PFL lightweight champion Usman Nurmagomedov has not left the promotion for the UFC … at least not yet.
It’s been just under three weeks since Nurmagomedov fought out the last fight on his PFL contract against Archie Colgan at PFL New York, finishing his opponent with strikes in the first round. Speculation has abounded for months that Usman would jump to the UFC once his current deal with the underdog promotion was up, and that speculation has been in overdrive since.
At UFC 330, Usman Nurmagomedov
was even shown on the crowd cam with the broadcast describing him as the final Bellator lightweight champion. It’s just another sign that the promotion is eager to get their hands on Usman, who welterweight champ Islam Makhachev has said will be the next UFC lightweight champion from Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov’s stable of fighters.
If that’s going to happen, it hasn’t happened yet. In a recent interview on the Ariel Helwani show, PFL CEO John Martin cleared up Usman’s status.
“There is so much misinformation,” Martin said. “The UFC has not given him an offer. They’re not legally allowed to. We have an exclusive negotiating period. We’re putting together an offer, and we’re going to sit down and talk with them. I think our offer will be competitive. It’s really up to him. We would love to have him. We would love to keep him.”
“It’s a little bit funny,” Martin added. “I started saying a year ago, ‘This guy is one of the best lightweights in the world,’ and I think people were almost mocking me. The original speculation was that he wouldn’t even be top 15 in the UFC.”
“Now I find it kind of ironic that he is being paraded around like he’s the salvation of mixed martial arts. I mean, he’s a terrific talent, and we would love to keep him and work with him. We’d love for him to be a meaningful part of our promotion. If he chooses that that’s not the path he wants to take, then we have a lot of great fighters here, and it’s a dynamic ecosystem.”
Usman Nurmagomedov has headlined all four PFL cards he’s been on since the promotion swallowed Bellator back in 2024 and is one of the cornerstone fighters on the organization’s roster. He’s reportedly paid very well by PFL, and Usman’s manager has said they won’t take a pay cut to jump to the UFC.
The UFC has been known to be stingy when it comes to paying fighters from other orgs, but we have no doubt they’ll put forward a tantalizing offer for Usman, if only to kick the legs out from under PFL as they prepare for a 2027 merging with MVP Promotions.
Usman Nurmagomedov is 22-0-1 with the one blemish on his record a win against Brent Primus in 2023 that was overturned to No Contest after Usman failed a drug test for an unnamed substance that his team claims was in a prescribed medication.
