Welcome to September. We’re beginning the decline towards the end of the year--no PFL events, no big ONE fights, some kind of disappointing UFCs including an unironic Raul Rosas Jr. Apex main event--but Super Rizin is back and so is Alexandre Pantoja, so it ain’t all bad.
THIS MONTH’S PUNCHSPORTS EVENTS
IS THERE ANY NEWS
ALLAN ALVES DO NASCIMENTO - 9/11/1991 - 8/3/2026
Every once in awhile the world reminds you that people can just Stop, and it’s never not disconcerting.
People dying too young in combat sports is depressingly common. Brain injuries, drugs, the general cost of violence; everyone who’s watched the sport long enough has someone they liked watching who passed too young. You get used to the wages of sin. I was training at Ralph Gracie’s the week Ryan Gracie melted down and overdosed, and while everyone was shocked by the tragedy, no one was shocked by the cause.
Everyone was shocked by Allan Nascimento’s passing. By all accounts he wasn’t a party animal, he wasn’t a ticking time bomb, he wasn’t accumulating CTE at an alarming rate (for fighters, anyway) or burning the wick at both ends. He was a nice guy everyone seemed to like. He turned a fascination with Muay Thai as a teenager into a career in combat sports, he made a lot of friends, he got to the international stage with both Rizin and the UFC and established himself as one of the better Flyweights in the world. Maybe not one of the best, but a permanent fixture of the division and a perpetual threat to the rankings. Never stopped, never submitted, and never, ever out of a fight.
He went to sleep the night of August 2, had a heart attack, and never woke up. 34 years old, a world-class professional athlete in one of the most demanding sports there is, and that was that. There is no moralizing lesson or cautionary tale to be taken from this. Life is simply capricious and cruel, and it’s important to remember that nothing is guaranteed and treat each other accordingly.
He leaves behind a 22-7 record, a widow and two children.
Edson Barboza retired after his August 15 loss to Esteban Ribovics. I almost brought back the long-dormant Retirement Corner feature just because I liked Barboza so dang much, but for one, I have very little faith any fighter stays truly retired anymore--did you know Glover Teixeira and Shogun Rua had a boxing match against each other last week?--and for two, there’s a better, angrier story to talk about anyhow.
Four days after his retirement loss, Barboza went on Ariel Helwani’s show and revealed that he spent the last two and a half years of his career fighting half-blind. After his match with Lerone Murphy in May 2024, Barboza’s right eye stopped working. Some days he would see blobs or slivers, but most of the time, including any time he was in direct light, such as, say, a spotlight, he was missing half of his sight and essentially all of his peripheral vision.
During which he was able to get licensed to fight three times and was violently knocked out twice. Folks immediately brought up comparisons to Michael Bisping, who infamously fought with only one functioning eye for the last four years of his career. In a way, this is actually worse. Bisping and his coach Jason Parillo were frauds. In a plot point ripped straight from Y2K old-man drama Space Cowboys, Bisping would memorize eye charts, Parillo worked out a system of signals to help him pass verbal check-ups, and together, they subverted the system that was supposed to take care of his health. It was successful subterfuge.
Barboza didn’t come up with a system. He didn’t have to trick anyone. He openly acknowledged he couldn’t see and told the commissions he wanted to fight anyway, and he found an eye doctor who gave him his blessing, and apparently, that was enough. They knew he was half-blind and let him go out there and get repeatedly bludgeoned three more times anyway because he signed a waiver.
I spend a lot of time talking about the way the industry has lost sight of its responsibility to take care of its fighters, and as I write this I’m working on yet another event preview starring multiple fighters who’ve already competed and been repeatedly smacked in the head within the last 90 days, and I find myself saying that an awful, awful lot these days, and I cannot help wondering what kind of wake-up call it will take for MMA to go back to taking fighter health even remotely seriously.
