he was slower, smaller and no longer possessed the biggest guns in the cage. Ciryl boxed him up and knocked him out in the second round, but in the process of getting the stoppage he dropped elbows on a fallen, shaky Pereira that hit the back of his head, over which Pereira is attempting to a) have the fight’s result reversed and b) have referee Herb Dean fired. Ciryl Gane, meanwhile, continues to profit from everyone else’s misery more than just about any other fighter I’ve ever seen, as on September 14, Tom Aspinall officially vacated the Heavyweight title because his eyes can’t handle training without getting reinjured and he’s incapable of being medically cleared to fight. Ciryl Gane won his first UFC Interim Heavyweight Championship by beating a Derrick Lewis who was already pondering retirement, he won his second UFC Interim Heavyweight Championship by beating an Alex Pereira who had never fought at Heavyweight in mixed martial arts, and now, he has won his the undisputed UFC World Heavyweight Championship by beating absolutely nobody. He won one of the worst decisions of 2024 to become a top contender, he blinded the rightful champion in 2025 to become the UFC’s only available option for the top of the division, and in 2026, he is the man atop the mountain because rules aren’t real if they go unenforced by consequences. Ciryl Gane is the #1 Heavyweight in the world, and his first match-up as champion looks like it’ll either be a rematch with Pereira or a fight with human 4chan post Josh Hokit, because we live in Hell and we simply have to accept it. UPDATE, SEVERAL DAYS LATER: So, a funny thing happened on the way to UFC 331: Despite the primary function of an interim champion being taking the real champion’s place if they can’t come back, despite this being the way it has worked with every other interim champion in UFC history, Dana White says, this one time, Ciryl Gane doesn’t get to be promoted and will have to fight Josh Hokit for the belt at UFC 334 on November 14. Also, this main events over Kayla Harrison vs Amanda Nunes. Also while I was typing this they said Dana White misheard the question (which he absolutely did not) and Ciryl Gane is the champion, and then changed the onscreen graphic in mid-show. I could clean this paragraph up, but why should I put more effort into the Heavyweight division than the UFC is?
Light Heavyweight Champion, 205 lbs
Carlos Ulberg - 14-1, 0 Defenses
It’s so hard not to skip to the punchline on this one. Carlos Ulberg’s combat sports career is more mixed than MMA alone would lead one to believe. He started as a mixed martial artist all the way back in 2011, but after winning his debut fight, he decided to give fighting a break for almost half a decade. Then it was boxing, and then it was MMA again, and then it was kickboxing, and for a brief period of time it was both at once. The rise of Israel Adesanya led the UFC on an all-out talent search for big, credible strikers from Oceania, and that is how despite being just 3-0 as a mixed martial artist, Carlos wound up on the Contender Series in 2020, and just a few months later, in March of 2021, he was debuting in the UFC. They hyped him, they gave him a spot on the pay-per-view prelims, they booked him against the 1-1 Kennedy Nzechukwu and despite having half his experience Ulberg was the heavy betting favorite, because everyone knew they wanted him on top. Which was unfortunate, because Kennedy knocked him out in two rounds. Carlos described the loss as the most important moment of his career--half for the lesson of the loss itself, half for the $50,000 bonus that gave him his first taste of actual profit as a professional. He vowed to take his career more seriously, he vowed to prepare for his fights as though every one mattered rather than simply being happy to be in the UFC, and four years later, he was the top contender for the Light Heavyweight crown. A testament to determination and a good mindset? Absolutely! But also a bit of a testament to the careful cultivation and protection of a prospect. Carlos did his job and beat everyone the UFC put in front of him, but the people put in front of him tended to be carefully picked. At one point he beat a genuine prospect in Nicolae Negumereanu, and the UFC followed it up by giving him Ihor Potieria, the man Nicolae had just knocked out in his previous fight. Stiff prospects like Aleksandar Rakić and Azamat Murzakanov flew past in the background, but Da Woon Jung and Alonzo Menifield had to be destroyed. The UFC spent a year and a half trying on three separate occasions to book Ulberg against Dominick Reyes, and by the time they finally got there, it was, somehow, impossibly, a title eliminator. But Ulberg won, just as he’d won every fight since his meeting with Kennedy Nzechukwu, and he proceeded to his title fight with Jiří Procházka for the championship Alex Pereira had left behind to try his hand at the Heavyweight division. It was fun, it was fast, it was dramatic and it was definitive. In just a hair under four minutes, Jiří was flat on the canvas and Carlos Ulberg, five years after his debut, was the Light Heavyweight champion of the world. He also very visibly tore his ACL in half right in the middle of the fight and could barely move. If Jiří had simply backed away, hacked a few leg kicks and kept his distance, the fight would’ve been stopped between rounds, but he chose to engage and got flattened by a left hook counter for his troubles, and the result was a brand new titleholder who proceeded directly to the emergency room after the fight and had knee surgery less than a week later. For the third time in six title reigns, the new champion has an injury so bad it will prevent them from defending their title for at least the rest of the year. Will we get an interim title? Will yet another champion have to give up the gold? Will Paulo fucking Costa wind up technically a 205-pound champion? Stay tuned.
Middleweight Champion, 185 lbs
Sean Strickland - 31-7, 0 Defenses
After all of that time, we are back where we were. When Sean Strickland got his first shot at the UFC Middleweight Championship back in 2023, it was under particularly thin circumstances. Strickland had just come off back-to-back losses against Alex Pereira and Jared Cannonier, his title prospects seemed slim, and a short-notice victory over the then-unheralded Nassourdine Imavov and one-fight UFC veteran Abus Magomedov seemed unlikely to get Strickland anywhere. But then Dricus du Plessis wanted another month to prepare for Israel Adesanya, and the UFC wanted to keep their pay-per-view main event, and suddenly, Sean Strickland was beating one of the sport’s biggest stars and becoming its top Middleweight. It was a stellar performance, it was a career-defining victory, and it was one of the shortest title reigns in UFC history, as just four months later Strickland lost the belt to du Plessis in his first defense. But it was a split decision, so his argument for a rematch was sound, and after a pretty dubious win over Paulo Costa, Strickland got du Plessis back in the cage, where he vowed vengeance, justice, and a return to greatness. Dricus beat him 50-45. It would be a full year before Strickland returned, and in that time, the Middleweight division had changed shape. Nassourdine Imavov was in pole position. Israel Adesanya was a shadow of his former self. Anthony Hernandez was the fastest-rising contender in the class. And Strickland’s nemesis Dricus du Plessis had lost his title to Khamzat Chimaev. On February 21, 2026, on the back of a bunch of bigot bullshit that was growing ever-more tired by the day, Sean returned to the cage and walked right through Hernandez, not just beating him but knocking him out in the third round, and just like that, Imavov’s work didn’t matter, Dricus beating Sean twice didn’t matter. The UFC has its favorites, and Sean got the shot. Khamzat, as he did, hadn’t fought in nine months, and had been busying himself making threats about moving to Light Heavyweight and chasing a superfight with Alex Pereira, who had, himself, already moved up to Heavyweight altogether. Chimaev swore he would outwrestle Sean, smash him, and move on with his life. And for one round, he looked completely correct. After the first, suddenly, Strickland evened things up. Khamzat was never able to assert his wrestling game again, so the rest of the title fight became a boxing match, and in that sense, it was surprisingly even, with Khamzat arguably landing the bigger punches but Strickland landing at a higher clip, and the scorecards were split right down the middle. But the coinflip went Sean’s way. For the second time, Sean Strickland is a world champion, and we are all bastards for it. A rematch seems almost inevitable, but Sean has a shoulder injury to rehabilitate, so we’ll see what the future holds.
