THE PUNCHSPORT REPORT FOR JULY 2025

After an insane June for a multitude of reasons, MMA pumps the brakes.

You have survived half of 2025, and honestly, good fucking job, it's wild out there. After one of the more insane Junes in mixed martial arts history, July is slowing everything right down. The PFL tournament phases are over, the UFC's taking the start of the month off, Invicta's still on a break, our UFC pay-per-view of the month doesn't even have a championship fight on it, and no, the BMF title does not and will never count. Enjoy the slowdown. We could all use it.

THIS MONTH'S PUNCHSPORTS EVENTS

• UFC on ESPN: Lewis vs Teixeira, July 12

• UFC 318: Holloway vs Poirier 3, July 19

• UFC on ABC: Whittaker vs de Ridder, July 26

• ONE Fight Night 33: Rodrigues vs Persson, July 12

• PFL MENA 2, July 4

• PFL Europe 2, July 5

• PFL Champions Series 2: Eblen vs van Steenis, July 19

• Super Rizin 4, July 27

IS THERE ANY NEWS

Ben Askren, who went from an undefeated best-in-class undefeated Welterweight to retired in less than a year after joining the UFC back in 2019, is in trouble. An infection managed to bore a hole through his lungs and he needs transplants to survive, but that entire process costs somewhere in the low seven figures and, in what will not be a shock to any Americans reading this, his insurance has declined to cover it.

This is, of course, where it all turns into sad social commentary. Ben Askren famously spent most of his time in the public eye shitting on COVID precautions, public health, social welfare and the general gamut of libertarian-adjacent fighter bullshit most of the sport believes in, and a whole bunch of people now find it very caustically funny that people are trying to whip up public compassion for him. I don't necessarily share the sentiment, but I sure understand it. Everyone with a brain is also noting that folks in the sport with many, many millions of dollars, including Dana White himself, are just passing Askren's crowdfunding campaign to the public instead of taking care of him, as one might hope large fight organizations would do.

And everyone who's been following the sport is disappointed, if unsurprised, that being a multiple-time NCAA champion, a Pan-American champion, a world wrestling champion, an undefeated Bellator and ONE champion and a UFC veteran (and a one-time Jake Paul murder victim) still doesn't set you up for life.

On the plus side, I wound up having to delete another paragraph on this because Ben got the transplant on the last day of the month. So instead I will say: It's rough out there and I hope people learn to be more compassionate about the need for everyone in society to take care of each other without having to almost die first.

In lighter, funnier news, after like two goddamn years of this shit, the Jon Jones era of Heavyweight came to an end at a press conference. Just after the UFC's June 21st event in Azerbaijan, Dana rather unceremoniously announced Jon's retirement and Tom Aspinall's promotion to capital-c Champion. In what is assuredly a complete and utter coincidence, two hours later, news broke that Jones was going to be arraigned again in relation to an incident back in February that saw him, allegedly, crashing a car while under the influence (again!), then running from the crime scene and in the process leaving a half-naked woman in the car who was both drunk and high on mushrooms, and when she called Jones while in the presence of police, Jones, allegedly, threatened to have the police murdered.

You know, the usual Jon Jones stuff.

It's incredible how difficult the Jon Jones career arc has made it to take any of this as seriously as it should be taken. I remember fellow former UFC Heavyweight Champion Ricco Rodriguez going on VH1's incredibly gross show Celebrity Rehab to discuss the way the rock-bottom moment of his addiction came from crashing his car while high and leaving his girlfriend behind to take the fall. For Jon Jones, that was Tuesday.

It's also tempting to say 'well, he's not our problem anymore,' but for one, he'll always be our problem, and for two, god knows we're never safe from Jon Jones Career Comeback #4. But for now, at least, we have a Heavyweight champion again and the world has another reminder not to party with Jon fucking Jones.

Also TKO Boxing is promoting Canelo/Crawford again. I wonder if we'll ever know what actually happened behind the scenes for that relationship to briefly fall into acrimony, but the money won out in the end, as it so often does.

