THE PUNCHSPORT REPORT FOR NOVEMBER 2025
Poked eyes, title vs title fights, ONE putting in a rare effort, a whole lot of Apex, and the cold march towards the end of the year.
Welcome to November. The year is beginning to wind down, as are the days of pay-per-view, and we’ve got two UFCs that are real solid on paper and two that are in the Apex and you know what that means. Also, one of the few ONE cards they put real effort into. Eat something nice for togetherness, watch some fights, and settle into the growing void of the cold.
THIS MONTH’S PUNCHSPORTS EVENTS
IS THERE ANY NEWS
JEFFREY RYAN “DUKE” ROUFUS - 2/19/1970-10/17/2025
Duke Roufus, one of MMA’s premier coaches and one of the few American kickboxers to make an impact on the sport, died way too young and far too abruptly in his sleep this month. I was left thinking about the way that, before I ever saw MMA, I saw him in those old, fuzzy kickboxing matches our Bay Area sports affiliate would run at night before they switched to infomercials. He was responsible for world champions, top contenders and the mixed martial arts career of CM Punk, and a whole lot more across a thoroughly prolific career that also included at least one tragic, preventable death.
For once, I’m gonna turn this over to an expert who can do it far better than I can. Luke Thomas had a great, honest and well-balanced bit about remembering Duke Roufus as both a fighter, a coach and a colleague, and it’s well worth listening to. I hope his family is doing okay and I hope one day we get to stop writing about fighters dying young.
WHAT HAPPENED IN OCTOBER
Our month of the macabre began with PFL Champions Series 3: Nurmagomedov vs Hughes 2 on October 3. As with a great number of the PFL’s individual events this was built around Dubai, so the prelims were full of a number of fighters you probably have not heard of save maybe Jarrah Al-Silawi (who won a decision!) and Slim Trabelsi (who got knocked out by Pouya Rahmani!), but folks were there for the main card. Jack Cartwright beat back UFC cast-off Caolán Loughran, Archie Colgan got a solid win over Jay-Jay Wilson and Sergio Pettis scored another in-fucking-credible comeback knockout by way of spinning shit, dropping Magomed Magomedov with a backwards elbow in two rounds. The co-main event crowned the first PFL Light Heavyweight World Champion, as Corey Anderson beasted his way through another day and scored his second career win over Dovletdzhan Yagshimuradov, and in the main event, Usman Nurmagomedov got another controversial decision over Paul Hughes--not because it was unreasonable for him to win, as it was an extremely close fight, but because despite being an extremely close fight one judge scored a completely insane 50-45 shut-out--to reign as the PFL Lightweight Champion.
The 4th brought us ONE Fight Night 36: Prajanchai vs Di Bella 2 and our time here feels as though it is coming to a close. They cut a bunch of MMA fighters, they fired Hamderlei Silva herself, I really wonder if we have another year of ONE MMA in the cards or if they’re finally going to give up pretending and just become a kickboxing organization. In any way, Shozo Isojima knocked out Nicolas Vigna, Sanzhar Zakirov took a decision over Hu Yong, Mansur Malachiev got an upset choke on Jarred Brooks, and Aung La Nsang retired after a kind of shifty-looking fight and knockout over Zebaztian Kadestam. The main event was Jonathan Di Bella unifying ONE’s Strawweight Kickboxing World Championship by beating Prajanchai P.K.Saenchai, and I hope the kickboxing fans in the audience loved it.
Later that day we got the first of two UFC pay-per-views for the month, UFC 320: Ankalaev vs Pereira 2. Down on your early card, Veronica Hardy beat the soon-to-be-released Brogan Walker, Ramiz Brahimaj choked out Austin Vanderford, Farid Basharat got the nod against Chris Gutiérrez in a squeaker, Yana Santos beat a Macy Chiasson who missed the Bantamweight limit, and Punahele Soriano managed to outwrestled Nikolay Veretennikov. On your much more violent regular prelims, Edmen Shahbazyan knocked out André Muniz, Jakub Wikłacz took a decision over a Patchy Mix who still just doesn’t seem to be awake, Daniel Santos knocked out Yoo Joo-sang which is a little less fun when you realize Santos also missed weight by almost an entire class, and Ateba Gautier destroyed regional last-minute replacement Tre’ston Vines in a minute and a half. Up top on the main card, Joe Pyfer overcame a tough first round to submit Abus Magomedov, Youssef Zalal very impressively armbarred Josh Emmett in 98 seconds, and Jiří Procházka won a back-and-forth with Khalil Rountree Jr. and stopped him in the third round. Your co-main event was another Merab Dvalishvili lesson, as he defended his Bantamweight title by taking a wide decision over Cory Sandhagen that also included nearly knocking him out; your main event saw Alex Pereira reclaiming the Light Heavyweight Championship by basically just walking right through Magomed Ankalaev in 80 seconds.
We returned to Rio on the 11th for UFC Fight Night: Oliveira vs Gamrot. Down below, Luan Lacerda tapped out an overweight Saimon Oliveira, Julia Polastri knocked out Karolina Kowalkiewicz, Luchas Rocha took a dominant decision over Stewart Nicoll, Beatriz Mesquita made a successful debut by outgrappling and choking out Irina Alekseeva, Vitor Petrino put in a less-than-stellar first two rounds before knocking out Thomas Petersen in the third, Jafel Filho carved through Clayton Carpenter with a first-round kimura and Michael Aswell knocked out Lucas Almeida, who had a visibly broken hand at the weigh-ins and the fact that he somehow passed medicals is so damning for the sport that I do not know where to start. On your main card, Kaan Ofli notched an upset by choking out Ricardo Ramos, Mário Pinto pounded out Jhonata Diniz and then pretended he didn’t know how to speak English, Joel Álvarez dominated but could not finish Vicente Luque in his Welterweight debut, Deiveson Figueiredo won an unbelievably uneventful matchup with Montel Jackson, and in the main event, Charles Oliveira ragdolled Mateusz Gamrot and became the first man to ever submit him in MMA.
October 18 brought us PFL Africa 3, and it was a little bit of a shitshow. The stream was available through the app, the app was a big mess, a whole bunch of people reported issues watching it, and despite being a big event for this year’s PFL Africa tournament, multiple people missed weight, which probably screws up the brackets, one tournament fight ended in a draw thanks to a point deduction for cage grabs, and the main event ended in a split decision with a 30-27 going the wrong way. So congratulations to Nkosi Ndebele, I guess. We’ll see the next round later this year, maybe.
But the day also brought UFC Fight Night: de Ridder vs Allen, the UFC’s return to Vancouver after two long, painful years away. The show started off with four third-round finishes in five fights, as Melissa Croden knocked out Tainara Lisboa, Yousri Belgaroui knocked out Azamat Bekoev, Stephanie Lucanio strangled Ravena Oliveira and Bruno Silva got the RNC over Park Hyun-sung. (The odd ones out were Djorden Santos for just getting a decision against Danny Barlow.) Aoriqileng broke the streak by dropping Cody Gibson in twenty-one seconds, but Drew Dober brought it back with a third-round knockout over Kyle Prepolec after a pair of groin shots bad enough to cost him a point. Up top, Kyle Nelson got the nod against Matt Frevola, Charles Jourdain dropped and choked out Davey Grant in one round, Manon Fiorot smashed Jasmine Jasudavicius in about a minute, Aiemann Zahabi got a decision over Marlon Vera, and Mike Malott got the decision over Kevin Holland, but only after Holland suffered two groin shots and didn’t get a point deduction over it after the commission told the referee not to, which was very funny. In the main event, Reinier de Ridder recorded a near-10-8 first round against Brendan Allen, then proceeded to get smashed for three straight rounds, prompting his corner to wisely throw in the towel before the fifth round could begin.