Welterweight Champion, 170 lbs
Islam Makhachev - 29-1, 1 Defense
The prophecy has been fulfilled. Khabib Nurmagomedov was considered by many to be the greatest Lightweight of all time, but in the later stages of his career he began to repeatedly reference his lifetime friend and training partner Islam Makhachev as not just his successor, but the man who would break the mold he’d left behind. And the fanbase was more than willing to buy another Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov protege coming in and wrecking shop--until he got knocked out by Adriano Martins. Khabib’s aura of invulnerability came from the simple, so-obvious-more-people-should-try-it factor of simply never losing a damn fight. When Islam got torched in under two minutes by a man that couldn’t beat Donald Cerrone, that aura vanished. A lot of folks still thought he could be a champion, but most felt the greatest-of-all-time lane was closed to him. It turns out there’s another way to regain that sense of unbeatable awe, though: Just don’t lose for so goddamn long people forget it ever happened. In the ten full years since that Martins bout, Islam has not lost a single fight. Most of the time, he hasn’t even lost a round. He worked his way up the Lightweight ladder and began to rack up incredible achievements. He tore through top prospects with virtually no effort, he choked out one of the best MMA grapplers ever in Charles Oliveira, he outlasted and later knocked out one of the two men with a claim to the all-time Featherweight crown in Alexander Volkanovski, he choked out Dustin Poirier and he broke the Lightweight title defense record after stomping Renato Moicano. And then he traded in his record-breaking reign to challenge for Welterweight gold. Jumping divisions is always difficult, but the 15-pound leap from Lightweight to Welterweight is a mountain, and no Lightweight champion had ever managed it. Even BJ Penn, the canonical first man to hold gold at both, had to do it in reverse: He failed at both of his attempts to win Lightweight gold and shocked the world by abruptly taking it at Welterweight instead, and it would be five more years before he finally got his shit together and won a title in the division that made him famous. His subsequent attempts all ended in defeat, half because Matt Hughes and Georges St-Pierre were both great and half because BJ was just a Lightweight. Even though Islam was Islam and widely agreed to be a monster in the cage, Jack Della Maddalena had won the Welterweight title with some of the cleanest boxing the UFC had seen, and his championship victory over wrestler Belal Muhammad had people convinced that Islam, at best, would struggle. They met in the main event of UFC 322 on November 15, 2025, and there was absolutely no struggle. Islam kicked Jack’s leg to pieces, landed some surprisingly big punches, and took the fight to the ground almost at will, and by the time the fight ended, it felt like Jack never had a chance. The shadow has been stepped out of. Islam Makhachev is a two-division champion. And now he has a brand new horde of contenders beating down his door. He beat back the first of them after defending his title against Ian Machado Garry at UFC 330 on August 15. He says he wants to fight one more time this year, but that not only did not happen, it did not happen so hard that the UFC booked an interim Welterweight title bout between Carlos Prates and Michael Morales for UFC 336 on January 30.
Lightweight Champion, 155 lbs
Justin Gaethje - 28-5, 0 Defenses
This has been a long, long time coming. Justin Gaethje has been right on the edge of the top for so long he banked two half-championships on his way up the mountain. Back in 2016, before the UFC even signed him, he was the champion of the World Series of Fighting--now known as the Professional Fighters League, much to our collective sadness--and was widely considered one of the best Lightweights in the world before ever setting foot in the Octagon. Back in 2020 he fought Tony Ferguson, then arguably the scariest Lightweight in the world, and beat him so horrifically that his career never recovered, and that netted Gaethje his first interim belt, which he promptly lost to Khabib Nurmagomedov in the latter’s retirement bout. Back in 2022, Gaethje got his second shot at the undisputed title against Charles Oliveira and he wound up strangled in three and a half minutes. Three and a half years after that, Gaethje was still right there at the precipice of the top, Ilia Topuria needed a break from the sport, and the UFC needed an aging veteran to propel their marketing star Paddy Pimblett to the top, and at UFC 324 on January 24, 2026, they threw Paddy’s big party and Justin crashed it. The UFC will tell you the fight was close, and it was in the sense that it went the whole way and one judge only gave Justin three rounds, but Paddy got brutally beaten and dropped repeatedly. With their desired player having failed his final exam, the UFC booked Gaethje into the main event of their big, terrible White House card against the finally-returning Ilia Topuria, who vowed to put Gaethje out within two rounds and resume his journey to a Welterweight showdown with Islam Makhachev. Instead, the two men had a goddamn war, with both hurting each other repeatedly and Topuria, arguably, giving away a TKO victory in the second round after crumpling Gaethje with bodyshots and choosing to roll for an armbar rather than pound him out. Gaethje broke Topuria’s face and left him nearly blind, and by the end of the fourth round, Topuria had nothing left and his corner threw in the towel. It took ten years, two interim belts and two failed shots, but finally, Justin Gaethje is the champion of the world. Which makes whatever happens next really fucking weird. They could run a Topuria rematch, but the ending was definitive and Topuria never defended the belt in the first place. They could have Gaethje fight rematches with Oliveira or Max Holloway, both of whom stopped him in the recent past, but Gaethje is hesitant about them and Holloway is booked against Conor McGregor. I’m sure they would LOVE it if Conor won so he could fight Gaethje instead, but that seems drastically unlikely. Arman Tsarukyan is, as ever, the #1 contender, but we know the UFC doesn’t care about that. My guess: Paddy Pimblett rematch. Gaethje does, however, say his hands are too busted up to fight again this year, so we won’t find out ‘til 2027.
Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs
Alexander Volkanovski - 29-4, 2 Defenses
And just like that, 2024 never happened. For eleven years Alexander Volkanovski was the best Featherweight on the planet, and most of that time was simply waiting for everyone else to notice. He was short and he won by decisions a lot and the world was entirely into Max Holloway so he skated under the radar right up until the moment he finally beat Max. And that wasn’t enough to convince people, so Volkanovski beat him again. And that somehow made the world doubt him even more, so he beat Max a third time. By 2023 Volk was second only to all-time great José Aldo in Featherweight title defenses--and he’d beaten Aldo in a fight, and his only actual loss was an all-timer of an effort against Islam Makhachev that still stands as the closest Islam has come to losing his title as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world, so it was very, very easy to accept Alexander Volkanovski as the greatest Featherweight on the planet. And then he took a rematch with Islam with only one week to prepare and got knocked out in three minutes, and then he came back less than four months later and got flattened by Ilia Topuria, and in the space of two fights the audience went from celebrating him as the best around to calling for his retirement. Volkanovski took an entire year off to heal and rebuild, which was enough time for Ilia to get bored and vacate the belt to go chase Lightweight greatness, and the Topuria/Volkanovski rematch became Volkanovski vs Diego Lopes at UFC 314 on April 12 to fill the vacant throne instead. It was somehow both close and clear. Lopes gained steam in the middle stanza of the bout and at one point dropped Volk, but Volk got right back up and resumed punching him in the face, and by the end of the bout he’d outlanded him more than two to one. The judges sided with him, the audience sided with him, and Alexander Volkanovski became not just one of the rare few to win back a UFC title, but the first man over 35 to ever win a UFC belt in the sub-170 weight classes typically reserved for young lions. His logical next contender should’ve been Movsar Evloev, but the UFC was busy trying to get him to fight an unranked, debuting Aaron Pico, thus clearing the way for a rematch with Yair Rodríguez in Guadalajara for Noche UFC 3 in September. Except the Arena Guadalajara wasn’t done yet, so Noche UFC 3 got moved to the most Mexican of places, Las Vegas, in October, and Alex’s manager said he had an eye injury that needs time to heal, so he took the rest of 2025 off. Good news, though: That left time for the UFC to get new contenders going. Lerone Murphy wound up fighting and knocking out Pico! Aljamain Sterling beat Brian Ortega! Hell, Movsar Evloev is still right there! The UFC looked at all of them and gave them all the finger. At UFC 325 on January 31, fresh off his title victory over Diego Lopes, Alexander Volkanovski had his first title defense against Diego Lopes. Unsurprisingly, the guy who beat Diego Lopes beat Diego Lopes again. The UFC had Evloev and Murphy fight in March and Evloev won a contentious decision, and after years of trying to derail him, they finally gave up. Volk and Evloev met at UFC 333 on October 24, and in one of his best performances ever, Volk smashed him in two rounds.
Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs
Petr Yan - 21-5, 1 Defense
Petr Yan’s road to the top has been incredibly circuitous. When Yan initially won the Bantamweight title back in 2020, no one was particularly surprised. He’d been one of the best in the world for years, he’d put together a six-fight winning streak on his road to the title shot, and the UFC had fed aging legend Urijah Faber to him in an attempt to make him a known quantity. Felling an even greater legend in José Aldo and taking the belt felt like an entirely expected passing of the torch, and a long reign as the division’s standardbearer seemed all but assured. And then, as they so often do, things went wrong. In quite possibly the most infamous title change in UFC history, Yan became the first champion to ever lose his title by disqualification after drilling Aljamain Sterling in the face with an illegal knee. Yan’s team cried foul and the world turned on Sterling, but when they had their rematch a year later, Sterling beat him by decision and that was that. But it was a split decision, and it was close, so the UFC gave Yan another theoretical title eliminator with Sean O’Malley, and this time the world was almost unanimously convinced Yan won--except for two of the three judges, who split in O’Malley’s favor. To top it off, Yan’s attempt to stay in the contendership conversation ran into the brick wall that was the rising Merab Dvalishvili, who handed him the most one-sided loss of his entire life. In the space of two years, Petr Yan went from being perceived as a generational champion to 1 for his last 5 and seemingly eliminated from contendership. After a year off to cope with injuries, reassess his career and figure out how to turn things around, Yan proceeded to take the path that most commonly leads to success: Just fucking beating everyone. He battered Song Yadong, he outpunched Deiveson Figueiredo, he won an exceedingly weirdly-booked matchup with Marcus McGhee, and suddenly, he was on a winning streak and right back in contendership. It might have taken him longer to get an actual title fight were it not for Merab Dvalishvili being a crazy person. Merab was on the greatest championship run the division had ever seen, and after clearing out most of his to contenders and recording a blistering three defenses in a single year, he announced his intention to break a UFC record and cement himself as the greatest 135-pounder of all time by recording a fourth--just two months after the last one--and Petr Yan was available and ready. The world saw the fight as a foregone conclusion, given how one-sided their first match had been, and the world was wrong. Yan put on the best performance of his career, not just battering Merab but outwrestling him, and in one of the best career comebacks we’ve seen, almost five years after he’d given it away, Petr Yan got his title back. He’s on top of the world again, and in all likelihood, the rubber match with Merab will be next. But it had to wait until the second half of the year, because Yan needed back surgery. Almost a full year later, Yan and Merab ran it back at UFC 333 on October 24, and the fight was much closer this time, but Yan still took it. He’s cemented himself as the best, he’s finally, finally recorded his first-ever title defense, and it’s likely another rematch next, either with Song Yadong or Sean O’Malley.
Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs
Joshua Van - 18-2, 2 Defenses
It would be disrespectful as hell to Joshua Van to say that no one saw this coming, as many people perceived it as a possibility, but I don’t think anyone saw it coming like this. Van was the Flyweight champion of the Fury Fighting Championships when the UFC came calling, as a 21 year-old regional titleholder with a penchant for collecting knockouts despite fighting at 125 pounds so thoroughly ticks all of their boxes that Van couldn’t have been a more perfect fit without also having a history of racist tweets, and his Contender Series debut was set for August of 2023. But the UFC needed someone to fill in against Zhalgas Zhumagulov, so Van got called up to the big show early and proceeded to justify their faith by beating Zhalgas, and then beating the man he was originally slated to Contend against, and then facing off with Legacy Fighting Alliance champ Felipe Bunes and handing him the first TKO loss of his entire career. In the space of six months, Van went from a little-known regional fighter to a borderline-ranked Flyweight in the UFC. And then he got atomized by Charles Johnson. It was the second loss of Van’s career, the first time he’d ever been knocked out, and the snapping of an eight-fight winning streak, and in many cases, that would’ve permanently ended his momentum. But Van was smart enough to learn from his mistakes, and the UFC was invested enough in him to bring him back up to speed with a gentle hand, and eleven months later he was on a four-fight winning streak again and had successfully made his way to the top ten after knocking out Bruno Silva, which left him in the perfect position to take advantage of an abrupt opportunity. Top contender Brandon Royval had just lost his opponent and needed a replacement, and Van was game to fight for the second time in three weeks if it meant a shot at the belt. It was a close bout, and if Van hadn’t knocked Royval down at the end of the third round he may well have lost, but he did, so he didn’t, and suddenly the prospect was next in line for the title. All but one month of Joshua Van’s UFC career took place during Alexandre Pantoja’s reign as the Flyweight king. His streak was monstrous and he was a sizable favorite coming into his defense against Van, but many were waiting to see if Van’s boxing could defuse Pantoja’s aggression. As it turns out: We’re gonna have to wait a bit longer. Twenty-six seconds into the bout Pantoja busted his own arm on the mat after a head kick gone awry. So Van’s the champion, but it’s under some real weird circumstances, and it means a number of people are immediately gunning for him. Alexandre Pantoja presumably has a rematch as soon as he’s back, but Tatsuro Taira just pounded Brandon Moreno out and got his crack at Van at UFC 327 on April 11. It was an amazing fight, but ultimately, Van got the knockout in the final round. The long-awaited rematch with Pantoja came at UFC 331 on September 19 and it was an instant classic, but this time, Van beat him definitively. Van’s now the unquestionable, undisputed best Flyweight on Earth. He gets to fight to keep that title against Manel Kape at UFC 336 on January 30.
Women’s Bantamweight, 135 lbs
Kayla Harrison - 19-1, 0 Defenses
Every once in awhile the inevitable turns out to actually be inevitable. Ronda Rousey parlayed a 2008 bronze medal in Judo into mixed martial arts stardom; Kayla Harrison took the gold medal in 2012 and 2016. The world was already asking her about MMA before the second. The UFC made a play for her, but there was a problem: By the standards of female fighters Kayla was huge. Ronda had competed at 70 kg in the Olympics, which translated to about 154 pounds, well within the range of weight cutting for the insane standards of combat sports and Women’s Bantamweight. Kayla competed at 78 kg, which was almost 172 pounds. Even at a twenty-pound weight cut, her division simply did not exist in major mixed martial arts organizations. So she had to find one that would build it. The Professional Fighters League needed star power, and Kayla was their gal. They founded the first Women’s Lightweight division in a major American organization, and it was populated mostly by Bantamweights and Featherweights who were trying the best they could. For four straight years, Kayla was their recurring, undefeated champion. She won the 2019 and 2021 tournaments, and in 2022 she made it to the finals and looked poised to take it for a third time, as her only competition was Larissa Pacheco, whom she’d already beaten twice. In a massive upset, Larissa took a decision off of her. It was shocking, it was unexpected, and it was also more or less fine, because Kayla was more or less done with the PFL. She took one more fight against Aspen Ladd as a one-off, but her future was with the UFC. Even with her loss to Pacheco, the world was sure she was a future UFC champion--as long as she could stomach the weight cut. And it did, visibly, kill her! But she made it. She choked out Holly Holm in her debut, she took a decision over Ketlen Vieira in a title eliminator, and all she had to do after that was wait. Julianna Peña was a +500 underdog in her own title defense against Kayla, and that turned out to be just about right. On June 7, 2025, at UFC 316, Kayla achieved the inevitable, ragdolled Peña and tapped her out in just two rounds. She’s the best in the world and she’s going to get her shot at the superfight everyone wanted in the first place, as Amanda Nunes is coming out of retirement to face her later this year--actually, this got delayed so much it’s only now finally booked for UFC 324 on January 24, 2026--maybe never? A couple weeks before the superfight Kayla had to pull out for apparently fairly major neck surgery. Now we’re doing it at UFC 334 on November 14.
