You couldn’t get enough of them last year, and so we’re bringing them back — the 2025 MITHY (Man in the Hat Year-end) Awards, recognizing the fighters and events that shaped the year in MMA in the most important categories.
Cool?
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All right, here goes nothing.
The Best Walkout We Had to See
Listen, there were reassurances in the air that Khamzat Chimaev would be there front and center for his middleweight title fight with Dricus du Plessis at UFC 319, but until we heard the music hit the pipes, all bets were off. He was unable to fight in the States in previous years, so we just had to hope that his visa issues — which were discussed frequently, but never really discussed — had been resolved.
With Dana White and Donald Trump being besties, we assumed a good many of those issues would magically go away.
Turns out they did. When Khamzat finally made that walk in Chicago, there was a relief to it, though … what was that song? What my ear heard was a kind of traditional Caucasus hillside music, the riparian sounds of the old country, connecting Khamzat back to his Chechen roots. In reality, it was just a coldblooded acoustic number meant to juxtapose the gentle sensibilities of an otherwise beastly man.
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We got to see that for ourselves up close and personal.
Bringer of Ruthless Vibes
Ilia Topuria showed up for his appointment against Charles Oliveira in June like the mysterious assassin who shows up to carry out a job in the movies. He was slick on the mic, no-nonsense in demeanor and completely unnerving in his mission. That he went out there and smoked Oliveira in the first round at UFC 317 was testament to the kind of ruthless cool we’re dealing in.
But he gets the runner-up in this category, solely because Valentina Shevchenko exists. It wasn’t just that a good many pundits saw Weili Zhang’s move to flyweight as a kind of coronation for the pound-for-pound best going, it was that Shevchenko was 37 years old. It was that she had been competing professionally for more than half her life, and time catches up to everyone. We were looking past her because of the logistics accompanying her to the cage.
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Yet all week Valentina was a conductress in the murder business. She wore sunglasses to all the media events, the kind that people with cataracts wear. She never flinched all week because she knew what we didn’t. Namely, that she is where ambitious dreams go to get squashed. The way she beat down Zhang isn’t something we’ll soon forget. It was merciless. Mean. A reminder that there can only be one queen.
The Nate Landwehr “Never Say Die” Award
This category was created last year as a show of heart award for a fighter who comes back after facing serious adversity, as Nate Landwehr did against David Onama in their 2022 classic. But it doesn’t have to be for a specific fight. It can also be for a career for somebody we’d long chalked up for dead.
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Daukaus’ first run in the UFC lasted seven fights between 2020-22, and honestly nobody noticed when he got his pink slip. He was 2-4-1 through the masked times. Yet instead of becoming a footnote in UFC history, Daukaus — a Philadelphia middleweight with bleached-blond hair — went back to the local theater and won the Cage Fury FC 185-pound title. He defended it, too, and kept posting on his social media that he would make the most of his second chance, if the UFC would but be so good to give him one.
It came in the form of a short-notice fight against the red-hot Michel Pereira some 7,500 miles from home in Shanghai. Let’s face it, this was a certain doom situation. Yet Daukaus didn’t hesitate. He made the trek, scored a 43-second upset of Pereira, snatched all the mojo in the room, and smuggled out $50,000 in bonus money. If that weren’t enough, Daukaus gave a nice encore against Gerald Meerschaert at UFC 322 in November, with a 50-second submission.
In just 93 seconds of total fight time, Kyle Daukaus became a big-time story in 2025. Talk about a resurrection.
This man had himself a year.
(Jeff Bottari via Getty Images)
Greatest Upset by an Underdog Nobody Saw Coming
If you’d mentioned the name Ethyn Ewing to anybody before Nov. 15, old heads might’ve thought you were referring to a nephew of JR’s from the nighttime soap, “Dallas.” Nobody had heard of this dude, even though he’d beat a guy named Billy Brand just a week earlier with Urijah Faber’s promotion on the other coast.