We closed out the month with UFC 321: Aspinall vs Gane on the 25th, and it was kind of a clusterfuck. Down on your prelims, Mizuki Inoue put a beating on Jaqueline Amorim en route to an easy decision, Azat Maksum missed weight, got beaten by Mitch Raposo and was then fired, Hamdy Abdelwahab outwrestled Chris Barnett and also got fired, Nathaniel Wood upset Jose Delgado, Valter Walker got his fourth consecutive heel hook over Louie Sutherland, Ľudovít Klein broke his ankle and still gutted out a decision over Mateusz Rębecki, Ikram Aliskerov pitched a shut-out against Jun-yong Park, and Quillan Salkilld scared the shit out of everyone by knocking Nasrat Haqparast unconscious for a disconcerting amount of time with a headkick. The main card got weirder. It started out fine: Azamat Murzakanov dusted Aleksandar Rakić in one round with a jab, and it was really neat. But then Alexander Volkov got thoroughly outwrestled by Jailton Almeida but won a split decision anyway because Almeida steadfastly refused to throw strikes or attempt submissions, and Umar Nurmagomedov got a shut-out over Mario Bautista despite getting knocked down in one round. The co-main event filled the vacant Women’s Strawweight throne, as Mackenzie Dern won a workmanlike (workwomanlike?) decision over Virna Jandiroba, fulfilling the UFC’s years-long marketing desires. And then the main event ruined everything. The long, long-awaited debut of Tom Aspinall: Real Heavyweight Champion ended in a No Contest after Ciryl Gane poked him in the eye, got warned, and then poked him in both eyes simultaneously, so badly that a week after the fight Tom still doesn’t have his sight back. This has spurred rancor, outrage and disappointment from the UFC and its various talking heads--and virtually all of it directed at Tom, as it’s apparently his fault he almost had his eye gouged out and as an honorable champion it was his responsibility to fight for the UFC no matter what. Everything is stupid and we are damned. They’re working on an instant rematch.
WHAT’S COMING IN NOVEMBER
We kick off bright and early on the 1st with UFC Fight Night: Garcia vs Onama. That is correct. We are in the Apex two weeks in a row and one of those two main events is Steve Garcia vs David Onama. Welcome to November, the month that barely matters. You also have Waldo Cortes-Acosta vs Ante Delija, Jeremiah Wells vs Thembra Gorimbo and no less than Donte Johnson vs Sedriques Dumas to look forward to. But hey, there’s a potential Women’s Bantamweight title eliminator between Ketlen Vieira and Norma Dumont! It is currently scheduled midway through the prelims under Sedriques.
On November 3, we go to Japan for Rizin Landmark 12. As a Landmark card it’s the equivalent of Rizin developmental, as they, too, are reloading their guns for the traditional NYE blowout, so unless you are sufficiently buried in mixed martial arts to remember who Won Bin Ki is (hint: he just lost to Roberto de Souza!) a lot of it may not resonate, but there’s still some high-ticket items here. Former champ Vugar Karamov against Koyomi Matsumishima, Sho Patrick Usami against Taisei Sakuraba, and in terms of actual skill, your big fight for the night is Seika Izawa defending Rizin’s Atomweight Championship against former DEEP Champion Saori Oshima. But your main event is Kyohei Hagiwara vs Kyoma Akimoto, because you go where the people are.
We move back to Bangkok on the 8th for ONE Fight Night 37 and as usual, I am quiet. I dunno, man. Lito Adiwang’s gonna fight Mauro Mastromarini? That’s neat? This is as ever built around Muay Thai and Kickboxing, the main event is Roman Kryklia vs Samet Agdeve for the ONE Heavyweight Kickboxing World Championship because 30 world championships just isn’t enough yet, they will not stop until at least half of the roster has an enormous gold belt. I hope the kickboxing is fun for the kickboxing funhavers.
But later that day, it’s back to the Apex for UFC on ESPN: Bonfim vs Brown. Hey, did you like last week’s main event that had two barely-ranked fighters in it? Good news! This time we only have the one. You’ve got a couple Apex bangers here like Ricky Simón vs Raoni Barcelos and Tecia Pennington vs Denise Gomes, and Mayra Bueno Silva is back to try 135 again with Jacqueline Cavalcanti, but you’ve also got Robert Valentin vs Jackson McVey and the UFC deciding they really want that bigot money through Josh Hokit and, once again, your main event is Gabriel Bonfim vs Randy Brown. Even for me, that’s a fucking stretch.
All of which is because they are withholding everything for their last two events of the month. On November 15, it’s your penultimate pay-per-view, UFC 322: Della Maddalena vs Makhachev. The card’s about as stacked as you get these days, with lower-card matchups like Angela Hill vs Fatima Kline, Kyle Daukaus vs Gerald Meerschaert, Erin Blanchfield vs Tracy Cortez, Roman Kopylov vs Gregory Rodrigues and Beneil Dariush vs Benoît Saint Denis, and up top, your PPV lead-ins are Leon Edwards vs Carlos Prates, Bo Nickal vs Rodolfo Vieira, and Sean Brady vs Michael Morales. But the big attractions are a pair of cross-class title matchups. First off, Valentina Shevchenko defends the Women’s Flyweight Championship against Zhang Weili, who abdicated the Strawweight throne to try to join Amanda Nunes as a double champion, and second, in your main event, Jack Della Maddalena tries to record his first title defense against Islam Makhachev, who wants to win the Welterweight belt and set up a cross-cross-class matchup with Ilia Topuria, because everything is sad now.
The 16th takes us back to ONE for ONE 173: Superbon vs Noiri, and this is part of the reason I am so disenchanted with them. In their day to day, they ignore MMA so badly that a score of their top fighters are perpetually desperate to get released from their contracts because they never get booked. But the second ONE puts on one of their increasingly rare numbered shows, as is the case here, at the Ariake Arena in Tokyo? MMA ll over the fucking place. Ryugo Takeuchi vs Shamil Erdogan, Itsuki Hirata vs Ritu Phogat, and three goddamn MMA championship matches, including a cross-class matchup between Flyweight champ Yuya Wakamatsu and Strawweight champ Joshua Pacio, a Lightweight rematch between titleholder Christian Lee and Alibeg Rasulov after an eyepoke ended their last attempt, and a Heavyweight rematch between Oumar “Reug Reug” Kane and Anatoly Malykhin. Your main event, however, is kickboxing, as Superbon Singha Mawynn looks to reunify the Featherweight Kickboxing Championship against Masaaki Noiri, which, as someone who watched Noiri win the 2009 K-1 Koshien, is just wild as hell to see.
And we knock off a week early, as the last event for the month is the 22nd’s UFC Fight Night: Tsarukyan vs Hooker. Despite being a Fight Night this card is a bit better-booked than most, and if you were wondering why, it’s because it’s coming to you live from Qatar, which means they paid the UFC some damn money. The prelims still have some cruft, including Abdul-Rakhman Yakhyaev vs Raffael Cerqueira and Ismail Naurdiev vs Ryan Loder, but for the most part, it’s pretty solid. Felipe Lima vs Daniel Marcos, Alex Perez vs Asu Almabayev, Tagir Ulanbekov vs Kyoji Horiguchi, Bekzat Almakhan vs Aleksandre Topuria, Serghei Spivac vs Shamil Gaziev, Jack Hermansson vs Myktybek Orolbai, Volkan Oezdemir vs Alonzo Menifield and Belal Muhammad vs Ian Machado Garry is a card well worth reciting. Your main event is Arman Tsarukyan vs Dan Hooker, which could be a setup for whoever’s got dibs on a Lightweight title shot, but with rumors of Ilia Topuria vs Paddy Pimblett coming next and the possibility that Islam beats Della Maddalena and we wind up with yet another title vacation, who knows what the Lightweight championship picture looks like anymore.