Women’s Flyweight, 125 lbs
Natália Silva - 21-5-1, 0 Defenses
When forever champion Valentina Shevchenko lost her title to Alexa Grasso in 2023, people were excited. Part of it was the degree to which the audience had tired of her finishing-averse style, but just as important was the excitement of watching a monolith of the sport fall. New champion! New fights! A brave new world! Then Val won it back a year later and everything went right back to the way it had been since 2018. But then, in 2026, we found the one force capable of felling Shevchenko: Card booking requirements. She was supposed to defend her title against Natália Silva at UFC 332 on October 3, but an injury forced her out. Despite half the championship roster barely fighting more than once a year, the UFC stripped herValentina altruistically vacated the title so the UFC wouldn’t have to promote a numbered event without a real title fightso the Flyweight division could stay vital and more on. Natália was a completely worthy challenger. She’s been undefeated in the UFC since her debut in 2022, but her undefeated streak stretched all the way back to 2018, when she was tearing it up in her native Brazil and taking the Jungle Fight championship home with her. A couple good knockouts got the UFC to take an interest in her, and while she never replicated those finishes again, she kept winning, and winning, and winning. She notched her first ex-champion victory by beating Jéssica Andrade in 2024, she pulled down her top contendership after a decision against Alexa Grasso in 2025, she went through the obligatory and inevitable attempt to replace her with a marketing favorite right at the start of 2026 when the UFC tried and failed to get Rose Namajunas to leapfrog her, and no one could doubt that she’d earned her shot at the top. And then the top disappeared and instead she found herself fighting for the vacant title against the peripherally-ranked Wang Cong as the UFC’s marketing department made one last attempt to sneak a more favorable champion in under the wire. It was close--to the point that a couple media figures had Cong winning, which I cannot disagree with any more strongly--but Silva took the decision, the fight, and the UFC championship home. On one hand: Congratulations! You made it! On the other: Valentina is gone and the two women most likely to get title shots, Alexa Grasso and Jasmine Jasudavicius, are women Silva already beat. Welcome back to the void, Women’s Flyweight.
Women’s Strawweight, 115 lbs
Mackenzie Dern - 17-5, 1 Defense
On a long enough timeline, the house always wins. Mackenzie Dern signed with the UFC as a 5-0 fighter all the way back in 2018 and they’ve been trying to get a belt on her ever since. She came into mixed martial arts with a pre-existing pedigree as one of the more decorated women in the history of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu: Gi championships, no-gi championships, pan-Am championships, Asian open championships, world championships, ADCC championships, she took them all. And the UFC marketed her as a grappling champion who was bringing some of the best submission offense in the sport to the Strawweight division! But they also marketed her as an extremely conventionally attractive woman who frequently wore bathing suits. It was one of the touchiest things to comment on with her career: Where other women would have to struggle for their matchmaking and featured spots, Mackenzie’s opportunities kept coming, and they were almost always on the main broadcast and, on multiple occasions, in the main event slots women almost never received. And she needed them, because despite being legitimately quite good, she just wasn’t great. She could make it into the top fifteen, and sometimes even brush the top ten, but every time they tried to get Mackenzie into title contention, she’d falter. It was Amanda Ribas in 2019, it was Marina Rodriguez in 2021, and between 2022 and 2024, Mackenzie had the worst run of her life, winning only one out of four bouts, getting shut down by Yan Xiaonan and Amanda Lemos, and taking the first stoppage loss of her career after being knocked out by Jéssica Andrade. She managed to get her way back up the ladder again by outgrappling Loopy Godinez and submitting a struggling Amanda Ribas in a six-years-belated rematch, but with so many losses to top contenders, her path to the title still seemed closed. Then a funny thing happened: Zhang Weili gave up the Strawweight belt to move up to Flyweight and challenge Valentina Shevchenko. Suddenly, the door was wide open. And conveniently, the UFC had booked all the women who beat Mackenzie into other matches, leaving Mackenzie with just one contender left--and it was Virna Jandiroba, a career grappler whom Mackenzie had already beaten back in 2020. The two met at UFC 321 on October 25, and after seven years of effort, the UFC finally got its way. Mackenzie beat Virna again, fair and square, in a close and hard-fought but ultimately clear decision. She is, at last, the Strawweight Champion of the World. And she’s in the exceptionally weird position of being a newly-minted champion that has very recently lost to several of her own top contenders. One would think, Zhang Weili having been soundly thwomped by Valentina Shevchenko in her bid for 125-pound supremacy, she would be back at Strawweight to reclaim her crown. Instead she’s MIA and Mackenzie defended her title against Gillian Robertson at UFC 330 on August 15, who was game but stood very little chance.
NOTABLE CHAMPIONS ACROSS THE WORLD
Rizin Lightweight Champion, 156 lbs
Luiz Gustavo - 16-4, 0 Defenses
Sunrise, sunset. Luiz Gustavo is not new to Rizin. He made his debut all the way back in 2018, when he was an undefeated, 8-0 22 year-old who’d only barely started fighting real competition down in Katana Fight. Rizin threw him straight into a main event in the hopes of completing the ascension of their rising star Yusuke Yachi, who’d just capped off a six-fight winning streak that included torch-passing matches with Japanese legends like Satoru Kitaoka and Takanori Gomi. Gustavo was supposed to be Yachi’s victim. Instead he knocked Yachi out in two rounds. Suddenly, Gustavo was the star and the man folks had flagged as Rizin’s next big Lightweight champion. He proceeded to go 1-3 over the next year, which culminated in the first knockout loss of his life against Patricky Pitbull and, ultimately, an almost three-year hiatus while the world struggled with COVID. When Rizin tried to get back to its wholly-international ways in 2022, they had Yusuke Yachi waiting for a rematch, and once again, Gustavo knocked him dead in two rounds. In two years Luiz had a winning streak and a shot at longtime champion Roberto “Satoshi” de Souza, and the world expected a classic striker-vs-grappler clash. Satoshi shocked him with a right hand and knocked him out in twenty seconds. Having lost his shot, and followed it with an unsuccessful bout against Shunta Nomura, Gustavo’s hopes for the top of the heap were so distant that Rizin booked him into a fight with living legend Kazushi Sakuraba’s son, the 2-1 Taisei. Gustavo punched him out in seven and a half minutes. Barely two months later, Rizin needed a challenger to stand opposite Ilkhom Nazimov, the man who had unseated Satoshi during their big New Year’s Eve special, and Luiz was available. Once again, the world underestimated him, and once again, they were wrong. Luiz punched Nazimov out in two minutes to finally take his title home.
Rizin Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs
Razhabali Shaydullaev - 19-0, 4 Defenses
I asked how long the second reign of Kleber Koike Erbst would last, and as it turns out, the answer was sixty-two seconds. Razhabali Shaydullaev’s rise through the sport has been impressively meteoric. Four years ago he was a rookie fighting on Batyr Bashy cards in Kyrgyzstan as a predominantly grappling-based fighter. Three years ago he was disposing of journeymen in the developmental leagues of Russia’s Absolute Championship Akhmat. Two years ago he was choking out top contenders in South Korea’s Road FC. One year ago he got signed to Rizin. In just six months he choked out a DEEP champion, submitted a Bellator champion and smashed through a K-1 Kickboxing champion with virtually no resistance. He was the favorite against Erbst, but few thought it would be an easy night, with Erbst having been finished only once in his entire career, and even that was an armbar all the way back in 2009 when he was still a rookie. Shaydullaev, as he has been doing for the entirety of his run thus far, destroyed Erbst. He walked through him and flattened him in just barely over a minute. Rizin’s got another gaijin champion, and given how good he’s looked, they may be stuck with him for awhile--or, worse, they might lose him to the UFC sooner than later. With Mikuru Asakura’s victory over Chihiro Suzuki on the same night he’s the logical next contender, but that would just be stupid, so instead it was Shaydullaev making his first defense against Viktor Kolesnik at Rizin 51 on September 28: He knocked Kolesnik out in just thirty-three seconds. His successful murders got him the main event of 2025’s Japanese New Year’s MMA special, where Rizin secretly hoped their big national star Mikuru Asakura would get the job done; Shaydullaev chain-suplexed him, grounded him, and laid an unconscionable amount of ground and pound on him in one of those Japan-likes-to-let-its-heroes-die moments before the ref finally called the fight in just shy of three minutes. Shaydullaev’s the best guy in the company, and now there’s a question of what’s left for him to do. For now, inexplicably, the answer was carrying the murder of the 5-2 Yuta Kubo at Rizin Landmark 13 on April 11, which is wild because they already fought at the end of 2024 and Shaydullaev destroyed him in seven and a half minutes. Try to control your shock: This time it only took Shaydullaev four. He became the centerpiece of the Rizin/PFL crosspromotion, taking on and beating the PFL’s A.J. McKee on September 10 to both defend his belt and become the inaugural PFL Featherweight champion.