WHAT HAPPENED IN AUGUST
We got on the road on August 1 with UFC Fight Night: Medić vs Rodriguez in Belgrade. If you do not recognize most of the people on this recitation: That is why. It wasn't actually an enormously successful night for the UFC's Serbian contingent--Marina Spasić got choked out by Stephanie Luciano, Miloš Janičić got choked out by Noah Gugnon, Duško Todorović got choked out by Robert Valentin, and Vlasto Čepo got himself knocked out by Gilbert Urbina--but Jovan Leka knocked out Alexander Poppeck, and Nina Nikolija Milošević got Hailey Cowan, and Borislav Nikolić got a decision over Mark Vologdin, and god, so few of these names are anything. Look at what they're doing, man. Aleksandar Rakić beat ranked Heavyweight Marcin Tybura but did not get ranked from it. Navajo Stirling knocked out Jan Błachowicz but will not be getting a title shot. Uroš Medić destroyed Daniel Rodriguez in thirty seconds so everyone went home happy.
The 7th got us PFL Charlotte: Battle vs Rosta, as the company continues to trade water and wait out the rest of the year so Jake Paul's MVP can do to them what they did to Bellator. If you're a steward of the sport you'll recognize some things like the unfairly-cut-by-the-UFC Trey Waters smashing Trukon Carson, or Bruno Cappelozza decisioning Valentin Moldavsky, or Cheyanne Bowers beating Elora Dana and Denis Goltsov kicking Hasan Mezhiev, but your main card was Josh Fremd beating on Jhony Gregory, Lewis McGrillen winning a brawl with Brandon Lewis, Aaron Jeffrey dominating Josh Silveira and Simeon Powell scraping past Dovletdzhan Yagshimuradov, which is indicative of just how thin things are getting over there. Main Event Bryan Battle squeaked by Dalton Rosta and that's the best we can do.
We were all locked in the Apex one day later for UFC Fight Night: Gamrot vs Salkilld. Was it fun? Yes. Was it a giant mess of a card? Miles Johns, Juliana "Killer" Miller, and Diyar Nurgozhay all picked up wins over people who were even worse off than them. "Yadier del Valle knocks out a retiring Darren Elkins in 2026" is a really fucking stupid sentence and everyone involved in it should feel bad. But Alexia Thainara became a contender by beating Amanda Lemos, and Diego Ferreira beat Billy Quarantillo, for some reason, and in the main event Quillan Salkilld just fuckin' destroyed Mateusz Gamrot, not only hurting him but outgrappling and choking him out, proving definitively that he is, in fact, a problem.
ONE Samurai 2 was also that day. There were two MMA fights: Subaru Mori choking out Yusuke Sato and Keito Yamakita choking out Koyuru Tanoue. That is all. Masaaki Noiri kickboxed the shit out of Liu Mengyang and knocked him dead in a round in the main event and that was fun, as Noiri always is.
The 11th--yes, a Tuesday--brought us Rizin 54, which was also a profoundly weird card. 1/4 of it was rookie fights including the lesser Hiramoto brother knocking out Ryoma Shishimoto and Naoki Tanaka getting a doctor's stoppage over the debuting Isaa Hosokawa, 1/4 was foreign prospects Azizbek Temirov and Alibek Gadzhammatov getting rolled by Japanese fighters Joji Goto and Yuki Ito, both of whom had 3-4 times as much experience as their opponents, and the Heavyweight Grand Prix Rizin is doing while pretending last year's never happened aw King Edokpolo knocking out Mikio Ueda and Tsuyoshi Sudario beating on Ryo Sakai. In the co-main event, Patchy Mix came back to Bantamweight and beat Shoko Sato! Except Patchy missed the weight limit by 7 pounds and thus couldn't win the fight and also started with an automatic point deduction. So for the first time since 2023 Patchy won a fight, except he contractually couldn't win the fight, so he lost. And then in the main event Kyoma Akimoto beat Kleber Koike to presumably pencil his way into a New Year's Eve special against the winner of this month's Razhabali Shaydullaev vs A.J. McKee Featherweight title fight.
ONE Fight Night 46 was on the 14th. Natalie Salcedo beat Magdalena Czaban, Viet Anh Do stopped David Brandao, and Jhanlo Mark Sangiao knocked out Marcos Aurelio. One of those divisions hasn't had a title defense since 2023. I'm so tired.