CURRENT UFC CHAMPIONS
Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs
Tom Aspinall - 15-3 (1), Either 1, 2 or 0 Defenses Depending On How You Look At It
You know, once upon a time, the UFC would’ve killed for a Tom Aspinall. Entire years of UFC events were spent desperately trying to get a Dan Hardy or Darren Till or Jimi Manuwa into championship pictures so they could cash in on UK superstardom. And somehow, Tom Aspinall just fell into their lap. They didn’t go out of their way to softball him, they didn’t put a ton of effort into marketing him, they just let him mulch everyone in his path. In 2025, Tallison Teixeira has a main event in just his second UFC bout: In 2022 Tom Aspinall had to notch five straight stoppages to get his first crack at the top of the card against Curtis Blaydes, and it ended with his knee imploding fifteen seconds into the fight. When he lost that fight, Francis Ngannou was the reigning UFC Heavyweight Champion of the World. By the time Tom returned in the Summer of 2023, it belonged to Jon fucking Jones. Within one fight Aspinall was a top contender again, and with Jon comically scheduled to defend his title against Stipe Miocic, who hadn’t fought in two and a half years, Aspinall was left in a holding pattern--until Jon injured himself in training. With barely two weeks to prepare, Tom Aspinall fought Sergei Pavlovich for an interim championship. Sergei was the most devastating knockout artist in the Heavyweight division: Tom knocked him out in sixty-nine seconds. Not only did it give him gold, it gave him a golden ticket. The sole purpose of an interim champion is to one day reunify the belts, and that meant Tom had a shot at Jon Jones, one of the biggest fighters in the history of the sport. All he had to do was wait. And wait. And wait. Tom waited so fucking long the UFC made him defend his interim title in a rematch with Blaydes--which he won easily, knocking him out in 60 seconds--on July 27, 2024. Four months later, Jon Jones returned and had his fight with Stipe, who by that point had been effectively retired for almost four years. Unsurprisingly, Jon won. Equally unsurprisingly, Jon and the UFC refused to commit to fighting Aspinall. Jones reportedly held the UFC up for a huge payday, and when they shockingly agreed, he changed his mind. In the end, the most obvious pair of conclusions happened: On June 21st, during the press conference after Fight Night Baku, Dana White announced Jon was retiring and Tom was being promoted to Undisputed Champion; an hour later, coincidentally, news broke that Jon was being summoned for arraignment in July on charges of leaving the scene of an accident after drunkenly crashing another car and leaving another heavily-inebriated half-naked woman behind in it and also threatening the police over the phone when they called him. It is the only way the Jon Jones story could possibly have ended. Tom Aspinall was an interim champion for 588 days, and he made his first undisputed one against Ciryl Gane at UFC 321 on October 26--and, because this division is fucking cursed, it ended in a No Contest after Gane poked him in both of his eyes at once. The UFC has decided this is mostly Tom’s fault, which has nothing at all to do with Tom’s dad talking about how he shouldn’t sign a new contract. A rematch has been vowed.
Light Heavyweight Champion, 205 lbs
Alex Pereira - 13-3, 0 Defenses
Marketing has helpfully corrected its error from earlier this year. Two things are indisputable: Alex Pereira has always been one of the UFC’s favored agents, and Alex Pereira is a hell of a fighter. When the UFC brought Pereira in as a 3-1 rookie back in 2021, it was a transparent attempt to fast-track him to title contention based entirely on his storied rivalry with then-white-hot company star Israel Adesanya back when they were both kickboxers. It was blunt, it was obvious, and it totally worked, thanks in no small part to Pereira getting placed in title contention after just three fights, only one of which was against a ranked opponent, and zero of which came against anyone known for their wrestling. It also paid off, as Pereira shocked the world by punching Izzy out in the fifth round. The UFC, seeing gold, booked an instant rematch, and Izzy completed the story by dropping Pereira in the second round. Rather than a rubber match, the rivals buried the hatchet--mostly because Pereira was incredibly sick of the deathly weight cut it took to reach the 185-pound limit. He went up to Light Heavyweight, he was jetpacked into contention there, too, and within two fights he was a two-division champion. Over the entirety of his title reign, there was an extremely clear #1 contender, and it was Magomed Ankalaev, and the UFC moved mountains to keep him away from their meal ticket. That, too, paid off: Pereira’s year-and-a-half-long title reign made him a star. Eventually, unfortunately, they ran out of options and put the two together, and Ankalaev fulfilled the prophecy of MMA still being a sport sometimes by taking home a decision and Pereira’s belt. The UFC, knowing what side of their bread contains butterin light of Pereira’s accomplishments as a champion, signed an immediate rematch. Pereira claimed he was injured beforehand and would make short work of Ankalaev on his second attempt, and, sure enough, on October 4 at UFC 320, he walked right through him, dropping him and pounding him out in just eighty seconds. It arose shortly after that this time Ankalaev was badly injured, but unsurprisingly, neither Pereira nor the UFC have any interest in a rubber match. As it turns out, Pereira doesn’t seem to have much interest in defending the 205-pound title at all. The second he won the belt he went about trying to manifest his next fight: A Heavyweight clash with Jon Jones at the UFC’s White House card in July. In other words: Fuck you, Light Heavyweight division.
Middleweight Champion, 185 lbs
Khamzat Chimaev - 15-0, 0 Defenses
Yeah, this was probably inevitable. When Khamzat Chimaev showed up in the UFC in the middle of the Fight Island pandemic era and wrecked two people in ten days at two different weight classes, the world was prepared to believe he was special. When he ended Gerald Meerschaert with one punch less than two months later, all doubt was cast aside. The fighters, the audience, and the UFC itself were all true believers in the championship future that lay ahead for Khamzat Chimaev. Khamzat, in response, retired from mixed martial arts. As it turns out, fighting in the middle of a COVID pandemic makes it more likely you’re going to get COVID. Who’dve thunk? After a year, some prodding from Dana White and reportedly a lot more personal prodding from Ramzan Kadyrov, the dictator in charge of Khamzat’s native Chechen Republic, Khamzat returned to the sport a year later. His dominance continued unabated, but his schedule never recovered--in fact, it worsened. After a particularly unfortunate 2022 episode involving Khamzat torpedoing his own pay-per-view main event against Nate Diaz after missing weight by almost ten pounds and very nearly cancelling the event altogether, he instead wound up strangling Kevin Holland, taking another year off, moving permanently to Middleweight, and adopting a new schedule whereby he fought only once every twelve months, and every time he appeared, something bizarre would happen. In the first episode of New Khamzat he showed up in 2023 for what was supposed to be a long-awaited showdown with Paulo Costa, but Costa, as he is wont to do, pulled out and resulted in Welterweight champion Kamaru Usman stepping in with just days to prepare. Even weirder: He gave Khamzat the closest fight he’d ever had. One judge scored the fight a damn draw. Khamzat’s struggle with a career Welterweight gave a lot of folks pause when, one year later, he returned to face Middleweight kingpin Robert Whittaker. Rob was universally respected as one of the best 185-pound fighters in UFC history, and while he’d lost, he’d lost only to the best and never easily. Khamzat steamrolled him in three and a half minutes. He face-cranked him so hard it snapped a previous palate injury and left Rob’s bottom teeth floating in his mouth. By the time Khamzat came back in 2025 for his long-awaited shot at the belt, Dricus du Plessis had etched his spot in the record books as one of just five men to ever defend the Middleweight championship multiple times. He’d beaten everyone the UFC put in front of him, and he was still a betting underdog. The conventional wisdom was Khamzat would choke Dricus out in the first two rounds or Dricus would drag him through a difficult back half of the bout. As it turned out: Everyone was wrong. Khamzat did hand out one of the most one-sided championship victories in UFC history, but rather than destroying Dricus, he just outwrestled him for five straight rounds. He didn’t engage on the feet, he didn’t land much in the way of heavy ground-and-pound, and he isn’t even credited with a single submission attempt. Khamzat landed 529 strikes and only 37 of them were considered significant. But Khamzat won, unquestionably and easily, and now he has the belt everyone long assumed he’d get. We can only hope he defends it more than once a year.