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With Malcolm Wellmaker positioning himself as the breakout fighter of 2025 — having already parlayed his Contender Series breakthrough with back-to-back explosive knockouts of Cameron Saaiman and Kris Moutinho — UFC 322 was supposed to be the great final act. Wellmaker was originally booked to face Serhiy Sidey, who later became Cody Haddon. Neither of those warm bodies could make the appointment in the end, so the UFC tapped in Ewing — a construction worker by day, who rolled into New York with a few hours to spare.
Dead man walking, right?
Shooooot. Ewing didn’t just thwart Wellmaker. He rendered him helpless. He pieced him up on the feet and used his wrestling, timing out beautifully each takedown. By the second round, people were wondering if Wellmaker would ever come to life. By the third, people were tearing up their parlays. And by the end of the fight, everyone knew who Ethyn Ewing was. Talk about being ready for the moment.
He became an instant cult classic.
Worst Foul
It has to be Ciryl Gane’s eye-poke of Tom Aspinall. After all the months navigating through the heavyweight saga to unify the heavyweight title — a full 15 months of waiting and training and biding his time — Aspinall had his undisputed moment dashed by a couple of extended French fingers, received deep into the sockets. Aspinall couldn’t continue. The fight was rendered a “no contest.” And now a rematch is on the horizon in 2026, once Aspinall is cleared to fight again.
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If Aspinall is cleared to fight again.
Worst Fowl
It has to be the man who used a mallard as his avatar on social media, Jon Jones. We can sugarcoat it however we want, but the truth is he ducked Tom Aspinall. He gave up his belt and retired to take the burden of unifying the title off his plate, only to announce he was coming back a couple of weeks later when the White House card became a serious thing for 2026. He wanted nothing to do with Aspinall. He protected his legacy by using the universal language of the pond.
Quack, quack, quack.
If Jones understands what a bad look it all was for him in 2025, he will never let on, though. He’s the proudest duck since Bo Nix.
As a wise man once said, chickens can’t be goats.
(KENA BETANCUR via Getty Images)
Worst Favorite that Lost
It was weird seeing Bo Nickal lose to Reinier de Ridder, especially in a corn-fed wrestling epicenter like Iowa. Yet that’s what happened. Nickal was an astronomical BetMGM favorite against Val Woodburn, Cody Brundage and Paul Craig, and he prevailed in all three fights easily (though big respect to the Scot, who at least made it to the scorecards).
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For the de Ridder fight, Nickal’s -340 betting line felt like a coin flip by comparison.
The thing is, de Ridder felt like he could present some trouble, though the consensus was that Nickal — who’d been in a thousand competitions at Penn State and beyond in wrestling — would find a way. He didn’t. He couldn’t get the wrestling going, as de Ridder proved to be a very tough object to move off his moorings. And he couldn’t survive on the feet, as de Ridder out-struck Nickal by a near 4-to-1 margin. The end came in the second round after a wicked knee to the body. Nickal took his first professional loss, and his public took home a reminder — there are levels to the game.
Before that fight people were wondering how Nickal would hold up against Chimaev. Some people wanted to see him expedited to the top, thinking he was ready. Crazy how delusions work.
In the end, maybe what happened in Des Moines was exactly what he needed. Nickal came back and scored a monster head-kick knockout of Rodolfo Vieira at UFC 322.
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Most Gruesome Cut
There was a soldier from the Civil War named Jacob Miller, famous among war buffs for walking around for many years postbellum with a bullet hole in his head. He took a shot at Chickamauga right between the eyes and somehow lived to tell the tale. With the bullet-sized dent visible to anyone who saw him in the intervening years, he became a walking testament to the brutality of war.
The cut Jan Blachowicz received against Bogdan Guskov wasn’t quite that dramatic, but it left an immediate impression as to the stupid nature of light heavyweight fighting. Blachowicz’s left eye looked like it had received a bullet, as it was a gnarly gash that fileted to the bone. Blachowicz posted it as a point of pride (or as a matter of fact) on social media, leaving some of us to wonder what he was thinking to share such a gruesome sight?