---

WHAT HAPPENED IN JUNE

The month kicked off on June 7 with ONE Fight Night 32: Nakrob vs Jaosuayai. If you remember this from last month, you may be noticing its main event is gone! Allycia Rodrigues was supposed to defend the Atomweight Muay Thai championship against Shir Cohen, but Cohen pulled out--for the second time--and the fight got scrapped. Alibeg Rasulov was also supposed to have his first fight since the Christian Lee debacle, but opponent Maurice Abévi fell ill. There were ultimately only two MMA fights, and both winners missed weight significantly, and no one involved has a Wikipedia page and I wonder if ONE even knows they have MMA anymore. Jaosuayai Mor. Krungthepthonburi knocked out Nakrob Fairtex in 53 seconds in the main event.

The MMA fans that day were mostly paying attention to UFC 316: Dvalishvili vs O'Malley 2 anyhow. On your early prelims MarQuel Mederos beat Mark Choinski, Quillan Salkilld outworked Yanal Ashmouz, Yoo Joo-Sang iced Jeka Saragih in less than thirty seconds and Wang Cong dominated Ariane da Silva to finally get ranked. On the regular prelims, Andreas Gustafsson ground out Khaos Williams, Waldo Cortes-Acosta won a depressingly quiet bought with Serghei Spivac, Azamat Murzakanov made Brendson Ribeiro tap to strikes in one round, and Joshua Van knocked out Bruno Silva. Up top, Kevin Holland choked out Vicente Luque, Mario Bautista won a decision over a depressingly stationary Patchy Mix in his UFC debut, and Joe Pyfer managed to drop Kelvin Gastelum twice in one round and then almost lose a decision to him anyway. In your co-main event, Kayla Harrison, as most of the world predicted, ragdolled Julianna Peña, submitted her in two rounds and won the Women's Bantamweight Championship, which makes her next for Amanda Nunes. In the main, Merab Dvalishvili actually outstruck Sean O'Malley before dumping him on his head in the third round and choking him out just before the bell. It looks like it'll be Merab vs Cory Sandhagen next.

PFL 5 came out way on the 12th, and with it, the semifinals of the Welterweight and Featherweight brackets. In tournament alternate bouts Magomed Umalatov knocked out Anthony Ivy and Ádám Borics ground Jeremy Kennedy to a majority decision, but in your actual tournament bouts, Featherweight saw Jesus Pinedo knock out Gabriel Braga and Movlid Khaybulaev outwrestling Kim Tae-kyun, and Welterweight had Logan Storley grinding Masayuki Kikuiri into single-legged dust and Thad Jean earning a squeaker of a split decision over Jason Jackson. Barring injuries, Jean/Storley and Braga/Khaybulaev will be your final bouts later this year.

Two days later, we got UFC on ESPN: Usman vs Buckley. The prelims were pretty violent: Jamey-Lyn Horth dominated Vanessa Demopoulos, Philip Rowe overcame an early scare to knock out Ange Loose in the third round, Ricky Simón ran a clinic on Cameron Smotherman, Jose Ochoa knocked out Cody Durden eleven seconds into their second round, Malcolm Wellmaker got another picture-perfect faceplant knockout over the returning Kris Moutinho, Michael Chiesa got a workmanlike decision over Court McGee, and Paul Craig vs Rodolfo Bellato went to a No Contest when an illegal upkick knocked Bellato loopy with one second left in the first round. The main card was a bit weirder. Alonzo Menifield notched a close decision against Oumar Say in a real uneventful bout, Mansur Abdul-Malik got away with a technical decision after headbutting Cody Brundage out of their fight, Raoni Barcelos beat Cody Garbrandt in what will probably be Cody's last UFC fight, Edmen Shahbazyan got the nod against Andre Petroski, and Rose Namajunas managed to outwork Miranda Maverick. The main event was intended to be a passing of the torch from Kamaru Usman to new big thing Joaquin Buckley, and instead Usman wrestled the shit out of Buckley and broke his face to a wide decision.