Welterweight Champion, 170 lbs
Jack Della Maddalena - 18-2, 0 Defenses
Three years ago I wrote that the UFC would throw hundreds of fighters into the meat grinder of the Contender Series if it meant finding one Jack Della Maddalena, and three years later, he has justified their efforts. Jack was picked up as a striking-heavy, wrestling-allergic Australian boxing machine who dropped the first two fights of his career and never sniffed a loss again, and contrary to what I write about most UFC marketing darlings, they did not give him an easy path. He was fighting seasoned veterans and tough competitors two fights into his tenure with the company, and more impressively, he was stopping all of them. Ramazan Emeev, Danny Roberts, Randy Brown, he clocked all of them in a single round. And then he almost got wrestled to death by a regional replacement named Bassil Hafez and barely got to a split decision with Kevin Holland, and even in victory, the wheels seemed to be coming off the hype train. By the time Jack got to his top ten fight with Gilbert Burns in 2024 people were far less certain about his championship prospects, and for most of the fight they were right. With less than a minute and a half left in the fight, Jack was being outgrappled and outworked and was en route to having his winning streak snapped by a decision. And then he swept Gilbert, kneed him in the head and knocked him out. He wasn’t supposed to get a shot at the title--he was booked in against former champ Leon Edwards. But Shavkat Rakhmonov got injured, and cards got shuffled, and suddenly, Jack Della Maddalena had a shot at Belal Muhammad. The conventional wisdom saw it was nearly inevitable that Belal would grind him into dirt, given all of Jack’s historical problems with wrestling and Belal having the market cornered on the strategy. But the planets aligned for the UFC. Jack busted his ass improving his takedown defense, and Belal fell in love with his hands and didn’t pressure him the way he was intending to, and at the end of five rounds, Jack took a unanimous decision, knocked off the company’s least favorite champion, and added another world championship to the arguments people inevitably make for why the Contender Series is actually good. In yet another case of good fortune, Jack has also managed to inherit a superfight. Lightweight champion Islam Makhachev had long discussed his plans of challenging for the Welterweight title, but he did not want to fight Belal given their past as training partners and friends. The UFC openly announced that Belal/Jack would determine the fate of two belts--if Belal won, Islam would have stayed at 155 and defended the gate against Ilia Topuria. Instead, Islam left the Lightweight division and will be facing Jack in a champion vs ex-champion bout later this year. If Jack loses, he is a footnote in the Islam Makhachev story and his win will be completely overshadowed; if he wins, he slew one of the sport’s pound-for-pound greats and he reinforces that weight classes exist for a reason. We’ll find out at UFC 322 on November 15.
Lightweight Champion, 155 lbs
Ilia Topuria - 17-0, 0 Defenses
One of the most exciting things about following mixed martial arts is picking which prospects you really, truly believe in. There are hundreds of fighters across history that you will enjoy watching, and you may have some hopes for their future, but you don’t necessarily expect the world from them. When Ilia Topuria showed up in the UFC in 2020, if you were paying attention, you knew he was going to be special. The combination of wrestling, grappling and absolutely murderous striking was almost immediately visible, but what really set him apart was the unshakable confidence with which he used it. Even when he went up to 155 pounds on short notice and almost got knocked out by Jai Herbert he survived the onslaught, recovered, came right back at him as though he was utterly unfazed and destroyed Herbert seconds later. That was the truly exceptional danger of Ilia Topuria: His belief in his technique was so absurdly complete that it came across as absurdly silly arrogance and it made huge swaths of the audience disdain him and then he’d somehow always find a way to just go do the damn thing anyway. He outgrappled Ryan Hall. He submitted Bryce Mitchell. He beat Josh Emmett so badly he got a 50-42 scorecard out of it. And on February 17, 2024, he ended Alexander Volkanovski’s historic, nearly-four-year reign as the king of Featherweight by knocking him out in two rounds. When Ilia followed that up by saying he was going to become the first man to ever knock out Max Holloway--a thing Volkanovski, Dustin Poirier, José Aldo and Conor McGregor failed to do--even with his title victory, the audience was still particularly skeptical. He did it anyway. Once again, Ilia walked into a fight with supreme confidence, and once again, it ended with his opponent on the floor, this time in three rounds. Ilia Topuria had knocked out the two greatest Featherweights of the generation and seemed poised for a longer title reign than either of them. And then he quit the division. One of those first overconfident boasts of his had been the desire to move up to Lightweight and knock out Islam Makhachev to become a double champion. The MMA world thought he was talking about a far-away future, but he wanted it and he wanted it now. Unfortunately, so did Islam. Right as Ilia vacated the Featherweight title to move up to Lightweight, Islam vacated the Lightweight title to move up to Welterweight. So Ilia was left to fight for his destiny against Charles Oliveira instead. Oliveira’s always been incredibly tough and dangerous, and he hadn’t been knocked out in almost eight years, and even then it wasn’t unconsciousness but rather because a Paul Felder elbow had broken part of his face. That streak ended on June 28, 2025 when Ilia Topuria punched him limp in two and a half minutes. The UFC may not do double-champions anymore out of sheer promotional frustration, but in any rational sense, Ilia is the king of Featherweight and Lightweight, which gives him a horde of contenders like Arman Tsarukyan, Justin Gaethje, Dan Hooker and Mateusz Gamrot. So he appears to be fighting Paddy Pimblett next. If you ask Ilia, he’s just killing time until Islam wins the Welterweight title, because his destiny is to take his 5’7” frame all the way up to Welterweight so he can kill the king and be the first ever three-division champion in UFC history. Does it sound aggressively silly and arrogant? Of course it does. Do you feel comfortable ruling it out? Then you haven’t been paying attention.
Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs
Alexander Volkanovski - 27-4, 0 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 be Movsar Evloev, but the UFC has booked 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 isn’t done yet, so Noche UFC 3 has been moved to the most Mexican of places, Las Vegas, in October. And Alex’s manager says he has an eye injury that needs time to heal. Welcome back to the slow lane, Featherweight.
Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs
Merab Dvalishvili - 20-4, 2 Defenses
2024 was the year of belated championship justice, and for Merab Dvalishvili, justice has been hard to find. Merab spent his childhood training to wrestle, grapple and fight in his native Georgia, but as a devout fan of mixed martial arts he knew he needed to sacrifice his homeland to secure a future in the sport. More than Georgia, he needed Matt Serra and Ray Longo yelling at him in New York English. Merab’s MMA career officially began with a 1-2 record in 2014, and there’s an argument to be made that said rookie year is the last time he legitimately lost a fight. By 2017 he was already heralded as an unsigned prospect, and then he made, and lost, his UFC debut--but it was a split decision to Frankie Saenz, and, unsurprisingly, almost all the media scorecards had it in Merab’s favor. One fight later he met Ricky Simón, and this time he clearly won a decision--but he had been stuck in a guillotine choke at the end of the fight, and in one of the most batshit endings to a fight I have ever seen, the referee ruled that he was retroactively unconscious after the fight had already ended. Merab had made it to the big show, and Merab was 0-2, and Merab was, to most of the world, already an afterthought. So he started wrestling as hard as he fucking could. Between 2018 and the midpoint of 2024 Merab ran up an astonishing ten-fight winning streak in one of the most talent-rich divisions in the sport. He made himself undeniable as one of the best in the world, and in 2022 he retired one of the greatest in all time, José Aldo, and made himself undeniable as a top contender. There was a problem: He didn’t want the contendership. Aljamain Sterling was his good friend, best training partner, and the reigning champion, and Merab had no interest in fighting him, and that made the UFC furious. So when Aljo lost the title in 2023, the UFC denied Merab the shot he had clearly earned and handed it off to Marlon Vera instead. Merab kept winning, and the UFC kept trying to put space between his contendership and promotional favorite Sean O’Malley, but the road ran out on September 14, 2024, when Merab wrestled O’Malley into dust in front of the very tired audience of the Sphere. He’s the champion, he has avenged his best friend, on January 18, he became cemented his legacy with a defense. After months of angry back-and-forths about preferential treatment from management, the undefeated Umar Nurmagomedov got the shot and Merab was a +300 underdog as a champion. By the end of the fight he was literally pointing and laughing at Umar as he cruised to a decision. Not only is Merab now a defending champion, he’s in the odd position of having beaten all of his top contenders. But with Cory Sandhagen facing Deiveson Figueiredo, the UFC getting its way was officially inevitable. With a total record of 0 fights since losing their first match, Sean O’Malley somehow still got a second crack at Merab at UFC 316 on June 7, and despite the UFC’s hopes it went even worse for him: After a competitive first two rounds, Merab hulked up and destroyed him in the third, savaging him on the ground for four minutes before choking him out. The Sean O’Malley era is officially over, and after the fight Merab called out Cory Sandhagen for his own long-deserved shot at the belt, which finally happened at UFC 320 on October 4. Cory was game for the first round and a half, but Merab almost knocked him out in the second and never slowed down, ultimately winning another drowning decision. Merab’s tied Aljo’s Bantamweight title defense record, and because he’s a crazy person, he immediately called out and was granted another title defense against Petr Yan at UFC 323 on December 6, the final UFC pay-per-view. If Merab wins, he becomes not just the numerically greatest Bantamweight champion in UFC history, but records almost inarguably the greatest championship year in the sport.
Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs
Alexandre Pantoja - 30-5, 4 Defenses
Sometimes, you just have everyone’s number. Brandon Moreno spent years fighting through a quadrilogy with Deiveson Figueiredo, and unfortunately for him, he had another trilogy waiting for him the second it was over. Alexandre “The Cannibal” Pantoja was Moreno’s personal bogeyman, a man who’d fought and beaten him twice. But one of those fights was an exhibition on The Ultimate Fighter, and the other was against a Moreno with five less years of evolution and growth. Surely, a third fight in 2023 would be different. And it was--unlike the previous, one-sided dominations it was a fight-of-the-year candidate that took both men to their limit and led to a split decision--but its ending was not. Alexander Pantoja scored a third victory over Moreno, and with it, after sixteen years of competition, he finally became the clear, unequivocal best in the god damned world. Which was made even more poignant when he used his post-fight interview to ask if his absentee father was proud of him--and was made even more irritating when he also revealed that despite having eleven fights in the UFC at the time, he was paid so little that he’d been part-timing as a Doordash driver just to make ends meet right up until 2022. The idea that one of the absolute best fighters on the planet, after years and nearly a dozen fights in the world’s biggest, most profitable fighting organization, would need to take on a gig-economy job to make money is outright offensive, and in a better world, it would have launched a furor. In this one, all we can do is be happy he’s got the belt and will, hopefully, make some actual fucking money. His first title defense came against Brandon “Raw Dawg” Royval as the co-main event to UFC 296 on December 16th, and it was a wild affair with a couple scary moments, but Pantoja emerged victorious and notched the first successful defense of the title in three years. His next contender is, in all likelihood, the winner of the Brandon Moreno/Amir Albazi fight this February--or it would have been, until Albazi got injured. The UFC promoted a Moreno/Royval 2 showdown in hopes of scoring a Moreno rematch, but Royval won, so the UFC decided to forget the whole goddamn thing and book Pantoja against the #10-ranked Steve Erceg on May 4. It was a spirited fight, but Pantoja’s experience ultimately got him the decision. On December 7 we got the rare cross-promotional treatment, as the UFC got Rizin champion Kai Asakura to sign up for an immediate title shot; Pantoja strangled him in two rounds and called out Demetrious Johnson. Instead he got a TUF24 rematch against Kai Kara-France at UFC 317 on June 28, and this time, he choked Kai out in the third round. Joshua Van will be next, as the fast-rising contender leaps to a shot at Pantoja at UFC 323 on December 6.
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.
Women’s Flyweight, 125 lbs
Valentina Shevchenko - 25-4-1, 1 Defense
After almost two years of suffering, we have gone back to the start. At the end of 2022 Valentina Shevchenko was so thoroughly ensconced as The Greatest Women’s Flyweight that a sizable segment of the fanbase had built an honest-to-god antipathy for her over it. Sure, she won, all the time, and sure, her only losses in almost a decade and a half came to the greatest of all time in Amanda Nunes, and sure, Shevchenko arguably won their second fight, but familiarity breeds contempt, and after watching the purported greatest struggle with a split decision to Taila Santos that could easily have gone the other way, too, a big chunk of the mixed martial world was ready to move on from Val. And then, unexpectedly, it did. Valentina was a -900 favorite when Alexa Grasso shocked the world, choked her out, and took her title away on March 4, 2023. An instant rematch was obligatory, given Val’s long history on top, so half a year later they ran it back at Noche UFC in 2023, and, awkwardly, it ended in a draw. If the rematch had been obligatory, the threematch was mandatory, but a hand injury on Val’s part and the UFC’s desire to put an entire season of The Ultimate Fighter behind their promotion meant a full twelve months passed before they got back in the cage. That’s a long goddamn time, and it left a lot of air, and that air was filled by doubt. Alexa won the first fight, after all--but she was on her way to losing a decision before Valentina made a costly mistake, threw one of her trademark nowhere-close-to-landing spinning back kicks, and got immediately jumped on and choked out for her troubles. Alexa didn’t lose the second fight--but based on the scorecards, she should have, and would have, were it not for one judge handing her a completely indefensible 10-8 in the final round. When the third fight came on September 14, 2024, it was seen as Alexa’s chance to cement her legacy: Either she was the superior fighter and the herald of a new generation for Women’s Flyweight, or the whole thing was just a weird episode. Unfortunately for Alexa, it was the latter. Valentina dominated her. She outstruck her and outwrestled her with almost comical ease, the fight was a complete shutout, and despite their series being now tied at 1-1-1, no one has any doubts about the winner, nor any desire to see them fight again. Once again, much to the internet’s chagrin, Valentina Shevchenko is a champion. And--only two years late--she defended her title against Manon Fiorot at UFC 315. It was close, it was contentious, and it was also a fight the audience does not want to see again. Her next fight, as it turns out, is a long-awaited champion vs champion affair against Zhang Weili at UFC 322 on November 15.
Women’s Strawweight, 115 lbs
Mackenzie Dern - 16-5, 0 Defenses
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. If Zhang Weili fails to beat Valentina Shevchenko, it’s very likely the UFC will try to pressure her back down to 115 for a money match with Mackenzie, in which case Dern would almost certainly be a big underdog in her own first defense. If not, at this point, it’s either a rematch with Yan Xiaonan, a grappling match with Tatiana Suarez, or the UFC stops pretending entirely and has Mackenzie beat Contender Series women until she turns a profit.
