The day that officially starts “the holiday season” in the United States is traditionally enjoyed with family, friends, and a laden table, where folk gather to celebrate what they are most thankful for. And we here at MMA Fighting have much to be thankful for!
Not only do we have the best readers and fans in the world, but we also get to spend our time covering the wild, wonderful, and sometimes woeful sport of MMA. Personally, we wouldn’t trade it for the world.
And so with 2025 winding down, Jed Meshew, Damon Martin, and Mike Heck gathered around the digital dining table to share the things we are most thankful for this year, and also admonish the biggest turkeys.
Biggest Turkeys of the Year
Chris Weidman vs. Luke Rockhold 2! Dillon Danis vs. Tony Ferguson! Paige VanZant returns to MMA!
Does anybody else remember those headlines from earlier this year, because those were all major announcements made by the Global Fight League ahead of its supposed launch. While it feels like a lifetime ago, this whole debacle unfolded in 2025 in an unbelievably predictable fashion.
After announcing the WFL back in 2021, former World Series of Fighting executive Darren Owen suddenly surfaced again years later to declare plans to launch the GFL in 2025. Of course, WFL never happened — it came and went like a fart in the wind — but for some reason, everybody got on board with the concept behind the GFL, which was a team-based format with the promotion signing effectively every known free agent veteran who had ever fought in the UFC or Bellator.
A pair of debut cards were announced after holding quite possibly the weirdest draft in sports history — and all of this without any broadcast deal whatsoever, mind you — and the promotion somehow even secured a license to hold a show in California. But then the bottom fell out after both events were cancelled, and Owen later claimed financial backing for the shows didn’t come through, forcing him to delay the launch of the promotion.
Back in October, GFL actually had the nerve to drop a message on Twitter stating for everybody to “stay tuned” for plans coming in 2026. Spoiler: You probably shouldn’t hold your breath on that one!
Fighters need options because not everybody can compete in the UFC or PFL or even ONE Championship (on those rare occasions, ONE still promotes MMA fights), and many of the veterans who signed to GFL talked about the obscene amounts of money they were being paid to go there.
But at this stage, Owen is 0-2 on launching a promotion, and here’s hoping fighters don’t even allow him to get to strike three when he inevitably launches another organization with a different name and a whole lot of promises that go unfulfilled.
For the past several years, referees have been botching calls left and right, but in 2025, it’s worse than it’s ever been. And it appears that the only changes in the works are for the refs to adhere to the rules that are already in place.
What in the world are we doing here?
The fact that I have to go on post-shows throughout the year and tell fighters and coaches that the smart thing to do in competition is to cheat is absolutely ridiculous. Fighters are allowed to poke other fighters in the eyes, kick each other in the ding-ding, grab the fence to avoid takedowns and non-advantageous positions, and nothing other than a slew of increasingly stern warnings is the answer. It’s so frustrating to watch most of the referees in the sport not make calls because they don’t want to be blamed for actually doing their jobs. Dan Miragliotta continues to be allowed to be the third man in the cage in very important fights in MMA, and I don’t get it.
After the Aspinall-Gane debacle at UFC 321, Herb Dean shared that there was a meeting among officials to discuss eye poke rules. Legit, word-for-word, this is what he said on an episode of Believe You Me:
“So we made a rule, it’s a foul to extend the fingers towards the eyes. That’s the rule we’ve already had in place. So that rule has been there, but we haven’t been enforcing it. So we’re going to move forward on that.”
I truly hope we see a change in 2026 and beyond, because if this year is an indication of the future, we’re in big trouble.
Meshew: While both Damon and Mike chose excellent Turkeys this year, I have someone else in mind.
Sure, GFL was a carnival sideshow that talked big while delivering a product that was more poorly produced than Fight Circus, but hey, at least we got to have some fun with them while they lasted! And have MMA referees been very silly and very bad all year? Of course, they always are! But both of those pale in comparison to 2025’s (allegedly) biggest Turkey: Isaac Dulgarian.