Rizin Landmark 11 was later that night, and as is the case with Rizin's developmentally-focused Landmark cards, there were 19 separate fights and if you want to read all of them, the link will help, since I will not bore you that thoroughly. Your highlights included Machi Fukuda getting a decision over Haruka Hasegawa, Sina Karimian winning another weird one against Hidetaka Arato, Alexander Soldatkin advancing in Rizin's Heavyweight Grand Prix thanks to a victory over Prince Aounallah, Hiroaki Suzuki managing a decision over Sora Yamamoto, and Yoshinori Horie knocking out Yamato Nishikawa. In the main event, former champ Vugar Karamov got a step closer to another shot at the belt by outworking Shuya Kimura.

PFL 6 hit on the 20th, bringing with it the Lightweight, Bantamweight and Women's Flyweight brackets. There was one notable special attraction in Archie Colgan grinding out Mansour Barnaoui to earn a shot at Usman Nurmagomedov's weird ex-Bellator Lightweight championship, and there was only one alternate bout this time around, this time in the form of Magomed Magomedov getting a real close decision over Sarvarjon Kahmidov in case any Bantamweight finalists get hurt, which this year will be Justin Wetzell, who outwrestled Mando Gutierrez, and Marcirley Alves, who ran an absolute striking clinic on Jake Hadley to the tune of a 180ish vs 18 striking differential. At Women's Flyweight, Jena Bishop choked out Ekaterina Shakalova and Liz Carmouche shut out Elora Dana and gave her a massive hematoma on her head just to add insult to injury. In your Lightweight semifinals, Alfie Davis managed to real scrap of a decision against Brent Primus and Gadzhi Rabadanov fought tournament replacement Kevin Lee, who fell down essentially every time Rabadanov touched him and eventually provoked a TKO stoppage after getting knocked down four times in two and a half minutes.

The next day saw the UFC's debut in Azerbaijan, UFC on ABC: Hill vs Rountree Jr. It was, for the most part, pretty unfortuante. Mo Usman took a close decision over Hamdy Abdelwahab in one of those 'the Heavyweight division is doomed' fights, Tagir Ulanbekov got a fun call over Azat Maksum, Klaudia Syguła outworked Irina Alekseeva, Daria Zheleznyakova beat a Melissa Mullins who inexplicably barely wrestled, Jun-yong Park beat Ismail Naurdiev despite nearly having the fight called for a grounded knee that badly damaged his eye, and Seok-hyun Ko dominated Oban Elliott. The main card opened with Muhammad Naimov taking a decision over Bogdan Grad and Nazim Sadykhov winning a fun two-round brawl with Nikolas Motta, and then former Rizin champion Tofiq Musayev continued the UFC-debut curse by getting tapped out in one round by Myktybek Orolbai and Rizvan Kuniev furthered it after dropping a split decision to Curtis Blaydes. In the co-main event Rafael Fiziev proved to be just too much for Ignacio Bahamondes, outstriking him to a wide decision, and in the main event Khalil Rountree Jr. completed the theme by battering Jamahal Hill for five rounds and multiple knockdowns, which concluded in Hill getting mad at him after the fight for being too evasive and not coming to fight properly, which was very, very funny.

PFL 7 came on June 27th to end the current phase of the PFL's season, and it ended as anticlimactically as only the PFL can. In special and alternate bouts, Rafael Xavier knocked out Karl Albrektsson in less than thirty seconds, the 1-0 Ronnie Gibbs ended the undefeated marketing hype of Biaggio Ali Walsh by grounding and choking him out in the second round, and former Bellator champions Sergio Pettis and Raufeon Stots met in a fairly uneventful three-round fight that most of the world scored for Stots but Pettis won anyway. Your Heavyweight semifinals were the real funny part of the night, as Oleg Popov won a grinding decision over Rodrigo Nascimento and Alexandr Romanov advanced after winning most of the first round against Valentin Moldavsky before getting kneed in the groin so hard that he couldn't walk. At Light Heavyweight, 2021 champion Antônio Carlos Júnior (better known as Shoeface) narrowly pulled a decision out of Simeon Powell and Sullivan Cauley lost most of a fight to Phil Davis but dropped him at opportune times so he still got 30-27s out of it. At Middleweight, Dalton Rosta notched a split decision against Aaron Jeffery and Fabian Edwards took a workmanlike decision over Josh Silveira in the main. So your tournament finals will be Oleg Popov vs Alexandr Romanov, Sullivan Cauley vs Antônio Carlos Júnior, and Fabian Edwards vs Dalton Rosta.