Rizin Lightweight Champion, 156 lbs
Roberto de Souza - 20-3, 5 Defenses
Roberto “Satoshi” de Souza is trying to become the new Gegard Mousasi. On April 17 he had the chance to avenge the only loss of his career, a half-knockout half-injury against “Hollywood” Johnny Case back in 2019, and he succeeded in emphatic fashion, climbing Case’s back, locking him in an inverted triangle choke and eventually forcing an armbar. He’s now 14-1 and inarguably one of the best lightweights outside of the UFC, but unlike most of the other fighters to bear that title, he has made it clear he has no interest in changing that. Where the A.J. McKees and Michael Chandlers of the world want to test free agency and notoriety, Roberto de Souza is happy in Japan, both because his Rizin pay is fairly lucrative and his entire family jiu-jitsu business is based in the country. This is admirable, but it’s also a little unfortunate: Rizin really only has around a dozen lightweights under contract, and “Satoshi” has already beaten a third of them. It was thus of particular interest when the main event for the New Year’s Eve Bellator x Rizin card was announced as Roberto de Souza vs AJ McKee--a test of where Souza ranks with the rest of the world’s competition. Unfortunately for him and Rizin, the answer was “under them.” He positionally threatened McKee and was able to land some solid strikes in the final round, but was otherwise controlled and lost a decision. On May 6th, Satoshi beat Spike Carlyle in a fantastic fight--but it was a non-title fight, because Japanese promoters are still real scared of their own belts. Satoshi fought Patricky Pitbull at Bellator x Rizin 2 on July 29th--in another non-title fight, naturally--and took the first definitive beating of his career, getting utterly outclassed and ultimately stopped on leg kicks in three rounds. He fought Keita Nakamura at Rizin Landmark 9 on March 23 and put in one of the best performances of his career, battering K-Taro to a TKO in just 1:43--but because this is Japanese MMA it was, of course, a non-title fight, so it doesn’t count as a title defense. His next title defense--his first in two and a half years--came against Luiz Gustavo at Rizin 48 on September 29, and it saw him drop Gustavo in fifteen seconds and pound him out to a maybe slightly premature TKO. He notched another win at Rizin Decade on New Year’s Eve after putting the former 145-pound champion out with a triangle choke in the first round. He faced Ki Won-Bin on May 31 and destroyed him in less than a minute, but it was, once again, a non-title fight. He finally went for his fifth title defense against Yoshinori Horie at Rizin 51 on September 28, and he choked Horie out--while standing--in the first round.
Rizin Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs
Razhabali Shaydullaev - 16-0, 1 Defense
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.
Naoki Inoue - 22-4, 2 Defenses
Rizin is one step closer to an all-Japanese championship roster. Naoki Inoue’s route to championship gold has been oddly circuitous, and as is so often the case, a big part of that comes down to UFC management. In mid-2017, Naoki was one of Japan’s star rookies, an undefeated 10-0 mixed martial artist and an amateur kickboxing champion despite being just 20 years old by a matter of days. The UFC signed him and had him debut on 2017’s Asian-focused Singapore card, where he beat Carls John de Tomas despite Tomas missing weight by half a weight class, and in response to his efforts, the UFC iced him out for an entire year. They brought him back 53 weeks later--once again, for a Singapore card--and this time he lost a close coinflip of a split decision to future top ten Flyweight Matt Schnell. In response to his 1-1 record, the UFC immediately released Inoue. A year later Inoue was in Rizin and immediately became one of their best Bantamweights, but try as he might, he couldn’t quite get to the top. In 2021 he was eliminated from the semifinal round of the Bantamweight Grand Prix by eventual champion Hiromasa Ougikubo; in 2023, he fell to Juan Archuleta, who would become Rizin’s Bantamweight champion one fight later. But Archuleta missed weight and Kai Asakura won the belt, and six months later Asakura promptly vacated the title to sign with the UFC, leaving Rizin struggling to fill the void. They ultimately settled on a bout between Inoue and top contender Soo Chul Kim for Rizin 48 on September 29. It was not an upset that Inoue won; he, too, was very well-regarded. It was an upset that Inoue, who had scored only one knockout in twenty-three fights, punched out Kim, who had never been stopped by strikes after fourteen years of competition. Naoki’s finally got his gold: Now we see how long he can keep it. He notched his first defense at Rizin 50 after beating Yuki Motoya--and became the first man to ever defend the Rizin Bantamweight Championship in the process. He notched a second one by beating Ryuya Fukuda at Super Rizin 4 on July 27.
Rizin Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs
VACANT - The recurring nightmare of unbeing
Rizin just can’t really catch a break with the Flyweights. Kyoji Horiguchi was one of Rizin’s biggest signings, as one of the best Flyweights in the world, but Rizin didn’t have a Flyweight division so he fought at Bantamweight. This was successful, as was his winning the Bellator Bantamweight Championship during their co-promotion, but back-to-back losses made Kyoji long for Flyweight again. So Bellator and Rizin agreed to co-promote a Flyweight division, and Kyoji met Makoto Shinryu in a Rizin match for the Bellator Flyweight Championship, and it ended in twenty-five seconds with an eyepoke, and by the time the fight was rebooked for the New Year’s Eve special, Bellator had been sold to PFL and its future was clearly in question, so Rizin proceeded with minting their own belt. Horiguchi won it on December 31, 2023, and he didn’t defend it again until exactly one year later on December 31, 2024, and on March 28, 2025, Horiguchi’s long-rumored re-signing with the UFC leaked when he was added to their testing pool and it was officially confirmed by the man himself at Rizin 50. That’s two top champions the UFC has signed away from Rizin in a single year, and that’s one more vacant belt for Rizin to fill--they’re going to run a Flyweight Grand Prix, because you never miss an opportunity for a tournament.
Rizin Women’s Super Atomweight Championship, 108 lbs
Seika Izawa - 16-0, 1 Defense
All hail the new queen. After years of reigning as Japan’s best atomweight, the legendary Ayaka Hamasaki fell not once but twice to the rookie Seika Izawa. A 24 year-old who was pushed into judo as a child by a frustrated mother who was tired of her constant fighting with her brothers, Izawa discovered a love for grappling that led her to win junior championships in judo, wrestling and sumo alike. She would still be pursuing judo had the pandemic not shut down much of its competitive scene, but fortunately, mixed martial arts is a terrible sport run by monsters who don’t care about things like deadly diseases, which made it a tempting professional prospect. Four months after her formal MMA training began Izawa was winning fights in DEEP, less than a year after that she was DEEP’s strawweight champion, and one year later she was dominating one of the best women’s fighters in history on Rizin’s New Year’s Eve special. As Japanese organizations tend to do, frustratingly, the fight was a non-title affair, meaning Izawa had to come back and do it again on April 17. After a scary moment where Hamasaki almost stole an armbar, Izawa resumed her wrestling domination and formally took Rizin’s atomweight championship. As entirely fresh blood, the world of Rizin’s talent is open to her--but that also means she’s got a real, real big target on her back. Rizin’s Superatomweight Grand Prix was both a big coming-out party for Izawa and a series of opportunities to look shockingly mortal: She had a fair bit of trouble with Anastasiya Svetkivska in the semifinals before ultimately submitting her, but her berth in the finals against former rival Si Woo Park proved the toughest fight of her career, ending in a split decision victory she easily could have lost. Seika was supposed to face Miyuu Yamamoto at Rizin 42, but after Yamamoto had to pull out with an injury, Izawa was instead scheduled to face...the last person Yamamoto beat, the 5-3 Suwanan Boonsorn, at DEEP Jewels 41 on July 28. Izawa choked her out, shockingly. It took more than an entire year, but Izawa finally had a title defense against the 8-4 grappler Claire Lopez, and Izawa scored the fastest championship victory in Rizin history, choking her out in just barely one minute. Seika scored one more win on New Year’s Eve, choking out Miyuu Yamamoto in her retirement bout, and while it was an honor, it does sort of emphasize the problem with Seika’s position. She’s unquestionably the best Atomweight in the world, but the last real top fighter she faced was more than a year ago. Will Rizin bring her real competition, or are they trying to simply build a star? And what IS real competition at Atomweight? She choked out Si Yoon Park at DEEP JEWELS 44 to add yet another win and belt to her credit, but the Rizin title wasn’t on the line, so she’s still only got the one defense. She was booked for Rizin 48 on September 29th, and once again instead of a top contender it was Kanna Asakura, and once again, it was a non-title match. Three months later, Rizin booked her for their New Year’s Eve supershow--against Lucia Apdelgarim, a 2-3 kickboxer who’d never beaten an MMA fighter with a single win. Seika submitted her easily and requested international competition, and in their eternal mockery of me, Rizin instead booked her to defend her title against the 3-0 Yu-jin Shin, who fights a weight class and a half up. Shockingly Shin did not make the Atomweight limit, so when Seika beat her easily it was a non-title affair. She’ll have her first actual title defense in two years on November 2, when she faces DEEP’s Saori Oshima.
