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Abdoul Abdouraguimov | Jose Peñuela, PFL PFL will land in France on Sept. 26 with Abdoul Abdouraguimov headlining a card against a yet-to-be-confirmed opponent in Nantes, the company announced Monday. That will mark PFL’s first trip to France since a cancelled event in Paris on May 26, the second time the promotion was forced to pull the plug on a show in the French capital. The card will also feature the semifinals of the PFL Europe lightweight and bantamweight tournaments, with the winners punching their tickets to the Dec. 13 finals in Lyon for a $100,000 prize. Born in Dagestan but based in Nantes, “Lazy King” won three in a row under the PFL Europe banner since 2023, capped off by a decision over UFC veteran Laureano Staropoli in the main event of show in Décines-Charpieu, France, in December 2024. “PFL is coming home,” Abdouraguimov stated in a release. “After 21 professional fights, I can finally fight in front of my home crowd, where I grew up and learned this sport. And now, it’s at the Zenith Nantes Metropole that I’m going to do the next Lazy Show. Grab a seat, some popcorn, and be good, but not too much, because I’m here to entertain you on September 26, let’s go!” Abdouraguimov’s nine-fight winning streak also includes quick title victories over MMA veterans Godofredo Pepey and Karl Amoussou in Ares FC, where he became a two-division champion at welterweight and middleweight prior to signing with PFL.

Nikolas Motta had to go under the knife after a war with Nazim Sadykhov this past month at UFC Baku in Azerbaijan. The lightweight duo won $100,000 in bonus each for the best fight of the night, but Motta returned home with a second-round knockout loss and a damaged jaw. “I think early in round two, I got hit with a cross and felt, ‘F*ck, that one hurt,’” Motta told MMA Fighting. “I felt my tooth kind of moving. I thought it broke my tooth. After the fight we always have to go to the hospital for exams after you lose by TKO or KO, and when they did the exam it showed two fractures on my jaw.” Motta was scheduled to return to Thailand after the event, the place where he did his camp this time, but instead travelled to Las Vegas to meet with a specialist and check on the injury. Motta said that a dentist explained that a cyst caused by a wisdom tooth made his jaw more fragile, which eventually led to the fracture. “It sucked, I couldn’t chew anything,” Motta laughed. “So I came to Vegas and had the surgery.” Photo via Nikolas Motta Motta is expected to have three other wisdom teeth removed in a couple of months, and then prepare to start a new training camp. The fighter said that the recovery timetable for the jaw surgery is eight week, and the wisdom tooth procedure should require a week off. “He did the surgery and put a titanium plate to get it back in place,” Motta said. “Funny thing is, Rafael dos Anjos sent me an X-ray of his face and it’s full of titanium plates. He said, ‘Brother, I still became champion after that.’” The Brazilian lightweight joked he’s like “The Terminator” after the surgery, and celebrates the $100,000 bonus now that he will be forced to sit out for some time. “My goal was to put on the best performance of my life,” Motta said. “Before I walked out for the fight, I talked to my coach, ‘I’m getting a bonus now. How much do I have to pay you? Do I have to pay a percentage of the bonus?’ And he said, ‘No, you don’t need to.’ My manager was making fun later, ‘Motherf*cker, Motta got me’ [laughs].” Motta wishes he had left UFC Baku with the win but doubts he would still be paid that much in bonus if that was the case. He was riding a two-fight winning streak going into that match, a knockout over Tom Nolan and a decision against Maheshate Hayisaer, and felt “more free” to put on the type of performance he wanted without feeling that his job was on the line. “I’m too f*cking competitive, we always want to win,” Motta said. “But there are times where we worry too much about the future and the result and we end up not fighting so well. I think that has helped me get that anxiety away, not being too worried about the result and the future. It kind of made me more free to fight the best way possible.”

Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC Paddy Pimblett remains a fan of Charles Oliveira, but he was shocked by the way the former lightweight champion approached his fight against Ilia Topuria at UFC 317. The bout ended after Oliveira stepped into the pocket for an exchange when Topuria unloaded a hellacious right hook that effectively ended the Brazilian’s night, but he connected with a left hand behind it to seal the deal. While there was never much down that Topuria packed that kind of fighting finishing power, Pimblett has no idea what kind of strategy Oliveira was employing. “I thought if Charles would get him to the later rounds, it might have been a bit different,” Pimblett said on the Verse Us podcast. “I really like Charles but what the f*ck was that game plan, lad? Just stand in front of him and get punched in the face. “I’d love to know what their game plan was. Because that was half embarrassing. Where did the cut come from? Topuria ended up on top of him, I was like ‘Oliveira’s cut.’ Obviously that would have been in his eye a little bit. Easier to get it but still. What are you doing just standing in the middle and swinging punches with him when he’s a top class boxer and he’s got power. It blew my mind how stupid he could be after that was his 47th pro fight, and he was going in there like an amateur.” Early in the opening round, Oliveira did manage to drag Topuria down to the ground but it was short lived success as the former featherweight champion scrambled free from the grappling exchange to get back to the feet again. What perplexed Pimblett most about Oliveira’s game plan was not using the weapons he had available to him that could have given Topuria problems as the shorter, smaller fighter. “The first 20 seconds, he did [kick him] a little bit,” Pimblett said. “Teeped him, leg kicked him, I was thinking you know we could be in for a tough night for Topuria. Then Charles got it once and just started swinging with him but when he was walking out I did go to Graham [Boylan] and say he looks nervous. When Ilia walked out, he was just smiling. I was like that’s going to play a part in this.” While there’s surely blame to go around, Pimblett understands that Oliveira has been through plenty of wars during his illustrious career and that could have played a part in Topuria’s knockout. Pimblett promises that’s not the case with him if he gets the chance to face Topuria next. “That’s the thing, he’s got loads of damage,” Pimblett said about Oliveira. “I’ve never had a fight like that. I want to have a war with someone but I’ve never had one. Never took a sustained amount of damage in my life. He wouldn’t knock me out. He could hit me with his best punch and I’d laugh in his face.” Immediately after the UFC 317 main event ended, Pimblett got in the cage for a faceoff with Topuria as the longtime rivals started setting up a potential fight between them in the future. Pimblett later revealed he’s weighing around 195 pounds currently but he always knew he was going to be a much bigger fighter than Topuria whenever they eventually met. He expects that size advantage is going to work well for him and Pimblett expects to approach Topuria with a much different strategy than Oliveira did this past Saturday night. “I’ve said this before in several interviews, people just think he’d steamroll me, but it’s different when there’s that much size difference,” Pimblett said. “People think I’m not good enough to [go against him] but lad, he’s a midget. “That’s what I said to him, I will finish you, little boy. He’s that much shorter than me, I’m so much wider than him. That plays a part. That’s why people cut weight.”

At UFC 317, Ilia Topuria destroyed Charles Oliveira to capture the UFC lightweight championship, and did so with ease. After picking up his second UFC divisional title, does Topuria now surpass Islam Makhahev as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world today? On an all new edition of Between the Links, the panel discusses the fallout of Topuria’s incredible accomplishment and performance, if he leapfrogs Makhachev, and if a matchup with Paddy Pimblett is the fight the UFC ends up making. Additionally, questions may include Alexandre Pantoja’s sensational title defense against Kai Kara-France, other standout moments from UFC 317, along with topics relating to some of the lingering stories in the world of mixed martial arts. Join MMA Fighting’s Mike Heck and Jed Meshew for a special Q&A edition of the program. Watch the show live at 2 p.m. ET / 11 a.m. PT in the video above. If you missed the show live, you can still watch above, or listen to the podcast version, which can be found below and on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your pods.