But the month didn't end until UFC 317: Topuria vs Oliveira on the 28th. It was one of the better cards the UFC has put together in awhile, but you still had to get through some silly prelims first, including Jhonata Diniz getting a close decision over the debuting Alvin "Goozie" Hines, Jacobe Smith almost gassing out and losing but still managing to submit Niko Price, Terrance McKinney choking out Viacheslav Borshchev in under a minute, Tracy Cortez dominating Viviane Araújo, Jose Delgado justifying his hype by knocking out Hyder Amil, and Jack Hermansson looking good agaisnt Gregory Rodrigues for four minutes only to get horrifyingly knocked out twenty seconds later. The main card was a bit wilder. Payton Talbott won hie comeback fight after outgrappling Felipe Lima, Beneil Dariush managed to remind everyone he matters by beating Renato Moicano, and Joshua Van's marketing jetpack finally got him to the moon, as he took a well-earned 29-28 in an absolute fight of the year candidate against Brandon Royval. Your title double-header delivered dominant champions. Alexandre Pantoja faced off Flyweight's scariest knockout puncher in Kai Kara-France and utterly dismantled him, outstriking him easily, grounding him repeatedly and ultimately choking him out in the third round to defend his Flyweight title, and in the main event Ilia Topuria justified his talk of destiny by moving up to Lightweight, facing down Charles Oliveira, and utterly flattening him in just two and a half minutes, making himself the Lightweight champion and the latest two-division titleholder in company history.

Oh, and PFL MENA 2 got moved from the 28th to July 4th. I dunno. We'll talk about it in a paragraph.

WHAT'S COMING IN JULY

Hey, remember one paragraph ago when I said PFL MENA 2 got delayed? Here we are, on the 4th of July. And now there are a bunch of fights announced! As always with MENA, you do not know any of the people in them. Do you want to see an amateur fight between Hattan Alsaif and Nour Al Fliti? Because you can! Omar El Dafrawy vs Daniele Miceli is a kind-of okay main event, I guess.

One day later on the 5th you've got PFL Europe 2, which, admittedly, is not much better. Regional appeal cards, man. Your big story here is UFC cast-offs, I guess--Taylor Lapilus, whom the UFC cut despite being on a two-fight winning streak, is co-main eventing against Ali Taleb, and Danny Roberts, who was much more understandably cut on a three-fight losing streak, is up against Patrick Habirora, who is 6-0 and was last seen fighting an 0-3 man at France's Fight and Furious In Octogon promotion. Their spelling, not mine.

July 12 opens with ONE Fight Night 33. Similar to MENA 2, this is something of a holdover from last month--Allycia Rodrigues was supposed to defend her Women's Atomweight Muay Thai Championship against Shir Cohen, but injuries scratched it for the second time and ONE didn't want to wait. So now she's fighting Johanna Persson, who has never fought in ONE. As always, there's like two MMA fights. I really wonder how much longer ONE can do this. They don't even have a Big Number event scheduled until November.

Later that day we get UFC on ESPN: Lewis vs Teixiera, which is A Card that Is Happening. At less than three weeks away this card still isn't fully announced, so for now, suffice to say that your prelims include the return of Lauren Murphy against Eduarda Moura, Max Griffin vs Chris Curtis and Chidi Njokuani vs Jake Matthews, and your main card gets Vitor Petrino vs Austen Lane, Junior Tafa vs Tuco Tokkos, Calvin Kattar vs Steve Garcia, Stephen Thompson vs Gabriel Bonfim and, in your main event, Derrick Lewis vs Tallison Teixeira, who is main-eventing in just his second UFC fight, because they've forgotten how to promote anyone and now they're desperate.