ONE Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs
Oumar Kane - 7-1, 0 Defenses
The triple championship days are over, and we can go back to appreciating ONE’s Heavyweight division for just how silly it really is. Oumar Kane’s origins are very serious: He grew up near Dakar, the capital of Senegal, and established himself as an undefeated star of Laamb, better known as Senegalese wrestling, a particularly harsh form of the sport that takes place on sand or turf and is fought in tiny shorts. As a giant 6’4” muscle monster with a wrestling background, Kane was an internationally visible talent, and ONE picked him up just one fight into his MMA career and promoted him as an undefeated monster of African wrestling. And it was true! For two fights. In his third bout with ONE, “Reug Reug” lost his undefeated streak in 2021 after gassing just two rounds in against Kirill Grishenko, but the actual ending of the fight was a bizarre sequence involving Grishenko throwing a punch right at the bell that appeared to graze Kane’s chin, only for Oumar to motion that he had been illegally punched in the throat after the bell and collapse onto the mat. After replays showed the punch barely connecting, the fight was ruled a TKO, and Oumar was accused of pulling a soccer dive. He spent three years building a three-fight winning streak--including a kickboxing match with “Boucher Ketchup” Mamadou Kamara, who is not a fighter but an influencer, and who fought exactly the way that sounds--and eventually that led him to a November 9, 2024 showdown with triple champ Anatoly Malykhin. The resulting fight was, to be gentle, pretty dreadful. Malykhin didn’t know how to get in on Kane, Kane repeatedly backed himself into a corner to focus on countering, and outside of the first round and a bit of the fifth, very little actually happened. But a takedown in the first round, a yellow card on Malykhin’s part for grabbing the ropes and a flash knockdown in the fifth were enough for Kane to win the title by split decision. “Reug Reug” is the champion. Unfortunately, he’s the champion of a division with all of five other people in it and he’s already fought four of them. ONE is trying to position Marcus “Buchecha” Almeida as the top contender, but given that Kane beat him to get his title shot in the first place--and, uh, Buchecha left the company after the fight--and they don’t have any other fucking Heavyweights except, like, Kirill Grishenko--unsurprisingly, ONE decided to just book a rematch an entire year later. Kane vs Malykhin 2 is scheduled for ONE 173 on November 16.
Anatoly Malykhin - 14-1, 0 Defenses
ONE Middleweight Champion, 205 lbs
Anatoly Malykhin - 14-1, 0 Defenses
For the second time in as many title reigns, ONE has managed to put a ton of hype behind a champion only to squash them prematurely. Anatoly Malykhin is one of the most successful marketing campaigns ONE ever ran: An undefeated, heavy-punching Russian Heavyweight with a 100% finishing rate. He knocked out everyone he faced, he carried ONE’s Heavyweight division as an interim champion while standing champion Arjan Bhullar was having contract issues, and when Bhullar finally re-entered the fold, Malykhin destroyed him with ease. But ONE had greater hopes for Malykhin as their spearhead for real international notoriety: They would make him the first three-division champion in the history of mixed martial arts. And it’d be real easy, because the other two belts were held by one guy. Reinier de Ridder had been their superstar double-champion, but his relationship with ONE had soured, and they cashed in by having de Ridder face Malykhin, twice, at both his weight classes. Malykhin destroyed him and became the first-ever 265, 225 and 205-pound champion the sport has ever seen--admittedly easier when you consider 225 is not a division that exists in almost any other federation on Earth. But he did it! And then they organized his first-ever title defense by having him put the Heavyweight belt on the line against Oumar “Reug Reug” Kane, and he lost a split decision, and now he is a lowly two-belt schmuck. It’ll be interesting to see what they do with Malykhin now, given that the last 205-pound fight ONE promoted was Malykhin’s bout against de Ridder, and the last 225-pound fight ONE promoted was Malykhin’s 2022 bout with de Ridder. He’ll try to get the Heavyweight title back at ONE 173 on November 16.
ONE Welterweight Champion, 185 lbs
Christian Lee - 17-4 (1), 0 Defenses
ONE Lightweight Champion, 170 lbs
Christian Lee - 17-4 (1), 0 Defenses
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--and it ended in a No Contest after two rounds thanks to Christian unintentionally gouging Rasulov’s eye. Whoops.
ONE Featherweight Champion, 155 lbs
Tang Kai - 19-4, 1 Defense
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 Bantamweight Champion, 145 lbs
Fabricio Andrade - 10-2 (1), 1 Defense
The second time was the charm. When Fabricio “Wonder Boy” Andrade joined ONE Championship back in 2020 he was a virtual unknown in the mixed martial arts world, a 20-3 kickboxer but only a 3-2 mixed martial artist who’d been fighting out in the regional circuit of China. His association with Tiger Muay Thai put him on ONE’s radar, and his visible striking skills despite being just 21 at the time made him interesting enough for a developmental contract. Said contract proceeded to develop into Andrade going on a five-fight winning streak that only got more dominant as he met tougher competition, and three straight first-round knockouts punched his ticket to the championship picture. His first appearance in the spotlight, unfortunately, went a touch awry. First, bantamweight champion John Lineker lost his title on the scale after missing weight, meaning only Andrade was eligible to become champion, and he was well on his way to doing so before hitting Lineker with an errant strike to the groin so hard it shattered his cup, and with the fight not yet halfway complete, it had to be rendered a No Contest. It took four months to get to the rematch, and it was much more closely contested, but after four rounds Lineker threw in the towel, his face having been punched too swollen to continue. Fabricio Andrade is 25 and a world goddamn champion. He promptly skipped away from MMA completely and faced Jonathan Haggerty for ONE’s Featherweight Kickboxing Championship on November 3rd, where he was immediately destroyed. At the end of January, 23 months after winning the title, Fabricio had his first defense against Kwon Won-Il, who he knocked out in 2022. At the time, it took him 62 seconds. This time it took 42. Thanks, ONE.