On the 15th: UFC 330: Makhachev vs Machado Garry. This was the big one, and you can tell, because Tresean Gore was on it. Your early prelims saw Jeremiah Wells score a huge upset by choking out Myktybek Orolbai, Neil Magny pounded out Ramiz Brahimaj, and Lucas Fernando stopped Rafael Tobias. Your proper prelims had Tresean Gore outworking Vicente Luque, Donte Johnson punching Eric McConico Jr. stiff in a minute and a half, Charles Johnson hitting a twister on Eduardo Henrique, and Chidi Njokuani winning a really slow decision over Joel Álvarez. Up top, Esteban Ribovics retired Edson Barboza with a second-round TKO, Dustin Stoltzfus choked out Mansur Abdul-Malik, and Jalin Turner flattened Kauê Fernandes in thirty-nine seconds. Your co-main event title fight had Mackenzie Dern successfully defending her Strawweight title with a clear if not particularly eventful decision over Gillian Robertson; your main event had Islam Makhachev defending the Welterweight title against Ian Machado Garry.
The PFL was back on August 22 for PFL Tampa: Cyborg vs Vieira. This, too, was a weird one, as the entire card was supposed to be built around a) Cris Cyborg, legend of the sport, finally retiring, and b) Ketlen Vieira, freshly cut from the UFC, challenging for Cyborg's belt. Unfortunately, in the week before the fight, Cyborg walked back her retirement plans from a 'definitely' to a 'maybe, we'll see,' and Vieira blew her weight cut by 7.2 pounds and became ineligible for the title win. So it was neither. But Javid Basharat had a great fight in his PFL debut with a win over Movsar Ibragimov, and Daniel Marcos stopped Magomed Magomedov, and Nkosi Ndebele beat Marcircley Alves, and Sabrinna de Sousa pulled the upset by beating Taila Santos, and Gadzhi Rabadanov knocked out Tracy Reeder. And, hey: Cyborg vs Vieira was, in fact, Cyborg's most competitive fight in years! But she still won.
And the 22nd also brought us UFC Fight Night: Hernandez vs Rodrigues, which was, also, a weird one. There was only one decision on the prelims, and it was newcomer Stan Dorsainvil outworking Gauge Young on 72 hours' notice; otherwise Shanelle Dyer turned Elise Reed into a kickboxing bag for 12 minutes, Jackson McVey knocked out Wesley Schultz, Márcio Barbosa pretty effortlessly punched out Ryan Kuse, Chris Padilla choked out Nasrat Haqparast with one second left in the fight, Shamil Gaziev dropped Kennedy Nzechukwu with one punch, and Jamall Emmers scored an enormous upset by smashing Lerryan Douglas in half a round. Up top, Anthony Wint choked out Terrance Chatman, Carli Judice kicked Jeisla Chaves in the liver, MarQuel Mederos elbowed Mason Jones to death, Reinier de Ridder pounded out Roman Dolidze, and Vitor Petrino won an incredibly sleepy decision over Serghei Spivac. The main was a Middleweight showdown between Gregory Rodrigues and Anthony Hernandez that went back and forth on a round-by-round basis, but Rodrigues ultimately won a clear decision.
We closed on the month in Shanghai for the 29th's UFC Fight Night: Nurmagomedov vs Song. The UFC tried their best to showcase their Chinese talent, and, boy, it went real, real bad for them. Ding Meng got decisioned by Cam Nelson, Julia Polastri kicked Xiong Jingnan's head off, Hector Santiago punched out Lawrence Lui, Francesco Nuzzi got the upset knockout over Xiao Long, and in other prelims, Sean Woodson took a split decision against Jack Jenkins, Rei Tsuruya choked out Kevin Borjas, and André Lima choked out Namsrai Batbayar. The main card started with Bilal Hasan knocking out Nilson Rojas and China getting some hope back, as Liu Ce took out Levi Rodrigues Jr. and Sumudaerji got a decision over Alex Perez, but then Kai Asakura domed Aoriqileng and Denise Gomes knocked out Yan Xiaonan in one round. None of it mattered, however, as in the main event, homeland hero Song Yadong scored the massive upset by not just beating but knocking Umar Nurmagomedov out cold in a round and a half, which sent everyone home happy.
