UAE Warriors 72: Chopurov vs McLaren
UAE Warriors returns to Abu Dhabi on Thursday, 23 July 2026 with a bantamweight world title at the centre of the night and a card built around fighters who tend to end things early. The headline question is whether an undefeated champion can be taken into territory he has never had to visit. The co-main asks a different one: what a former champion has left in the building where his rise began.
Main Event — Asaf Chopurov vs Reece McLaren
Champion Asaf “Honey Badger” Chopurov defends the UAE Warriors Bantamweight Championship against Australian challenger Reece “Lightning” McLaren. Chopurov has never lost as a professional. His record stands at 10-0, and nine of those wins have come by finish, divided between four by KO/TKO and five by submission. He is twenty-four, a former IMMAF Junior World Champion, and he has beaten every name UAE Warriors has placed in front of him, most recently retaining the belt with a first-round rear-naked choke.
McLaren brings the deepest experience on the card. A 19-9 veteran and BJJ black belt with more than a decade among the most accomplished names at bantamweight and flyweight, the Filipino-Australian challenged for the ONE Bantamweight World Championship in a five-round fight that defined his career. He made his UAE Warriors debut in late 2025 and won it clearly. At 34, he steps in for a championship that has eluded him across a long career, and he carries the one thing Chopurov has not yet faced: a high-level grappler who can drag him into the deep championship rounds. Nine of Chopurov’s ten wins have ended early, and only once has he gone the distance. When these two meet on the ground in the later rounds, the fight will tell us more about the champion’s ceiling than anything on his record so far.
Co-Main Event — Ali Taleb vs Peter Danesoe
Iraq’s Ali Taleb returns to UAE Warriors for the first time in roughly four years, and he returns to the promotion where he became a champion. In July 2022 he stopped Vinicius Oliveira in the third round at UAE Warriors 30 to claim the UAE Warriors Bantamweight title. Oliveira has since signed with the UFC and climbed into the top twelve of its bantamweight rankings, which has only added weight to that win. Taleb left for PFL, won the inaugural PFL MENA Bantamweight Championship with a first-round knockout and a $100,000 prize, and is the only fighter to have held both belts. He comes back at 12-2, fighting out of Sweden, with 83% of his wins by finish and a record no opponent has ever stopped. His UAE Warriors mark stands at 5-0.
Across from him stands Thailand’s Peter “The Asian Viking” Danesoe, who does not fight like a man planning to reach the scorecards. He is 9-4 with an 89% finish rate across his wins, trains at Bangtao Muay Thai and MMA in Phuket, and won his UAE Warriors debut by first-round TKO in just over a minute. His flying-knee finish on Road to UFC traveled well beyond the usual MMA audience. Every one of his career finishes has come in the opening round. When two fighters who close at this rate share fifteen minutes in a bantamweight cage, the answer tends to arrive quickly, and Taleb’s homecoming rests on getting it right.
Through the Card
The bantamweight theme runs deep, and two of the division’s prospects carry the most recognisable training pedigree in the sport. Kurban Zaynukov arrives at 5-0 out of Team Nurmagomedov in St. Petersburg, with no fight ever reaching a scorecard. His finishes span three submission techniques and a spinning-wheel-kick TKO, a range that points to a broad fighting education rather than a single preferred path. He meets fellow unbeaten Pavel Andrusca, 7-0, in a clash of perfect records and the most tested opponent Zaynukov has faced.
The flyweight division brings a champion in his promotional debut. Brazil’s Paulo Victor, the reigning Shooto Brasil Super-Flyweight Champion, arrives at 10-1 on a six-fight winning streak with 80% of his wins by finish. He was born in Cruzeiro do Sul in the western Amazon, one of the most remote cities in Brazil, and trains out of Nova União in Rio de Janeiro. He faces Sweden’s Abdurahman Nasrutdinov, who fights out of Allstars Training Center in Stockholm and is 5-1 with a 100% finish rate. Nasrutdinov has won four straight by stoppage since the only loss of his career, and opened his UAE Warriors account with a first-round knockout. Neither man tends to leave the result to the judges.
Lightweight offers a clean contrast in approach. France’s Yazid “Juggernaut” Chouchane is a fourteen-year veteran and 2023 PFL Europe finalist at 11-5, with nine of his eleven wins by decision and a 4-1 record inside UAE Warriors that includes an appearance in the first Arabia Lightweight title fight. Across from him, Turkey’s Ramazan Ragimov is unbeaten at 7-0, 3-0 in the promotion, and has just moved up to lightweight. Every one of Ragimov’s wins has come over an opponent carrying a winning record into the cage. The veteran’s staying power meets the prospect’s momentum.
A catchweight bout adds the credentials of Shamidkhan Magomedov, an 11-1 fighter with a 91% finish rate who won the LFA Welterweight Championship across an interim title, a defence, and a unification, all by finish. A two-time Russian national wrestling champion, he opened his UAE Warriors run with a 53-second head-kick knockout that earned Knockout of the Night. He meets Serbia’s Evgeny “The General” Morozov, 11-2.
The full card runs live from Space42 Arena in Abu Dhabi and live on UFC Fight Pass.