ONE Flyweight Champion, 135 lbs
Yuya Wakamatsu - 19-6, 0 Defenses
After two years of solitude, ONE’s Flyweight title has a home again, and it is to one of the men most denied it. Yuya Wakamatsu was a Pancrase standout in Japan for years before the rest of the world knew his name, but even there, he couldn’t get over the hump, winning their Flyweight Neo-Blood Tournament in 2016 only to get knocked out by standing champion Senzo Ikeda when he challenged for the title itself. But ONE’s aggressive expansion in the late 2010s brought in a lot of Japanese talent, including both Wakamatsu and Ikeda, and fittingly, both lost their first two fights and were promptly forgotten by most of the audience. But where his nemesis retired in fairly short order, Wakamatsu kept grinding and ultimately built up a five-fight winning streak, which was more than enough to justify a shot at then-champion Adriano Moraes--which he lost. And then he missed weight and got knocked out. And then he won, but missed weight again. ONE was decidedly unhappy with him, but he got his weight cut under control and returned to his winning ways, and when Demetrious Johnson retired and abdicated the belt, ONE needed an answer. On March 23, 2025, Wakamatsu and Moraes had a rematch three years in the making, and this time, Wakamatsu made it count by pounding Moraes out in a single round. After a decade in the sport and three at-bats, Yuya Wakamatsu finally has his championship belt. His first defense? A champion vs champion match against Joshua Pacio at ONE 173 on November 16.
ONE Strawweight Champion, 125 lbs
Joshua Pacio - 23-4, 1 Defense
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 will, of course, challenge for the 135-pound title next. Pacio vs Wakamatsu happens at ONE 173 on November 16 so we have even less MMA to worry about booking.
ONE Women’s Strawweight Champion, 125 lbs
Xiong Jing Nan - 19-2, 7 Defenses
Xiong Jing Nan dreamed of lifting weights. She’d enjoyed sports as a child, and when China started its national push for Olympic supremacy she began training heavily in hope of joining the national weightlifting team. But then she met aspirants for its boxing team and fell in love with the idea of living out a martial arts movie and getting to hit people for fun and profit and she never looked back. She turned pro in 2014 and immediately became a standout, going 9-1 in China’s Kunlun Fight promotion with wins across three separate weight classes. What made her truly dangerous wasn’t one-punch power, but the ability to break her opponents with constant pressure striking, scoring TKOs with combinations stretched out across dozens of consecutive, unending strikes. The story was no different when she moved to ONE in 2017, and she was strawweight champion within two fights. ONE’s women’s MMA divisions have been its most stable, each having had exactly one champion, and they were so dominant that they inevitably had to fight each other--and, hilariously, traded wins back and forth in the process. 115 lbs champion Angela Lee went up to 125 to challenge for Xiong Jing Nan’s belt but Nan stopped her with body kicks in the fifth round, and half a year later Nan dropped down to 115 to challenge for Lee’s belt only for Lee to choke her out with twelve seconds left in the fight. Xiong has notched three successful title defenses since, which set her up for her greatest challenger yet: Angela Lee, again, apparently. Despite ONE’s best attempts, Xiong successfully defended her title against Lee again, nearly finishing her in the first round and ultimately winning a decision. An entire 364 days later, she had her next fight: A special rules match, with MMA gloves but only punches and no takedowns or clinching allowed, against Muay Thai champion Nat “Wondergirl” Jaroonsak. Half a year later her next fight was finally announced, and it was, once, defending her title against ONE’s new postergirl in Stamp Fairtex as the company attempts, once again, to make a double champ at Xiong Jing Nan’s expense, and with Stamp out injured ONE went back to radio silence. It took half a year for Xiong to get rebooked--and it was a non-title fight against Bo Meng at 115 pounds. Xiong won, and once again, what the hell are we doing.
ONE Women’s Atomweight Champion, 115 lbs
Denice Zamboanga - 12-2, 0 Defenses
Denice Zamboanga, to be clear, is not the problem. She’s a good fighter. She’s been trucking along in ONE since 2009, she’s proven herself repeatedly as a solid all-around competitor. She’s tough, she’s talented, she’s never been finished. She’s also never beaten a top fighter. She’s fought 0-0 rookies, she’s beaten journeywomen on losing streaks--in a dozen fights with ONE, she’s only beaten someone coming off a victory at all twice. She was also notably defeated by Seo Hee Ham, the top Atomweight contender and former Rizin champion, twice in a row. It was consequently a bit of a surprise to Ham when ONE announced an interim title fight to make up for Stamp’s injury absence and she wasn’t in it. Instead of her, the #1 contender whose only loss in ONE was to Stamp herself, it would be Denice Zamboanga, the woman she beat, against Alyona Rassohyna, a woman she also beat and who, as a bonus, had not fought in ONE since September of 2021--when she lost to Stamp Fairtex. This was all supposed to end in a unification match with Stamp at ONE 173 on August 1, but in early May, ONE announced that Stamp had reinjured her knee and was going to miss at least the rest of 2025. With the awareness that it would have been close to two and a half years between title fights, Stamp ‘voluntarily relinquished’ her title. This wound up being even more infuriating when ONE failed to rebook Denice for so long that upon finally scheduling her again, they chose ONE 173 on November 16, where Stamp Fairtex, who is now healthy, will be fighting a completely unrelated kickboxing match. Denice will face Ayaka Miura. Rather: Denice was going to face Ayaka Miura, but at the end of August she announced medical issues will prevent her from fighting. So they made an interim title fight for Stamp’s return against a non-#1 contender, and then they stripped Stamp for being unable to compete, and then they didn’t schedule the next championship fight until the card where Stamp was making her return anyway, and now Stamp is healthy and fighting but the Atomweight champion isn’t. Just fucking stop already.
Invicta Bantamweight Championship, 135 lbs
Jennifer Maia - 23-10-1, 0 Defenses
It did not take Jennifer Maia long to find her way back home to Invicta after the UFC cut her in 2023, and it only took a year for her to reclaim gold in the company she left behind. This is, in fact, Maia’s third stint with Invicta: The first time around was back in 2013, when Invicta was barely a year old and Maia was only a couple years and nine fights into her career, and it saw Maia distinguishing herself as a hot prospect but failing to get past the top ranks. She came back in 2016 as a more seasoned fighter and captured its Flyweight championship, but, as is the fate of all regional champions, she traded the belt for a ticket to the UFC. Her half-decade in the big show was by no means bad--she even fought Valentina Shevchenko for the UFC’s 125-pound title--but she still couldn’t crack the top of the mountain, and eventually, the UFC got tired of her derailing prospects and let her go. It only took two fights for Maia to dethrone Talita Bernardo and gain her second Invicta gold. Hopefully she sticks around this time.
Invicta Atomweight Championship, 105 lbs
Elisandra Ferreira - 9-2, 1 Defense
The only major Atomweight division in America is back, and as happens so often, it belongs to Brazil. Elisandra “Lili” Ferreira started competing as an amateur at 19, lost all of her amateur fights, and proceeded to turn pro anyway, because giving up sucks. She spent the first third of her professional career fighting at Strawweight simply because Atomweight opportunities are few and farbetween, but she made the turn to the lower weight class in 2021 and never looked back, and boy, it’s worked out for her. With one exception--a loss to Anastasia Nikolakakos, maybe the best Atomweight on this side of the globe--Ferreira’s cleaned house on the division. She made the jump to Invicta in 2023, and a year and a half later she’s 4-0 and the new bannerwoman for its most unique weight class, thanks to a hard-fought decision over Andressa Romero on September 20, 2024. Invicta’s 2024 comeback has reclaimed its first lost title; now we just have to see who they line up to test Ferreira over the next year of its renaissance. Her first at-bat came against Ana Palacios at Invicta FC 61 on April 4, and Ferreira earned a near-shutout on the scorecards.
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 - 17-3, 0 Defenses
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 what that means from here is anyone’s guess, given that the PFL still doesn’t seem to have any idea how any of this is going to work.
PFL Lightweight Championship, 155 lbs
Usman Nurmagomedov - 20-0 (1), 0 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.