Rizin Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs
Danny Sabatello - 19-4-1, 2 Defenses
When Naoki Inoue won Rizin’s Bantamweight title I wrote that Rizin was one step closer to its dream of an all-Japanese championship roster, and it’s fitting that as gaijin once again take over the majority of the championship belts in the biggest organization in Japan, Danny goddamn Sabatello is one of the men to do it. Sabatello has been dogged by a reputation as a grinding wrestler without a ton to offer since 2020, when he got the call to compete on Dana White’s Contender Series, won, and was notably not offered a contract on the grounds of Boring Grappler. He made the move to late-stage Bellator instead, where he attempted to establish himself as their own personal Chael Sonnen: An indefatigable wrestling machine whose mouth ran just as hard as his double-legs. But it never quite caught on. The talk seemed a bit forced, the wrestling wasn’t that fun to watch, and all his 1980s wrestling promos about the bums in Bellator’s Bantamweight Grand Prix ended with an elimination at the hands of Raufeon Stots. Sabatello swore he’d won and that he’d get revenge; instead he ended his Bellator tenure getting choked out by Magomed Magomedov, decisioned again by Stots, and losing out on a shot at the PFL after going to a draw with Lazaro Dayron, who would’ve won the decision were it not for a point deduction. It was a bit of a shock when Sabatello signed with Rizin in 2025, but it seemed to have paid off when he scored his first knockout in six years during his debut against Shinobu Ota and swore he’d reinvent himself as Japan’s new American superstar. Then he went back to wrestling. It was still enough to get him his shot at Inoue’s belt at 2025’s New Year’s special, and despite the common wisdom of judging favoritism, a very close split decision went Danny’s way. It took three years longer than he intended, but Danny Sabatello is holding gold. Now we see if he can, in fact, become Big In Japan. His first title defense was against Joji Goto at Rizin Landmark 13 on April 11, and, unsurprisingly, he wrestled Goto to a broad decision. After a lot of public threats from Rizin CEO Nobuyuki Sakakibara about terminating his contract if he didn’t stop winning by decision, because, in their heart of hearts, every MMA promoter is Dana White, Danny gave the boss what he wanted by knocking the fuck out of Jinnosuke Kashimura on July 18. It’s seeming likely a rematch with Naoki Inoue will be next.
Rizin Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs
Makoto Takahashi - 23-5-1 (1), 0 Defenses
Oh, buddy, Rizin has wanted this one for years. Anytime a fighter with an above-average winning rate successfully gets their name replaced with a nickname it means the marketing power is strong with them, and within one fight in Rizin, no one called him Takahashi anymore. Japanese MMA is perpetually desperate for young national stars, and they knew almost immediately that Makoto Shinryu was their guy. By July of 2023 Shinryu was already 16-1-1 despite having just turned 23, he was the most-hyped male prospect in the country, and he was uniquely positioned to take over the world, as Rizin and Bellator were in the middle of their historical co-promotion days, and Bellator was inaugurating its Flyweight title with a match between Shinryu and top dog Kyoji Horiguchi. It ended with Kyoji unintentionally poking Makoto in the eye in twenty-five seconds. It took half a year to get the rematch together, and this time it was for Rizin’s Flyweight title, and Kyoji choked Shinryu out in two rounds. This marked the beginning of Shinryu’s career hitting speedbumps, as after almost seven years of constant victory, it’d be two years before he managed back-to-back wins again. Hiromasa Ougikubo, Jose Torres and Yuki Motoya all turned Shinryu away by decision, the last of which knocked him out of the Flyweight Grand Prix to fill the throne Horiguchi abdicated to return to the UFC. Ougikubo ultimately won the tournament and the title, but wins over Hiroya Kondo and Nkazimulo Zulu were enough for Rizin’s brass to put Shinryu right back in the title conversation, because, well, that’s what they wanted in the first place. They were right, too. Three years after his first failed attempt at grasping gold, Shinryu took Ougikubo the distance and took his belt home. There may have been detours along the way, but he’s got the title everyone felt he was destined for. Now we get to watch him try to keep it. He’ll go for his first defense against Tony Laramie at Rizin 55 on November 8.
Rizin Women’s Super Atomweight Championship, 108 lbs
VACANT - The source of life and death
The world has long wondered who or what could beat Seika Izawa, and as it turns out, the answer is childbirth. At Rizin Landmark 13 on April 12, 2026, Seika took to the ring and announced her pregnancy and, accordingly, her hiatus from the sport. After four straight years as the undisputed best Atomweight in the world, the queen has abdicated the throne. She vowed to one day return and take back the belt from whichever unlucky woman gets it in her absence, but obviously there’s no timeline for said return, nor should there be. All eyes now turn to the rest of Rizin’s Atomweight division, which is, like, four people. Ayaka Hamasaki’s back in Rizin, but she got armbarred pretty easily by the debuting Natasha Kuziutina. Moeri Suda and Saori Oshima are always around on loan from DEEP. I’m sure they’d love to belt up RENA, but she spends half of her time closer to Strawweight. It’s a loss for mixed martial arts, we are all happy for Seika and wish her well, and god bless Rizin, which can never, ever have a full complement of champions.
ONE Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs
ONE Light Heavyweight Champion, 225 lbs
ONE Middleweight Champion, 205 lbs
VACANT - The inevitable end of hubris
We were always destined to end here. ONE’s heavier title belts have always been more suggestion than reality. All three have seen at most five champions apiece in their decade-plus of existence--in Light Heavyweight’s case it’s just four, which makes sense, as after ten goddamn years there have been exactly five Light Heavyweight title fights. The belt-padding era began in earnest when ONE made Reinier de Ridder the double-champion over a division that barely existed, and when he fell on hard times with ONE management, they one-upped him by having Heavyweight champion Anatoly Malykhin drop to 225 and 205 thereafter just to beat him out of the company entirely. Over the past two years there was exactly one championship fight across all three weight classes, and it saw Oumar “Reug Reug” Kane take Malykhin’s Heavyweight title away, and it was a portent of the future that Marcus Buchecha won #1 contendership on that same night and opted to leave the company rather than fight for its title. Kane and Malykhin wouldn’t have their scheduled rematch until May 15, 2026, when Malykhin got his revenge by knocking out an exhausted Kane in the fourth round. Having won back his belt, he retired immediately, and in so doing rendered 1/3 of ONE’s MMA championships vacant. I’d bet we will, eventually, see another Heavyweight champion in ONE; I doubt we’ll ever see the other two belts again.
ONE Welterweight Champion, 185 lbs
Christian Lee - 18-4 (1), 0 Defenses
ONE Lightweight Champion, 170 lbs
Christian Lee - 18-4 (1), 1 Defense
It took three tries, but by god, Chatri gets what Chatri wants. Christian Lee, the male half of the first family of ONE Championship and its homegrown golden boy, was very mad about losing his lightweight championship in a controversial decision to Ok Rae Yoon last year. He demanded the decision be reviewed and overturned and his championship reinstated. Unsurprisingly: This did not happen. After months of complaining and just shy of a year of waiting, the two had their long-awaited rematch and Lee left nothing to chance, knocking Yoon out in six minutes to reclaim his belt. Having finally retrieved his title, Lee, being a responsible champion, proceeded to immediately challenge ONE’S 185-pound champion, Kiamrian Abbasov, for his title, a move that was definitely in no way influenced by ONE’s repeated attempts to get his sister Angela Lee double-champion status. Fortunately for Christian, Abbasov horribly botched his weight cut: He came in overweight, lost his title on the scale, and was visibly depleted in the fight. Which is particularly lucky, because Abbasov beat Lee senseless in the first round to the point that a standing TKO would not have been an unreasonable stoppage. But whether from his failed weight cut or simply from punching himself out, Abbasov was exhausted by the second round, and Lee mounted a gutsy comeback and ultimately stopped him with ground-and-pound in the fourth round. After three attempts, ONE has succeeded in getting two belts on a Lee. Unfortunately, it was followed by tragedy. After the passing of his younger sister Victoria, Christian took the whole of the year to, understandably, grieve. ONE planned his comeback for February of 2024, but, y’know, that clearly did not happen. ONE held an interim title fight between Alibeg Rasulov and Ok Rae Yoon to welcome him back--but that didn’t exactly happen either, as Rasulov failed hydration tests, became ineligible to win the title, then won the fight anyway. Lee vs Rasulov was scheduled for October. And then November. It finally happened on December 7, 2024--and it ended in a No Contest after two rounds thanks to Christian unintentionally gouging Rasulov’s eye. They ran it back almost a full year later at ONE 173 on November 16, 2025, and this time Lee knocked him out in the second round, marking Lee’s first win in three years. Now, almost a full year after that on November 6, 2026, Lee will defend the Lightweight title against, uh, Tye Ruotolo. 2-0 Tye Ruotolo. Been-fighting-MMA-for-one-year Tye Ruotolo.
