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Sergio Pettis | Lucas Noonan, Bellator MMA Sergio Pettis and Raufeon Stots are putting their friendship aside for fight night. The former Bellator bantamweight titleholders are set to face off at the PFL’s June 27 event, which takes place at Wintrust Arena in Chicago. Pettis vs. Stots is being billed as a showcase bout and opens the main card, which features semifinal bouts in the light heavyweight and middleweight tournaments. See Thursday’s announcement below. : Your #PFLWorldTournament 7️⃣Fight Card! Middleweight, Light Heavyweight & Heavyweight 2025 PFL World Tournament Semi-Finals are set to bring fireworks in Chicago! Get your tickets for June 27th! ️https://t.co/wJp6Rrk0dx pic.twitter.com/zu2AxusJUc— PFL (@PFLMMA) May 15, 2025 Pettis (23-7) looks to bounce back from a rare losing streak as he enters his next fight with consecutive defeats at the hands of Kyoji Horiguchi and Patchy Mix. Prior to this slump, Pettis won three straight bantamweight championship bouts, taking it from Juan Archuleta and then knocking out Kyoji Horiguchi and outpointing Patricio Pitbull to prevent him from becoming a three-division champion. He dropped the title to Patchy Mix at Bellator 301 and then lost a rematch to Horiguchi at a RIZIN event this past June. Stots (21-2) has won two straight since suffering his own championship loss to Mix. The former interim titleholder has scored back-to-back wins over Marcos Breno and longtime rival Danny Sabatello. The June 27 PFL event is headlined by Fabian Edwards fighting Josh Silveira in a middleweight semifinal bout, while light heavyweight competitors Phil Davis and Sullivan Cauley meet in the co-main event. See the updated lineup below, which also features heavyweight semifinal bouts on the preliminary portion of the card. Main Card (ESPN, ESPN+ at 10:30 p.m. ET) Fabian Edwards vs. Josh Silveira Phil Davis vs. Sullivan Cauley Dalton Rosta vs. Aaron Jeffery Antonio Carlos Junior vs. Simeon Powell Sergio Pettis vs. Raufeon Stots Preliminary Card (ESPN+ at 7:30 p.m. ET) Valentin Moldavsky vs. Alexandr Romanov Biaggio Ali Walsh vs. Ronnie Gibbs Oleg Popov vs. Rodrigo Nascimento Sergey Bilostenniy vs. Karl Williams Rafael Xavier vs. Karl Albrektsson Jordan Newman vs. Khalid Murtazaliev

Khamzat Chimaev | Photo by Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC Khamzat Chimaev is favored to win his first UFC title. On Tuesday, UFC CEO Dana White announced that Chimaev will challenge Dricus du Plessis for the middleweight title in the main event of UFC 319, which takes place Aug. 16 at United Center in Chicago. According to FanDuel, the challenger opens as a nearly two-to-one favorite at -194, while the comeback on the middleweight champ du Plessis is +150. Implied odds give Chimaev a 66 percent chance of winning the fight. A $100 wager on Chimaev returns $151.55, while the same wager on du Plessis returns $250. Chimaev is coming off of the most impressive performance of his career, submitting Robert Whittaker in the first round of the UFC 308 co-main event this past October in Abu Dhabi. It was the first appearance in over a year for “Borz,” and just his third fight since September 2022, but it was enough to earn Chimaev his long-awaited championship opportunity. Du Plessis captured the title with a decision win against Sean Strickland at UFC 297 in January 2024 and has since defended the belt twice with a stoppage win over Israel Adesanya at UFC 305 this past August, and a lopsided decision win in a rematch with Strickland at UFC 312 in February.

Cory Sandhagen and Deiveson Figueiredo | Photo by Randy Thomas/Getty Images Deiveson Figueiredo suffered a nasty knee injury in his loss to Cory Sandhagen at UFC Des Moines, but the two-time flyweight champion won’t have to undergo surgery to repair the damage done. On Thursday, Figueiredo’s manager Alex Davis told MMA Fighting that the Brazilian suffered a tear in the anterolateral ligament in his knee. Fortunately for the fighter, the injury wasn’t severe enough to require him to go under the knife. Instead, Figueiredo just needs to go through physical therapy, which he has already started, and rest the knee as he recovers. The injury occurred in the second round when Sandhagen sat up during a grappling exchange. As Sandhagen shifted forward, his legs were tangled up with Figueiredo, who immediately grimaced from pain in his knee. A second later, Figueiredo was tapping out and the fight was stopped with Sandhagen earning the victory by TKO due to an injury. “It’s very painful,” Davis told MMA Fighting about the kind of knee injury Figueiredo suffered. “But he did not get finished. It was just a freak accident.” Replays showed Figueiredo’s knee seemingly popping when Sandhagen sat up from the grappling exchange and the pained look on his face was undeniable. Figueiredo was eventually helped out of the octagon before returning home to Brazil where he sought medical treatment. With a diagnosis that allows him to avoid surgery, Figueiredo is “already asking to fight again” with hopes he’ll be able to return to the gym sooner rather than later. It was an unfortunate ending to the fight after Figueiredo hoped to get back on track when he faced Sandhagen in the UFC’s return to Iowa. The loss Figueiredo was his second straight after earning three impressive wins in a row following a move from flyweight up to bantamweight. While there’s no exact timeline on when Figueiredo might book another fight, Davis says he’s anxious to get back to work once his knee heals and he expects to hit the ground running.