For the sake of covering my bases, it should be said that Dulgarian has not been proven to have done anything wrong as of this moment. But in case you were living under a rock earlier this month and missed it, Dulgarian was the centerpiece of a fight that seems destined to live in MMA infamy forever.
At UFC Vegas 110, Dulgarian took on Yadier del Valle in a main card fight that almost immediately drew criticism for Dulgarian’s allegedly lackluster performance, which coincided with a major shift in the betting lines shortly beforehand. Now, Dulgarian is possibly under investigation by the FBI for fight-fixing allegations. Again, nothing is proven yet, but this is the Darrick Minner situation all over again.
Again, I’m a firm believer in innocent until proven guilty, and no one should assume Dulgarian has done anything wrong. But at bare minimum, this is going to follow him for the foreseeable future, and maybe the rest of his career. And if anything ever does get proven? Hooo boy, that would be bad.
Thing You Are Most Thankful For
Technically, this benefit won’t kick in until 2026, but there’s no way it’s not worth a mention here because the UFC is moving from ESPN to Paramount+ in January!
Now, why exactly is that a celebration?
Well, for the vast majority of fans, it’s a cost-cutting measure because while Paramount plans to raise prices for its streaming service in 2026 — right when the UFC deal kicks in — every single show is covered under the deal. That means no more pay-per-view broadcasts, where it costs another $80 on top of the $11.99 per month you’re already paying for ESPN+.
But there’s another benefit that can’t be ignored.
ESPN+ has been bombarded with streaming issues ever since the service first launched, and it doesn’t seem like things have gotten much better. Poor quality streams or broadcasts just up and dying out of nowhere is a regular occurrence. There is rarely a UFC event that goes by where ESPN+ doesn’t just freeze, completely shut down, or lag so badly that you’re potentially a fight or two behind the live broadcast!
UFC executives were reportedly “furious” over streaming issues that plagued UFC 313 in March, where users couldn’t even purchase the pay-per-view broadcast to watch the event. ESPN officials later issued a statement saying there was a “technical issue that impacted purchases” while apologizing for the inconvenience.
But ESPN+ has been so bad during the life of the UFC’s broadcast deal that it should literally be named “sorry for the inconvenience.”
Here’s hoping Paramount+ has better luck, and considering the service already touts live NFL broadcasts and shows like Landman gobbling up over 9 million viewers across two days, there’s almost no chance this streaming service is worse than ESPN.
Shoutout to UFC bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili. What a difference a year makes, right?
Last year, Dvalishvili was my turkey for obvious reasons. The first two months of his new title reign were some of the worst from a PR perspective in the history of the sport. When the MMA community was clamoring for a fight between Dvalishvili and Umar Nurmagomedov, “The Machine” did everything in his power to steer the conversation to a Sean O’Malley rematch, or a Petr Yan rematch, or Deiveson Figueiredo getting the shot.
Eventually, he took the fight against Umar, and did it while nowhere near 100 percent, and he went out there and won one of the best fights of the year at UFC 311. Then he steamrolled O’Malley, dominated Cory Sandhagen, and now looks to defend the title again next weekend against Yan in a rematch. Dvalishvili is doing the thing where he’s defending the belt against the next guy, and he’s potentially 25 minutes or less away from winning Fighter of the Year — and he’s become an absolute darling amongst the fan base while doing it.
It’s never too late, folks. When the chips are down — and they were very much down at this time last year — if you just do the thing, things can turn in this sport in an instant. I’m proud of you, Merab.
Meshew: Look, I will always be thankful for fighters like Dricus du Plessis, Reinier de Ridder, Jiri Prochazka, and Justin Gaethje for being my favorite brand and violent weirdo, but if I can be serious for a moment, the thing I’m most thankful for in this crazy sport is all of you.
It doesn’t matter that some of you may hate me (and, honestly, I get it), I am incredibly grateful to each and every one of you who comes to MMA Fighting (great website), because without you, we can’t do this job. I am one of the luckiest people in the world because I somehow get to talk about MMA for a living, which is pretty great. Without y’all, I wouldn’t.
So thank you for everything, and Happy Thanksgiving to you all.
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