ONE Featherweight Champion, 155 lbs
Tang Kai - 20-4, 2 Defenses
Tang Kai has been flying under the radar for some time, and in hindsight, that was clearly a mistake. He made his professional debut as a 20 year-old collegiate wrestler and won a rookie featherweight tournament in China’s WBK (after investigating, we THINK it’s World Battle Kings), but his stylistic limitations became apparent when he moved up to Kunlun Fight--and stopped fighting rookies. Dominant decision losses to ACA standout Bekhruz “Ong Bak” Zukurov and Road to UFC runner-up Asikeerbai Jinensibieke made Kai’s weaknesses too apparent to ignore, and he made the tough call to commit to his dream, pack up his life, and move away from home to start training with real fight camps, most notably Shanghai’s Dragon Gym and Phuket’s legendary Tiger Muay Thai. It’s worked out quite well: He hasn’t lost a fight in five years. Three knockout wins in China’s Rebel FC got ONE’s attention, and since debuting with the organization in 2019, Kai has soundly defeated everyone in his path. He claims his wrestling base makes him impossible to take down and he proves it by using it almost entirely defensively, vastly preferring to bludgeon his opponents on his feet. His fight against Thanh Le, while blistering and difficult, was proof: He evaded every takedown attempt, widely outstruck him, dropped him with punches and leg kicks alike, and took the belt he’s held for two years. And then, absolutely nothing else happened. It took ONE almost a full year to book another match for Tang Kai, and it was just an instant rematch with Thanh Le with no fanfare, and it was delayed by eight full months thanks to an injury. So after more than a year and a half without a fight, Tang Kai finally fought Thanh Le again, and this time, he knocked him out in three rounds. Congratulations, Tang Kai: You are back at square one. His position hasn’t improved much, either. He was supposed to defend his title against Akbar Abdullaev on January 10, and Abdullaev pounded him out in the fifth round, but he also missed weight by a pound and a half and thus was ineligible for the championship. So, hey: Still a world champion! You just got knocked out a little bit. It’s fine. ONE cut Abdullaev anyway rather than give him another shot. After almost another year and a half of inactivity Tang Kai finally defended his title on May 15, this time knocking out Shamil Gasanov.
ONE Bantamweight Champion, 145 lbs
Elbek Alyshov - 10-0, 0 Defenses
You know, Bantamweight was one of ONE’s best divisions. The higher weight classes were always troubled, but Bantamweight thrived with activity and Kim Soo-chul, Martin Nguyen, John Lineker--hell, Bibiano Fernandes, one of the best fighters to never take a shot at the UFC, remains the all-time greatest, champion in ONE history. But things ain’t what they used to be. Bibi alone had eleven title fights in five years. Since 2022, there have now been five Bantamweight title fights altogether. John Lineker took it from Bibi, the scale took it away from him, Fabrício Andrade picked the bones and waited almost two full years to defend the title once, and in his second attempt in 2025, Mongolian wrestler Enkh-Orgil Baatarkhuu choked it out of him. By then, Elbek Alyshov was already waiting, but waiting was something he’d gotten used to. He turned pro back in 2017, realized he wasn’t ready, and bumped back down to the amateur scene, only re-emerging three years later as a finished product after winning the International Mixed Martial Arts Federation Junior Championship. He made a name for himself as a standout in Moscow’s regional fight scene, but had to take another three-year hiatus from the sport after chronic health conditions grounded him. He finally joined ONE in 2025, rattled off two submission wins in two months, and had to sit and wait for another eight months before finally getting his shot at the top of the mountain. He didn’t waste it. Alyshov knocked Baatarkhuu flat in a round and a half to take the Bantamweight title home. Now he waits to see if ONE can book him more than once a year.
ONE Flyweight Champion, 135 lbs
Avazbek Kholmirzaev - 16-2, 0 Defenses
There’s a certain kind of tragedy in winning a championship during what certainly seems to be the waning days of a promotion’s time with mixed martial arts. Avazbek Kholmirzaev is by no means new to ONE, his title victory came a whole eleven fights into his time on their roster, but he spent a great deal of that time nigh-unto invisible. He got his start in his native country’s Uzbekistan MMA Association, but like so many of his countrymen, the successes that built his career came from the bigger, more popular Alash Pride FC, Kazakhstan’s biggest promotion, which is large, well-populated, and also the kind of bullshit record-padding organization that books main events between promising prospects and 5-11 guys who mysteriously always lose within three minutes. But he was on the positive side of the equation, and he knocked people out with spinning kicks, so ONE scouted him for their expansion across the East and he proved to be a natural fit--for the prelims. Avazbek almost never left the first few fights of the cards he was booked on, right up to his championship-opportunity-earning victory over no less than the 11-10 Jeremy Miado this past December curtain-jerking an Amazon Prime card, and an unkind man would probably intimate that his shot at Yuya Wakamatsu’s Flyweight Championship was an attempt to get Yuya a win, being as it was ONE’s big Ariake Arena show in Tokyo and they were attempting to showcase as much of their Japanese talent as possible. It was going well for Yuya right up until he ate a spinning elbow to the dome and went down in a heap just moments before the second round was about to end. Avazbek is a champion and he should be duly proud, and now we’re just left to see what being an MMA champion in ONE means in 2026.
ONE Strawweight Champion, 125 lbs
Joshua Pacio - 24-5, 2 Defenses
It’s been a difficult couple of years for Joshua Pacio. “The Passion” stands as a true veteran of ONE Championship, having made his debut--and his first, unsuccessful attempt at winning the Strawweight title--all the way back in 2016. Pacio established himself as both a fan favorite and a solid promotional favorite for the company, and when he lost his second bid for the title against Yosuke Saruta in 2019, ONE, in a trick they’d become very friendly with over the years, gave him an instant rematch anyway. Pacio knocked Saruta out in the rematch and became easily the greatest 125-pound champion in ONE history, ultimately defending the title three times--including a trilogy match against Saruta. By 2022, Pacio was a crown jewel for ONE’s lineup. Which is when he promptly got wrestled into paste by UFC cast-off Jarred Brooks. Rather than having him defend the title, ONE booked Brooks into grappling matches, and in the meantime Pacio fought and defeated undefeated prospect Mansur Malachiev to earn himself a rematch. Multiple delays ensued, but on March 1, the Brooks/Pacio rematch finally came. Fifty-six seconds in, Pacio attempted a standing kimura on Brooks, who hoisted him off the ground, suplexed him, and knocked him out. Unfortunately, this was a problem. Under ONE’s ruleset, slams that land headfirst are illegal. ONE has been regularly criticized for this--less for the rule itself as for ONE’s tendency to selectively enforce the rule, using it to benefit fighters they would like to succeed. ONE, of course, denies this vehemently. However you draw your own conclusions, at the end of the day Jarred Brooks was disqualified, and thus, by DQ, Joshua Pacio is now a three-time Strawweight champion. He almost immediately announced he has torn his ACL and was out for an entire year. On February 20th, 2025, Pacio and Brooks finally fought again and it was weird, but definitive. Jarred Brooks seemingly exhausted himself after a round and Pacio pounded him for the entire second round, which eventually elicited a mercy stoppage from the ref. ONE has only one 125-pound champion again. So he, of course, challenged for the 135-pound title next. Pacio vs Wakamatsu happened at ONE 173 on November 16 and ended in Pacio getting smashed in six minutes. Thankfully, he secured his first win in a year and a half, and his second title defense, after choking out Mansur Malachiev on July 10.