July 19 brings us PFL Champions Series 2: Eblen vs van Steenis. Like everything the PFL does, it continues to be deeply bizarre. There are fourteen fights on this card, but the first nine are all the quarterfinals of PFL Africa, which is holding tournaments at Bantamweight and Heavyweight with as much local talent as they can get. And as always, some of it is really good! Some of it is guys like the 2-09 Justin Clarke fighting 3-1 former Power Slap loser Jashell Ticha Awa. It's a mixed bag. The main card is considerably better off. Corey Anderson is making his Heavyweight debut against Denis Goltsov, EFC championship contender Makkasharip Zaynukov is facing Rizin's Takeshi Izumi, A.J. McKee is up against Akhmed Magomedov, and Dakota Ditcheva is facing Sumiko Inaba. Your main event is an ever-more insane Bellator title defense, as Johnny Eblen puts the dead belt up against Costello van Steenis. Will the belt just become a PFL belt? I don't know, and from the sound of it, neither do they.

But that day also gets UFC 318: Holloway vs Poirier 3. By the standards of Fight Nights this card would be excellent, but as a pay-per-view they want you to pay eighty dollars for, it's a stretch. Kyler Phillips vs Vinicius Oliveira? Jimmy Crute vs Marcin Prachnio? Ikram Aliskerov vs Brunno Ferreira, Dan Ige vs Patrício Pitbull and Paulo Costa vs Roman Kopylov? It's not great, man! Your co-main event is fucking Marvin Vettori vs Brendan Allen, who are both now on two-fight losing streaks! And your main event is a bout for the idiot BMF title between Dustin Poirier and Max Holloway, because it's Dustin's retirement fight and the UFC rejected all the retirement bouts he actually wanted in favor of a third fight in a series Dustin's 2-0 in.

And a week later on the 26th we've got UFC on ABC: Whittaker vs de Ridder back in Abu Dhabi. This card, like most Abu Dhabi cards, is pretty stacked for a TV show, but it's also individually designed just to personally infuriate me. Gleeful Nazi Bryce Mitchell gets another spotlight, this time against Said Nurmagomedov. Shara Magomedov, fresh off his first loss, gets to rebound against Marc-André Barriault, who is a clear fall guy. Petr Yan, a top Bantamweight contender, is fighting Marcus McGhee, ranked #13. Movsar Evloev, the Featherweight contender, is fighting Aaron Pico, who is making his UFC debut. And Robert Whittaker is being set up to get eaten alive by Reinier de Ridder so they can crown a new contender. Eat shit, UFC.

The month ends on the 27th with Super Rizin 4. It's a big, wild card, with Patricky Pitbull coming back to Japan to face Shunta Nomura, and Masanori Kanehara having a big ol' brawl with YA-MAN, and three straight title fights. One will be newly-crowned Featherweight champ Razhabali Shaydullaev against an as-yet unannounced competitor, one is Seika Izawa defending the Atomweight championship against Shin Yu-jin, and one is Naoki Inoue putting the Bantamweight title up against Ryuya Fukuda. Your main event is a non-title bout, with recently-deposed Kleber Koike Erbst facing Mikuru Asakura.

---

CURRENT UFC CHAMPIONS
Heavyweight Champion, 265 lbs

Tom Aspinall - 15-3, 1 Defense

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. What happens now, who the fuck knows.