Photo by Jordan Mansfield/Comic Relief/Getty Images Jake Paul has threatened to file lawsuits against anybody defaming him and the legitimacy of his boxing career but two of his biggest critics aren’t backing down from taking shots at him. Following a lopsided win over Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. this past weekend, Paul and his business partner Nakisa Bidarian said they are ready to use the legal system to go after detractors alleging that his fights are fixed. The declaration came after veteran talk show host Piers Morgan blasted Paul’s fight with Chavez and said that the YouTuber turned fighter is “killing boxing with this boring staged bullsh*t against older fighters way past their prime.” “After years of letting it slide as just ‘haters being haters,’ I have asked my team to vigorously go after anyone who makes up lies about my boxing career,” Paul wrote in response on Twitter. “Expect to get served you pigs.” Hours later, Morgan addressed Paul’s legal threats alongside Dillon Danis, who is actually embroiled in a lawsuit with Logan Paul’s fiancée Nina Agdal after he posted dozens of photos of her while building towards his boxing match with Jake’s older brother. “What he didn’t like was me casting any kind of suspicious aspersion over the quality of his opponents, even though everyone in the fight game knows, any kind of fight game, that he’s deliberately selecting fights that are not much of a test for him,” Morgan said on his YouTube channel. “If he fought Mike Tyson when Tyson was 22, that’s one thing. Fighting Mike Tyson when he’s 58 and you’re half his age is clearly set up for you to not get knocked out. “I don’t see how he can possibly contradict the fact that he clearly stages fights that are to his obvious benefit. He’s choosing opponents who are not at their peak or way past their peak. They’re either much older or from other disciplines or whatever. He is staging events that are entertaining on a certain level, he’s making a ton of money but the idea that these are doing anything but damaging the integrity of boxing, I think is for the birds.” Morgan using the word “stages” is likely what’s getting under Paul’s skin because that makes it sound like he’s setting up fixed fights meant for him to win. Instead, Morgan insists he’s just talking about Paul handpicking easier fights that almost guarantee he’ll win because he’s not facing anybody that presents a legitimate challenge. During the interview, Morgan rattled off the names of Paul’s opponents and noted that fighters like Tyron Woodley, Nate Diaz and others came from MMA while journeyman fighters such as Andre August and Ryan Bourland were no threat whatsoever. “I think he’s ruining the sport,” Danis said about Paul. “100 percent ruining the sport. I think people are starting to catch on though. It seemed this one no one was really talking about, no one really cared about. I feel like people are just like this is bullshit now. He doesn’t have the kind of shit he had before when he was fighting the MMA guys like ‘oh let’s see if he can win because he’s a Disney star.’ “I think right now we’re just giving him the platform he doesn’t have anymore. You can see by his socials that no one really cares about his fights. I think he’s ruining the sport.” Danis stopped short of saying that Paul was fixing fights to ensure he would win but much like Morgan, he vehemently criticized the 28-year-old boxer for his selection of opponents. He said look no further than Chavez, who entered the fight at 39 years old with two of his past three fights also coming against MMA fighters including a loss to Anderson Silva — an opponent Paul already bested back in 2022. “I don’t want to say it’s rigged because we’re going to get sued here,” Danis said. “I just think Jake is that bad. I don’t think Jake even has the ability to knock out Chavez Jr., who just came out of rehab and has been an addict his whole life, who’s quit on the stool multiple times, he’s a terrible fighter. They picked him because they thought they could probably knock him out and then [Jake] could be like ‘Canelo [Alvarez] didn’t knock him out so I knocked him out.’ That was his whole thinking and I think the fight was harder for him. “In the last couple of rounds, he was getting pieced up. I didn’t really watch the fight because I was watching UFC, what real men watch, and I just saw a couple of highlights at the end that he was getting pieced up. The steroids are starting to get to him. He was getting tired.” Morgan didn’t sound too stressed about facing potential legal action from Paul and his team but more than anything, he just wanted “The Problem Child” to confess that he’s not risking much with the level of competition he’s facing these days. Morgan even joked that given the sudden rivalry between them that Paul might choose him as a future opponent. “I would like him to just accept and acknowledge that he’s not a real boxer having really challenging fights,” Morgan said. “What he is, is somebody who’s latched onto turning boxing into a form of entertainment. That’s what it is. He’s making a ton of money. He should just be more open about it. “I’m in his right age wheelhouse. I’m 60 years old with zero professional boxing experience. So I’m pretty much his perfect target for his next fight.”