Though it could be said that the answer to that was right there in the picture. The cut was deep enough to see everything in his mind.
No, I’m not posting the cut here, you sickos.
(Jeff Bottari via Getty Images)
Funniest Fighter
Merab Dvalishvili.
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Nobody loves to make little videos before and after fights like Merab. He is always around women in these videos or treating an imitation Sean O’Malley like a ragdoll. Back in the day he’d jump headfirst into frozen lakes. These days he’s a little safer.
With his rivalry against Petr Yan now in full bloom, here’s expecting Merab to become a full-blown producer of diss-track style short films in 2026.
Most Serious Fighter
Arman Tsarukyan.
Whenever I see Tsarukyan, with his hair brushed neatly to one side like a good lad, for some reason I think of the Pink Floyd lyric, “How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?”
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It always feels that somebody is reprimanding Arman. And it always feels like he’s a little blue about it. The fact that he has money only adds to this air of sulkiness. He’s a little like the Veruca Salt of MMA, wanting for nothing other than a title shot, and the fact that he can’t get one is … well … let’s just say there’s something in his features that suggest the onset of a tantrum.
That hair though? Impressive.
(Chris Unger via Getty Images)
Not sure about you, but that footage of Facebook zillionaire Mark Zuckerberg taking down Merab Dvalishvili and giving him the works struck me as a little disingenuous. For one thing, I’ve seen Merab in there against more seasoned cage fighters, like Cory Sandhagen, for instance, and even Sean O’Malley, and they couldn’t move him around like Zuck did. Merab isn’t one to take physical dictation like that, which is why it was surprising.
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And for another thing, Zuckerberg didn’t seem to be selling out to get into these advantageous positions. I don’t know, something about it doesn’t sit right. I had a similar feeling back when Ramzan Kadyrov manhandled Khamzat Chimaev in a sparring session a couple of years back. I guess certain guys out there have these UFC champ’s numbers, though I’m not sold on that assessment 100%. I’m just saying it’s possible the fighters are going light on these moguls and evil dictators.
Greatest Fib Told in 2025
Among the many fibs told in 2025 — that Arman Tsarukyan would get a title shot with a win against Dan Hooker, for instance, or that Isaac Dulgarian would give it his best effort against Yadier del Valle — perhaps Dana White’s version of what happened with Francis Ngannou takes the cake. In his first telling, which was to Andrew Schultz, he was grabbed by the collar and pushed by Ngannou, who was demanding an end of the night bonus after his fight with Stipe Miocic.
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In his revised telling, which was with The MacLife, Dana said Ngannou placed his hand on his chest, but that there weren’t any threats being issued. In any case, we’re either being told too much or nothing, yet with Dana the skews are a little hard to follow.
The bottom line: He doesn’t want to do business with Ngannou again, and that much can be taken at face value.
Worst Case of Decking the Halls with Blue Balls
Last year we wanted to see Jon Jones against Aspinall. In years previous, it was Jones versus Ngannou. We got none of those. The UFC has left the public hanging when it comes to Dana White’s all-time GOAT.
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But this year’s blue balls award goes to a couple of guys the UFC has treated like proverbial stepchildren: Movsar Evloev and Lerone Murphy. Both have more than earned their title shots at featherweight. Both have been cast aside as Alexander Volkanovski defends the title against Diego Lopes again. Both have learned the hard way that the meritocracy is just fancy word for “LOL!”
Lerone Murphy has never lost and is 9-0-1 in the UFC. He is coming off a massive first-round knockout against Aaron Pico. Movsar has never lost and is 9-0 in the UFC. One of his victories came against Diego Lopes, who is now fighting for the belt a second time.
The four words that we love to say in MMA circles comes flooding back to me now at the end of 2025: Make it make sense!
Until it does, those balls remain blue.