WHAT'S COMING IN SEPTEMBER
September 4 starts us off with ONE Fight Night 47: Stamp vs Flores, and I think my willingness to cover ONE as an MMA organization is wavering more than ever. Some of it, as always, is their complete lack of giving a fuck about the sport, and some of it is the pain of anticipating Xiong Jingnan's arrival on the world stage only to watch her get absolutely humiliated over and over, but some of it is also seeing people legitimately enjoy their kickboxing fights. Which 8is great! Do that! Focus on it! This half-measure thing does nothing for any of your fans, although I'm sure your Qatari financiers demand it. I just miss anything having a point. Gilbert vs Nazareth Lalthazuala is here and then Stamp Fairtex has a Muay Thai match with Selina Flores. Have fun.
The 5th brings us UFC Fight Night: Hooker vs Parnasse. The UFC's back in France, which means you have all the French folk they can manage. Nora Cornolle! Farès Ziam! Nathaniel Wood! You know, him. Losene Keita vs Muhammad Naimov, Morgan Charrière vs Felipe Lima, Daniil Donchenko vs Punahele Soriano, Michael Page vs Nursulton Ruziboev, Farès Ziam vs Axel Sola and Dan Hooker vs debuting superprospect Saladine Parnasse make up your main card.
Rizin's biggest card until NYE comes on September 10, as the once-dormant Super Rizin 5 cross-promotional throw-it-all-at-the-wall series is back, and it's a weird whopper of a card. You've still got a couple of rookie fights, including the 3-2 Daichi Tomizawa vs debuting judo champion Ryo Kawabata. Yutaka Saito, a fifteen-year veteran with 32 fights, is up against experienced kickboxer/2-2 MMA fighter YA-MAN. Ren Hiramoto is back after two years off from MMA-rules bouts to face Karshyga Dautbek, who hasn't lost a fight since 2019. You've got former champions out in force, with ex-Featherweight champ Vugar Karamov facing Ryo Takagi and just-dethroned Lightweight king Satoshi de Souza meeting Shunta Nomura. You've got the potentially inadvisable return of a legend, as young star Mikuru Asakura meets 43 year-old PRIDE veteran Shinya Aoki, who is having his first MMA fight for a Japanese promotion since he retired Kazushi Sakuraba back in 2015. You've got the next stage of the Women's Atomweight Grand Prix, as star player RENA takes on the exceedingly scary Natasha Kuziutina. And, in your main event, you've got the unfathomably rare, cross-promotional winner-takes-all title bout, as undefeated Rizin ace Razhabali Shaydullaev takes on the PFL's top gun, AJ McKee Jr., with both belts on the line.
Which makes it very anticlimactic when ONE Samurai 3 happens in Yokohama on the 12th. When they started the Samurai series it was supposed to be a big deal! They pulled out all the stops! They had multiple championship matches and an MMA title fight and goddamn Takeru vs Rodtang! Now there's, uh, Yuya Wakamatsu vs Willie van Rooyen, and Hiroba Minowa vs Yuta Miyazawa, and your main event is a Muay Thai title fight between Atomweight champion Nadaka and Har Ling Om, who is 2 for his last 5 and coming off a loss, if you didn't get what this was for.
But don't worry, because the 12th also brings us Noche UFC 4: Silva vs Delgado. You know! Noche UFC, the fight series that's meant to bring the UFC ever-closer to Mexico's lucrative and not yet fully exploited marketrich cultural traditions the UFC obviously deeply respects! This one's in Glendale, so we're actually geographically worse-off, but that's fine because this card is a goddamn mess. Manon Fiorot, the woman who almost beat Valentina Shevchenko, and Alexa Grasso, the woman who DID beat Valentina Shevchenko, are meeting in a top contendership match at Women's Flyweight, during a year that's seen women not get a single main event. And this isn't, either. It isn't even a co-main event--that's Brandon Moreno vs Joseph Morales. It isn't even the featured bout, that's the unbelievably Mexican Tommy McMillen vs Marwan Rahiki. The actual main event? Jean Silva vs Jose Delgado. Eat the paste, fans.
