It was a bizarre year for MMA. Champions we never expected to fall fell, and new stars we never saw coming fought their way to the forefront, emerging as potential major players as the calendar turns to 2026. Yet compared to years past, 2025 was also a year that left many fans scratching their heads about what’s on the horizon.
With more eyes on the sport than ever before, breaking through and making a name for oneself should, theoretically, be easier than it’s ever been. And while that wasn’t quite the case more often than it was, those who ultimately stood out at least did so in monumental ways.
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These are Uncrowned’s biggest breakthrough fighters of 2025.
1. Joshua Van
It didn’t happen how he envisioned, but Joshua Van won UFC flyweight gold to close out his meteoric year.
Fight, fight, fight and fight some more. The 24-year-old Myanmar native once again embodied that concept at a ridiculous rate in 2025. Van has already fought 10 times in the UFC since his June 2023 debut, and four of those came this past year — a year that began with Van watching the top 15 from the outside looking in.
A clearly talented boxer from the jump, Van started his 2025 campaign by styling on Rei Tsuruya in March and then Bruno Gustavo da Silva in early June. This feels strange to say, but you could entirely disregard Van’s title win over Alexandre Pantoja and he’d still have the strongest case for Breakthrough Fighter of the Year. (Considering that win came via a 26-second injury, it’s fair to disregard it, too.) Because the fight that earned Van a title shot is what the MMA world remembers most from his past 12 months.
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You’ll have to wait and see whether Van vs. Brandon Royval was Uncrowned’s Fight of the Year, but nonetheless it was a certified banger of the highest order. A rollercoaster of violence that saw an underdog upstart launch into title contention against a gritty one-time challenger just three weeks after Van’s da Silva win. Royval was no stranger to fighting fire with fire, having accruing multiple Fight of the Night bonuses by that point, but Van met him in the middle and braved the flames to score the upset.
Years like Van’s 2025 are literally what fighters dream of. And for that, he is Uncrowned’s 2025 Breakthrough Fighter of the Year.
Michael Morales could very well be the future of the welterweight division.
(Jeff Bottari via Getty Images)
2. Michael Morales
That Michael Morales is a pretty big deal in Ecuador, huh?
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UFC 322 at Madison Square Garden was practically the Morales show throughout fight week. The 26-year-old striking sensation felt like the welterweight division’s next big thing, garnering nonstop media attention from his home country. That was only outside the Octagon, though. What Morales did inside it was even more impressive.
Tasked with stopping top-ranked contender Sean Brady, Morales appeared to be facing one of his stiffest possible challenges before a potential title shot. Then the fight started, and that wasn’t the case at all.
Needing less than four minutes to handle his business, Morales battered Brady from pillar to post, scoring the most impressive win of his career. The win launched Morales to the forefront of the contender line after starting the year at the bottom of the top 15. It also marked Morales’ third consecutive Performance of the Night bonus after already knocking out Gilbert Burns and Neil Magny, further cementing Morales as a welterweight to fear in 2026.
Waldo Cortes-Acosta was one of the few bright spots at heavyweight in 2025.
(IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect / Reuters)
3. Waldo Cortes-Acosta
Heavyweight is in a painfully dreadful state.
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Just don’t tell that to “Salsa Boy” Waldo Cortes-Acosta. You may not have realized it because of how bad the division was in 2025, but Cortes-Acosta actually fought five times, winning four. It all began with a knockout of former light heavyweight contender Ryan Spann in March, before a June unanimous decision over Serghei Spivac ascended him up the rankings.
Although Cortes-Acosta’s earlier performances were largely forgettable, including his loss to Sergei Pavlovich in August that followed, his wins to close out 2025 wiped away any stench from his year’s first half.
In one of the weirder moments of the year, Cortes-Acosta came back from the brink of defeat against former PFL champion Ante Delija in early November. The win was timely — an eye-poke controversy immediately following the mother of all eye-poke controversies — but Cortes-Acosta somehow battled through to score a finish. He earned a performance bonus for his efforts, then added another only three weeks later when he traveled to Qatar on just a couple of days’ notice, as Cortes-Acosta put Shamil Gaziev away in less than 90 seconds, earning himself a big fight with Derrick Lewis to start 2026.
Believe it or not, “Salsa Boy” could very well be one win away from a title shot with how he ended 2025.
Quillan Salkilld delivered one of the nastiest knockouts of the year.
(Chris Unger via Getty Images)
4. Quillan Salkilld
Lightweight’s Quillan Salkilld was arguably the definition of breaking through in 2025.
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A Contender Series alum who wasn’t overly popping off on anyone’s radar, Salkilld started his UFC rookie year in perfect fashion. Matched against Anshul Jubli in February, a beautiful right cross connected only 19 seconds into the fight, putting the Indian to sleep. It was fast, violent — and a sign of things to come.
Salkilld, 25, displayed more of his overall game in his sophomore appearance in June, going the distance with Yanal Ashmouz to win a unanimous decision. With two wins down, Salkilld had one more to claim — and boy, did he ever.
It was a relatively large leap in competition for Salkilld, going from Ashmouz to the veteran Nasrat Haqparast at UFC 321 in October. Admittedly, Salkilld started the fight terribly too, shooting so far out that his takedowns could be seen from the block over. But it didn’t matter. One pinpoint head kick was all it took to brutally disconnect Haqparast from his senses. To call it a Knockout of the Year contender is an understatement — head kicks don’t get much cleaner than Salkilld’s last win of 2025.
Kevin Vallejos might be a future contender if he carries his momentum over to 2026.
(Jeff Bottari via Getty Images)
5. Kevin Vallejos
Much like Salkilld, Kevin Vallejos followed a nearly identical trajectory to start his UFC career.
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The promising 24-year-old featherweight contender wasted no time racking up big wins in 2025. In his March debut, Vallejos scored a nasty knockout of Seung Woo Choi, which he followed up by going the distance against Danny Silva in August.
But Vallejos wasn’t done there.
In his third fight of the year, matched with a mainstay of the featherweight ranks, it was sink or swim — and Vallejos very much did the latter. In a year of “spinning s***,” Vallejos decided to contribute to the collective highlight reel, finishing Giga Chikadze with a brutal spinning back fist at UFC Vegas 112.
The future appears to be now for plenty of talent entering 2026, and Vallejos was a bright example.