ONE Women’s Atomweight Champion, 115 lbs
VACANT - The planting ground for broken dreams
On June 23, Denice Zamboanga vacated the Atomweight title after she had a baby. On one hand: Mazel tov. On the other, for those keeping track, this means Stamp Fairtex was the champion, then she got hurt, then Denice won the interim belt a year and a half ago, then Stamp fell out of their unification bout with an injury so ONE promoted Denice to undisputed champion, and that was more than a year ago, and now it’s ended with the belt going to nobody. There has been one championship fight in the last three fucking years and it was for an interim belt and one of the women in said fight hadn’t recorded a win since January of 2021. I am once again pleading with ONE: Just stop doing MMA. Let my people go. They have, of course, not listened, so at ONE Samurai 6 on December 2, the vacant title will be awarded to the winner of Chihiro Sawada vs Anastasia Nikolakakos. Seo Hee Ham has not been booked to fight in more than three years.
PFL Heavyweight Championship, 265 lbs
Vadim Nemkov - 19-2 (1), 0 Defenses
When the PFL announced that it was going to crown a standing Heavyweight champion, they had a raft of interesting options. Oleg Popov, their 2025 tournament champion, had a strong argument. Denis Goltsov, 2024 champion and the only man in almost ten years to beat Popov, could’ve called dibs. Hell, the PFL still technically has Francis Ngannou, the best Heavyweight on the planet, under contract. They, of course, did not choose any of those men. They chose Renan Ferreira, the 2023 tournament champion whose only fight in almost two years was a TKO loss to Ngannou, and Vadim Nemkov, Bellator’s best Light Heavyweight. Nemkov, a Fedor protégé, hadn’t lost since 2016, when he got himself punched out by Jiří Procházka and narrowly edged out by Karl Albrektsson, and it’s a testament to both his skills and the world’s dim view of the Heavyweight division that when the PFL acquired Bellator and Nemkov announced he was leaving 205 for the 265-pound world, instead of the expected fretting about how a 6’1” man would contend in the world of the big boys, more or less everyone said “Yeah, that’s fine.” And lo: It was. Nemkov choked out 2021 PFL champ Bruno Cappelozza, and then he choked out the ever-pained Timothy Johnson, and when he fought Renan Ferreira at PFL Champions Series 4 on December 13, 2025, shockingly, he choked him out, too. Nemkov’s now the only major Heavyweight champion in American MMA outside of the UFC. Hopefully it pays off. On November 14, just 30 days shy of a year after his title victory--and 30 days shy of the PFL ceasing to exist as a brand--Nemkov will make his first title defense against Sergey Bilostenniy.
PFL Light Heavyweight Championship, 205 lbs
Corey Anderson - 20-6 (1), 0 Defenses
One of the best Light Heavyweights in the world isn’t in the UFC, and they have only themselves to blame. Corey Anderson was the precise kind of fighter the UFC wanted when they first got ahold of him in 2014: Big, young, athletic, talented, undefeated. He had all the makings of a future champion, and his victory on The Ultimate Fighter 19 (jesus christ) cemented him as a prospect to watch. Unfortunately, he had also barely been in the sport for a year and only had four professional fights to his name. In short order he’d suffered his first loss, and a couple years later, a pair of back-to-back knockouts in 2017 sent him to the realm of afterthoughts. But a recommitment to his wrestling style, an extremely well-aged victory over Glover Teixeira, and a devastating knockout over Johnny Walker got Anderson back in the title picture, and in 2020, he fought Jan Błachowicz to determine the #1 contender to the soon-to-be-vacated belt. They’d done battle once, five years prior, and Corey had won a clear decision. This time, Jan flattened him in three minutes. Despite his top-ten ranking and the four consecutive fights he’d just won, the UFC decided to dump Corey, sending him from main event to unemployment in a week. Corey went straight to Bellator and proceeded to become one of its best stars, and he would have become the first man in America to beat Vadim Nemkov had they not banged their heads together and ended the fight prematurely. Corey lost the rematch, but he became the last man to hold Bellator’s Light Heavyweight title after beating Karl Moore, and on October 3, Corey had a champion vs champion match against the PFL’s 205-pound tournament champion, Dovletdzhan Yagshimuradov. Corey had pounded him out in Bellator four years prior, and while he didn’t get the stoppage in the present, he did get the win, and in so doing he became the inaugural PFL Light Heavyweight Champion. What that actually means going forward, we’ll have to see.
PFL Middleweight Championship, 185 lbs
Costello van Steenis - 18-3, 1 Defense
For years, the Professional Fighters League has threatened to crown standing champions. Did they carry through any of their major tournament winners? Nope. Did they bring out their holdout Bellator champions? Not exactly! Did they at least make a big hubbub about finally going through with it? Of course not. Instead, just five days before PFL Champions Series 2, their promotional debut in South Africa, they abruptly announced that Bellator champ Johnny Eblen was suddenly the first-ever PFL Middleweight Champion, and his match with Costello van Steenis was the first-ever defense of the title. Costello, himself, was a Bellator veteran who’d been absorbed in the PFL buyout, but he’d always played second fiddle in the organization, unable to get through the John Salters and Douglas Limas of the world, and thus said world was mostly overlooking him as a challenger. The first three rounds of Eblen gradually grinding him into dust bore out that expectation, but then a funny thing happened: The inexhaustible wrestler got tired. Eblen found himself punched up by van Steenis in the fourth round, and he seemed to be pulling it together again in the fifth, but right before the bell could ring van Steenis managed to take his back and sink in a choke, and with just seven seconds separating him from an almost-certain decision victory, Eblen passed out. Costello van Steenis is the first man to truly hold a standing PFL Championship, and he became the second man to defend one after knocking out Fabian Edwards on March 20.
Interim PFL Middleweight Championship
Johnny Eblen - 18-1, 0 Defenses
Yeah, I dunno, man. This is kind of silly. So, as you read above, Johnny Eblen lost an upset last-minute fight against Costello van Steenis in 2025, and it cost him his chance to be the inaugural Middleweight Champion of the PFL. They could have booked an instant rematch, but instead they decided to build the tension by having Costello battle 2025 PFL Tournament Champion Fabian Edwards, and Eblen fight, uh, the unranked UFC cast-off Bryan Battle. Unsurprisingly, both men won their fights with ease. Costello and Johnny were to have their almost-a-year-later rematch on July 18, but two weeks before fight night, van Steenis injured himself training and fell out of the fight. Instead, Eblen met Impa Kasanganay--in what was ALSO a rematch of a 2024 contest that Eblen won--for an interim title. Eblen trounced Impa and knocked him out in the third round, and now he has his own shiny PFL belt and can sit and twiddle his thumbs until Costello’s ready to roll.
PFL Welterweight Championship, 170 lbs
Thad Jean - 12-0, 0 Defenses
One of the least necessary championship snarls in the world has been resolved, but not without one last bit of comedy. Ramazan Kuramagomedov was the PFL’s first Welterweight champion, but he retired in the cage seconds after winning the belt, and there was very little doubt about who they wanted carrying their banner in his stead. Thad Jean is one of the precious few fighters the PFL can legitimately call a home-grown star. He was only 4-0 when they picked him up for their development Challenger Series as a Haitian-American prospect turned regional veteran, and a year and a half later he had four straight PFL preliminary wins, two of them by horrifically violent knockout. They put him in as a dark horse contender in their last-ever tournament in 2025, and in a bracket that included three Bellator champions, one Pancrase champion and multiple title contenders, Thad Jean was the last man standing, having knocked out Russian champion Mukhamed Berkhamov and taken decisions over Jason Jackson and Logan Storley on his way to the throne. On July 25 Thad was supposed to face Shamil Musaev, the man Kuramagomedov beat, for the vacant belt, but Musaev fell out at the last minute and was replaced by Ernesto “Starboy” Rodriguez, a much lower-profile challenger. Which has somewhat clouded the fight, as no one expected anything from Starboy and he damn near killed Thad. The two had a war, with both getting knocked down, both having success on the floor and both almost finishing the other, but ultimately, Thad got the ground-and-pound TKO in the third and with it, the belt. Presumably, he’ll be waiting for Musaev to come back.