On the 19th, we get the monthly show that matters. UFC 331: Van vs Pantoja 2 is one of those cards that has a really great main event, in the Flyweight Championship rematch between Joshua Van and Alexandre Pantoja, and then a decent co-main event, as the UFC once again tries to get Arman Tsarukyan out of the picture by having him fight Maurício Ruffy, but after that, it goes off a damn cliff. The rest of your main card: Patrício Pitbull vs Choi Doo-ho, Renato Moicano vs Brian Ortega 2 but this time it's at Lightweight, and Alonzo Menifield vs Iwo Baraniewski. Your prelims? Gable Steveson vs Sean Sharaf, Marlon Vera vs Charles Jourdain, Tai Tuivasa vs Robelis Despaigne and Edmen Shahbazyan vs Bruno Ferreira. Down on the bottom, it'll be Giga Chikadze vs Joanderson Brito, Casey O'Neill vs Eduarda Moura, Ryan Gandra vs Ozzy Diaz and Michael Aswell Jr. vs Yoo Joo-sang. Most of that should be illegal.
Our last UFC for the month is UFC Fight Night: Rosas Jr. vs Barcelos on September 26, and I gotta tell you, man, it's depressing. You've got the Women's Strawweight and Men's Bantamweight finals of TUF 34 (jesus christ), which are now so important that we're burying them in the Apex. You've got Montel Jackson vs Ricky Simón, a battle of people who should've been more. You've got Norma Dumont vs Ailín Pérez and Vanessa Demopoulos vs Yazmin Jauregui, and if either makes it onto the main card I will be pleasantly gobsmacked. And up top, guess what: Raul Rosas Jr. is a main eventer now, and they're going to try as hard as possible to feed Raoni Barcelos to him.
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, but Tom had to get eye surgery to regain his sight and the UFC doesn’t want to wait when there’s marketing to be done, so Ciryl Gane and Alex Pereira fought for an interim title at the godforsaken White House.
Interim Heavyweight Champion
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. He’s the interim champ again, which means either he’s going to face Tom in a rematch when Tom’s healthy, or the UFC’s going to stop pretending and strip Tom and Ciryl will ascend to the Heavyweight throne on a trail of eyeballs and brainstems.
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 we’ll see.
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 - 28-4, 1 Defense
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 will meet at UFC 333 on October 24.
Bantamweight Champion, 135 lbs
Petr Yan - 20-5, 0 Defenses
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. So, almost a full year later, Yan and Merab will run it back at UFC 333 on October 24.
Flyweight Champion, 125 lbs
Joshua Van - 17-2, 1 Defense
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 will come at UFC 331 on September 19.
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. No word on when she’ll be back or what on Earth happens now.
Women’s Flyweight, 125 lbs
Valentina Shevchenko - 26-4-1, 2 Defenses
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 was a long-awaited champion vs champion affair against Zhang Weili at UFC 322 on November 15, 2025. After years of watching Zhang dominate her competition, the world felt she had genuine double-champ potential and could be the woman to unseat Valentina. As it turned out: Not even close. Val dominated her in every aspect of the game, Zhang got completely shut out, and her Flyweight hopes are dead in the water. Valentina has multiple title defenses again and is now tied with Amanda Nunes and Anderson Silva for the fourth-most wins in title fights in UFC history. We’ll have to see who they give to her next, but Natália Silva feels like a safe bet.
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 - 18-0, 3 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’s the centerpiece of the Rizin/PFL crosspromotion, now: He’ll face the PFL’s top Featherweight, A.J. McKee, in the main event of Super Rizin 5, with the winner taking home the Featherweight title for both companies.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.