Light-Heavyweight Champion, 205 lbs

Magomed Ankalaev - 20-1-1 (1), 0 Defenses

Took 'em long enough. Magomed Ankalaev's title fight came just one week too early to mark seven years since his UFC debut, in which a young, undefeated Combat Sambo champion hopped into the biggest fighting company in the world, dominated Paul Craig for 14 minutes and 53 seconds, and somehow managed to get himself submitted in those last seven seconds anyway. It was shocking, it was embarrassing, and it was the last time Magomed allowed himself to lose a fight. For the next four years Ankalaev beat everyone in his path, and in 2022, after the Light Heavyweight Championship was vacated, Ankalaev finally got a well-deserved shot against Jan Błachowicz and won! On almost all of the media scorecards. For the judges, it was inexplicably a draw, which meant no champion and a very, very angry Dana White who blamed the fighters, as he does. Rather than a rematch or a fight against new champion Jamahal Hill, Ankalaev was put on ice for a year and busted back down to contendership clashes--which also went weird, as he blasted Johnny Walker with an illegal knee and got a No Contest for it. They rematched, Ankalaev destroyed him in two rounds, and the world waited for the now inevitable and clearly logical match with new champion Alex Pereira. And they did not get it. In yet another example of egregious matchmaking, the UFC kept Ankalaev on ice for almost the entire year while Pereira had rematches and fill-ins, and then, in October, they booked Pereira and Ankalaev to fight within three weeks of one another. Ankalaev dominated Aleksandar Rakić, a top contender; Pereira beat Khalil Rountree Jr., who was one fight separated from beating up Chris Daukaus. Much to the UFC's chagrin, the public narrative shifted largely to the perception that they were protecting Pereira from Ankalaev out of fear that he would beat their star, which was cruel and disrespectful and also pretty true. The world finally got to find out at UFC 313 on March 8, and it was close--closer than most thought it would be no matter who they favored to win--but the UFC's least favorite internet haters wound up being right again. Ankalaev tanked Pereira's leg kicks, disarmed his footwork with forward pressure, kept him afraid of his wrestling and even stung him repeatedly with his boxing, and at the end of the night, he went home with a unanimous decision and the belt. It took two and a half years longer than it should have, but Magomed Ankalaev finally got his title and he did it by beating one of the UFC's favorite sons. Ankalaev was supposed to have a rematch with Pereira this Summer, but it appears to have not worked out, and now he's calling for the UFC to give him anyone they've got.

Middleweight Champion, 185 lbs

Dricus du Plessis - 23-2, 2 Defenses

Middleweight's fucking wild, man. Generally when a belt changes hands repeatedly in a short period of time you can blame injuries and strippings and title vacations, but recent history has simply been a case study in how goddamn weird things can get at 185 pounds. As of this writing (February 1, 2024) we've had five separate Middleweight champions in less than fifteen months. Divisional king Israel Adesanya dropped the belt to his nemesis Alex Pereira, Adesanya dropped Pereira himself in an immediate rematch, and in one of 2023's bigger upsets, Adesanya lost his belt to human exclusion zone Sean Strickland. But that shot, initially, didn't belong to him: It belonged to Dricus du Plessis. Dricus joined the UFC in 2020 as one of the international scene's best prospects--a two-division champion in his native South Africa's Extreme Fighting Championship, a Welterweight champion in Poland's Konfrontacja Sztuk Walki, and a finishing machine who'd never gone to a decision in his life. The spotlight of the UFC gave him two new reputations: For one, as an exceptionally awkward-looking fighter who could appear shaky and exhausted and still easily knock anyone out, and for two, as a guy with real uncomfortable feelings about his homeland. Shortly after his debut Dricus du Plessis began making comments about becoming the first "real" African champion in the UFC, citing the way fighters like Kamaru Usman, Israel Adesanya and Francis Ngannou had left the country, and, boy, there's just no way to get around the topic that isn't gross as hell. But du Plessis knocked #1 contender Robert Whittaker dead, so it didn't matter. He was in pole position. And then he lost it, because he wanted more than a month to prepare for a world championship fight and the UFC decided that just wouldn't fly. A fully-trained du Plessis stepped into the cage against his replacement and now-champion Sean Strickland on January 20 at UFC 297, and after a close fight and a split decision, du Plessis brought the belt back to South Africa just like he promised. The UFC decided to go right back to their original racially uncomfortable plan and book du Plessis vs Adesanya at UFC 305 on August 17, and after a good, back-and-forth battle, du Plessis emerged victorious with a fourth-round submission. He is the first man to defend the Middleweight title in two years and four reigns, and after UFC 312 on February 8th, he became just the fifth man to ever record multiple defenses of it thanks to a one-sided decision in his rematch with Strickland. The fireworks factory is next: du Plessis vs Khamzat Chimaev at UFC 319 on August 16.