Tainara Lisboa | Photo by Amy Kaplan/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images For the first time in nearly three years, Tainara Lisboa finally enters a UFC cage this weekend. Lisboa faces the younger Luana Santos in the preliminary portion of UFC Vegas 106 for her first match since suffering a serious left knee injury in late 2023. She beat late-notice replacement Ravena Oliveira at the UFC APEX despite the injury, and went straight to surgery for a knee cartilage reconstruction. “It was very difficult,” Lisboa told MMA Fighting. “I could list the many difficulties I’ve faced, but the idea of not being able to do what I’ve done my entire life was the hardest part. This injury left me close to retiring. It was a test surgery. The doctor made it pretty clear that it could be successful or not. “Imagine going that whole process after finally arriving in the UFC and putting on two good performances. You’re living the dream, and all of a sudden you have no idea if you’re going to come back. And if I do go back, am I the same Tainara? Can I become the best Tainara I can be? That was very complicated.” Lisboa, 34, underwent surgery on the first day of December 2023, six weeks after improving to 2-0 in the UFC with wins over Oliveira and Jessica-Rose Clark. The recovery process caused a leg thigh muscle atrophy of 2.3 inches. The bantamweight veteran jumped up to 168 pounds before going back to the mats and needed a full year to finally be able to inform the UFC she was ready to start a camp. Tainara Lisboa had surgery in December 2023 “I couldn’t walk up stairs, for example,” Lisboa said. “I learned how to walk again. There were moments I felt that was the end of the line for me, but I had a great team around me. Every time I was down, they picked me back up again. I started the toughest camp of my life on Dec. 2, 2023 not knowing the end result.” Lisboa wasn’t able to train in the gym, and that’s when a call from the promotion to work as a color-commentator came to the rescue. Lisboa was invited to commentate LFA and UFC shows on the Brazilian version of UFC Fight Pass, and that helped her get through difficult times and “feel part of the UFC”. “To live that other side and learn, and still feel alive in fights, that was an incredible experience,” Lisboa said. “I plan on studying more and more to continue doing that. I think I’m kind of good at it. I breath fighting since I was 13, so to watch and talk about fights is something I do well.” Tainara Lisboa works for UFC Fight Pass It also helped Lisboa improve as a fighter, she said, “because you study other athletes that weren’t on your radar, like men and other weight classes you don’t watch that much, and you start to see things and other techniques. I’m constantly learning.” Lisboa enters Saturday riding a five-fight winning streak that dates back to 2021. On the other side, Santos returns to 135 pounds after a flyweight loss to Casey O’Neill, her first defeat in the octagon. “I think it’s going to be a very interesting fight,” Lisboa said. “Luana is very young and had great numbers. We have similar numbers and we both like to finish fights before the final round. Even though the age gap is gigantic, we both bring similar intention to the cage.” Lisboa believes that being nine years older than her opponent gives her the edge experience-wise. And not just that. “Few things scare you after you go through hell,” Lisboa said. “Being back already is an enormous victory alone. This fight is not about who’s on the other side. It’s about myself, it’s about everything I went through and being able to return to the world’s biggest organization. Being able to return to work and show I’m fine, that my knee is alright. People have that doubt. And I’m sure I’ll face the best Luana there’s ever been because she’s also worked hard for that, she has her dreams. I’ve prepared for her best version.”

Ilia Topuria | Photo by Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC Ilia Topuria is heavily favored to become the UFC’s next two-division world champ. Earlier this week, UFC CEO Dana White announced Islam Makhachev is vacating the lightweight title to challenge Jack Della Maddalena for the welterweight title later this year, and that Topuria will face former champ Charles Oliveira for the vacant belt in the main event of UFC 317 on June 28 in Las Vegas. According to FanDuel, Topuria opened as a massive -400 favorite to become the next UFC lightweight champ. The comeback on Oliveira is +285. That gives Topuria an 80 percent chance of winning per implied odds. A $100 bet on Topuria yields a return of $125, while the same bet on Oliveira yields $385. Topuria vacated his featherweight title this past February after knocking out Max Holloway in the main event of UFC 308 in October in his lone title defense. “El Matador” captured the championship with a devastating knockout of Alexander Volkanovski eight months prior at UFC 298. Topuria looks to win a second divisional title in just his ninth octagon appearance. Oliveira has the opportunity to become a two-time lightweight champion. “Du Bronx” captured the title with a stoppage win over Michael Chandler in May 2021 at UFC 262, and then stopped Dustin Poirier in December 2021 at UFC 269. Oliveira was later stripped of his title after missing weight for a defense against Justin Gaethje (he went on to defeat Gaethje, but was not eligible to regain his belt), and was finished by Makhachev at UFC 280 for a vacant title. Since then, Oliveira is 2-1 in the octagon with a second win over Chandler, a stoppage of Beneil Dariush, and a decision loss to Arman Tsarukyan.