PFL Lightweight Championship, 155 lbs
Usman Nurmagomedov - 22-0 (1), 2 Defenses
The Nurmagomedov family is trying to run the sport, and Usman is their B-league beachhead, but that assault has proven to be an awful lot rockier than the rest. As the kid brother of Umar and the cousin of Khabib, Usman had great expectations thrust upon him very early in his career, and he dealt with them the way regional talents with great camps traditionally do: Squashing severely overmatched competition until you get a contract from one of the big companies. Bellator won the Usman bidding war and brought him over in 2021, and he proved to be one of the breakout stars of their final days, blitzing his way up the Lightweight ranks, knocking off several contenders and ultimately beating Patricky Pitbull to win the 155-pound championship and securing his reign by retiring former star and UFC champ Benson Henderson. It was 2023, and even though Bellator’s upcoming death was clear, Usman was a name and widely considered one of the best Lightweights in the world. Unfortunately, then, things got weird. He was a massive, -2200 favorite to beat Brent Primus in the waning days of Bellator, and he did--and it became the first non-win of his career after failing a drug test for something that was never disclosed. He carried Bellator’s title over into its new life as a colony of the PFL, and he immediately ran into controversy after barely scraping a majority decision off of Irish superprospect Paul Hughes. The world wanted a rematch for the inaugural PFL Lightweight Championship fight, and on October 3, at the PFL’s big Dubai show, they got it--and this time, it waws even closer, with media scorecards split right down the middle. This, by itself, is not that unusual, nor is one fighter winning a controversial decision unusual. It is unusual when the decision is not only unanimous, but one judge scores the entire fight as a 50-45 shut-out. So Usman’s last two wins were dubious, and his future as part of the PFL depends on how they treat their own championship, but for now, he is the damn champion. He notched his first title defense by choking out Alfie Davis on February 7, and he scored his second after easily knocking out Archie Colgan on July 31. And now, reportedly, he’s a free agent and will almost definitely be signing with the UFC.
PFL Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs
Razhabali Shaydullaev - 19-0, 0 Defenses
This, admittedly, is a first for these write-ups. We’ve written about vacant champions, double champions and even triple champions, but since we started just a touch too late for Kyoji Horiguchi’s heyday, we’ve never had one person show up as a champion in multiple organizations. Razhabali Shaydullaev was the Featherweight ace of Rizin out in Japan, a wrecking machine with a 100% finishing rate, but in 2026 he very publicly signed up with Ali Abdelaziz, a manager who works hand-in-hand with the UFC, and spoke openly about his intentions of jumping over to America once he finished the last two fights on his Rizin contract. But in the Summer Rizin announced it was once-again co-promoting with the PFL, and its first crossover would be a massive winner-takes-all bout between Shaydullaev, Rizin’s best Featherweight, and A.J. McKee, the PFL’s best Featherweight, with belts for both companies on the line. It was seen as the toughest fight of Shaydullaev’s career, and it was, as it broke his perfect finishing streak, but it did not break his undefeated streak. Shaydullaev outwrestled McKee, took the decision, took home his second world championship, and became the absurdly rare multipromotional champion. Within twenty-four hours, MVP MMA announced they had signed Shaydullaev to a contract and he would be staying on with MVP when it envelops the PFL at the turn of the year. So the UFC lost their shot at Shaydullaev, the MMA world has a new best fighter outside of the big show, and MVP has an internationally notable fighter to launch their product. At this point, it’s just a question of if they’ll let Rizin continue to promote him, too.
PFL Women’s Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs
Cris Cyborg - 30-2 (1), 1 Defense
Are you noticing how all of the inaugural PFL champions are just Bellator’s champions? Funny, that. Cris Cyborg is the greatest Women’s Featherweight of all time, and we all just kind of have to deal with that, because Women’s Featherweight has only barely ever existed. Strikeforce set the standard back in 2006 because Gina Carano was one of their biggest stars, and that star lasted right up until 2009, when they attempted to put a belt on her and failed because Cris Cyborg punched the shit out of her. In the following sixteen years Cyborg’s only lost one mixed martial arts fight, and it took Amanda Nunes, the greatest Women’s mixed martial artist of all time, to do it. Aside from that one loss, she’s run the table. She was the Strikeforce Featherweight Champion until it closed, and then she was Invicta’s Featherweight Champion until they let the UFC have her, and then she was the UFC’s Featherweight Champion until Amanda dropped her, and Cyborg promptly went to Bellator and won their title, too. When the PFL brought her over in the Bellator buyout, they set her up for an interpromotional superfight against Larissa Pacheco, a two-time PFL tournament winner and the only woman who’d ever beaten Kayla Harrison. On one hand, Pacheco’s one of just six women to ever make it to the final bell with Cyborg. On the other, she lost 4-1. In the ultimate act of promotional cowardice, the PFL promoted Cyborg to champion status three days before her appearance at the PFL Champions Series on December 13, 2025, meaning her fight with Sara Collins was, technically, a title defense. It was as one-sided as you’d expect. In theory, this is great! The biggest female fighter outside the UFC has a belt and the PFL is bringing back a division the UFC threw in the garbage. In practice, Cyborg didn’t even get out of her post-fight interview without noting that after her next fight she’s going to retire from MMA in favor of focusing on her boxing career. Unless she changes her mind--again--her swan song will come against UFC cast-off Ketlen Vieira on August 22. UPDATE: She may or may not have retired. She beat Ketlen, but it wasn’t a title defense because Ketlen missed weight really, really badly, and then Cyborg said she’s not retired but doesn’t know when she’ll fight again, which is the kind of limbo Women’s Featherweight has always existed in.
PFL Women’s Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs
Jena Bishop - 12-3, 0 Defenses
This will sound unkind, but the world of mixed martial arts never expected much from Jena Bishop. Generally-speaking, by the time a professional fighter hits their mid-thirties the world is already preparing for the end of their career: Jena made her professional debut just before she turned 36. Generally-speaking, prospects are supposed to start at the lowest levels of the sport: Jena started off in the Legacy Fighting Alliance and was in the PFL before her career was even three years old. When a new prospect arrives, they’re generally expected to reach success on a steady incline! Jena lost her second PFL fight to Taila Santos and got knocked out of the 2024 Flyweight tournament after eventual winner and promotional queenpin Dakota Ditcheva obliterated her. When Liz Carmouche knocked her out again in the 2025 tournament final, most of the audience, self included, gave up in Jena. She was good! Solid, a dangerous grappler, tough as heck. But she had repeatedly smacked into the ceiling and she was about to turn 40 and that’s just not when the sport tends to reward fighters for sticking it out. But she stayed afloat, she picked up two wins in 2026, and opportunity struck. The PFL wanted to put together a Carmouche vs Ditcheva fight for their inaugural 125-pound title, as both their two best and most notable Flyweights, but Dakota busted her hands (for, like, the third or fourth time) beating up Denise Kielholtz in July, so Bishop was given her second crack at Carmouche as the main event of PFL Chicago on October 16, 2026. Carmouche damn near knocked Jena out again in the first round, to the point that a stoppage wouldn’t have been entirely unwarranted, but Bishop survived and staged a comeback on the tired Carmouche for most of the next twenty minutes. It was a close fight, to the point that more of the media scored it a draw than a win, but in the end, Bishop got the unanimous 48-47 decision, the fight, and the title. She’s the first official PFL Women’s Flyweight Champion at 40 and she should be damn proud. What that means, given that the PFL as a brand ceases to exist as of January, we will have to see.