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 sometime this Fall.

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. If he wins, he ties teammate Aljamain Sterling's record for the most defenses the Bantamweight title has ever seen.

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. It looks like Joshua Van will be next.

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.

Women's Strawweight, 115 lbs

Zhang Weili - 26-3, 3 Defenses

Are you really surprised? There's a long tradition of underestimating unlikely champions in mixed martial arts, particularly when they're not the fan-friendliest in style or personality, from Michael Bisping to Frankie Edgar, only to have those demeaned champions remind the world that they didn't reach the peak of their divisions by mistake. Many of the wise, studied scribes of the sport warned the foolish masses against assuming the same about Women's Strawweight Champion Carla Esparza: She was no pushover, they said, and Zhang will have real trouble. And then, come fight day, we unwashed masses pulled them from their ivory towers and forced them to run in the streets amongst the mud and filth so they, too, could feel the unburdened joy of being, because Zhang Weili, as basically every fan had assumed, did, in fact, beat the absolute tar out of Carla. It wasn't particularly close: Carla got outlanded 37-6, hurt several times on the feet, and choked out just a minute into the second round. The inexplicable, season-long Cookie Monster subplot is over, Zhang Weili is now a two-time world champion, and things are back as they should be. What comes next, however, is tricky. Carla was blown out, so a rematch is out of the question. Rose Namajunas, the only person in the UFC to beat Weili, is a likely candidate--but after her disastrous performance against Carla, it remains to be seen how much faith the UFC has in her. Jéssica Andrade has a claim, but she's splitting time between 115 and 125, and probably needs to pick a weight class if she wants a shot. So the UFC solved the problem by picking Amanda Lemos. In a surprise to no one, Zhang absolutely dominated Lemos, outstriking her 296-29, smashing her to the tune of multiple 10-8 rounds, and winning a very, very wide decision. The next step was a China vs China championship showdown against Yan Xiaonan at UFC 300, and Yan did better than some expected--which is to say she won a round while also arguably getting choked out once and TKOed once, and ultimately, Zhang took a lopsided decision again. Her fight with Tatiana Suarez on February 8th was supposed to be her most competitive defense: Ultimately, it was not. Tatiana won the first round; Weili proceeded to thwomp her for the next four and ultimately took a lopsided decision. The rumor now is Zhang will be moving up to Flyweight to face Valentina Shevchenko, but it has yet to be officially confirmed or denied. All we know is the UFC's putting on a card in Shanghai in August, and I'm sure they would've loved to have her on it, and instead the main event is Zhang Mingyang vs Johnny Walker.

---

NOTABLE CHAMPIONS ACROSS THE WORLD

Rizin Lightweight Champion, 156 lbs

Roberto de Souza - 19-3, 4 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.

Rizin Featherweight Champion, 145 lbs

Razhabali Shaydullaev - 13-0, 0 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 who knows what'll actually happen.

Naoki Inoue - 21-4, 1 Defense

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 in doing so became the first man to ever defend the Rizin Bantamweight Championship. He'll gun for a second one when he meets 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 - 15-0, 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 by god, I hope she gets it, because this is an aggressive waste of her time. But I wrote that six months ago and instead she's defending her title against the 3-0 Shin Yu-Jin on July 27, so.

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.

ONE Light Heavyweight Champion, 225 lbs

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. Now we hope he gets booked to defend it.

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.

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. Congratulations on becoming champion by default, Denice. The question now becomes if ONE will book her at all.

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.