Fighters On The Rise 2025 | Part Two

The Penn State product makes his second straight appearance on this list after amassing another pair of victories in his sophomore campaign to move to 4-0 in the UFC and 7-0 overall.

Nickal is one of those fighters that countless people forecasted to be fighting for championship gold almost immediately, forgetting one of the most important facts about mixed martial arts prospects: development takes time.

As great as Nickal was as a collegiate wrestler and as promising as he’s looked thus far, he’s still just seven fights into his career, and still has a long way to go before he’s anywhere near being a finished product or someone that is ready to challenge for a place in the Top 5. He turns 29 early in the new year and will hopefully log another two or three fights in 2025, which would provide additional opportunities to assess his progression and figure out where he truly stands in the middleweight division.

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Beating Paul Craig was a good win — it wasn’t necessarily pretty and he didn’t earn many style points, but he beat a legitimate veteran and did it without issue, which is a big step in the right direction. With a couple more wins over tenured talents in the 185-pound ranks, Nickal could head into 2026 either looking to break into the rankings or closing in on a place in the Top 10, depending on how things shake out.

Kennedy Nzechukwu

There are plenty of folks that likely wrote off Pyfer following his February loss to Jack Hermansson, but for me, the setback had the opposite effect: it made me even more certain that “Bodybagz” would eventually find his way into the Top 10 in the middleweight division.

In his first UFC main event, against an experienced, savvy veteran, Pyfer started well and faded, unable to shift to Plan B after Hermansson began to rally back in the third round. It was a massive learning experience for the Philadelphia-based fighter, and he rebounded in spectacular fashion in June, knocking out Marc-Andre Barriault in just 85 seconds at UFC 303.

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Health has been an issue for Pyfer thus far in his UFC career — he’s constantly battling colds in the late stages of his camps and has been forced to deal with a couple different injuries coming out of fights that have limited him to just four appearances in the last two years. Right now, that feels like the only potential limiting factor for the dangerous 28-year-old.

Pyfer has a complete skill set and scary power, and if he can sort out the health issues and compete with a little greater consistency, he could make a real run. He’s already in that pack of fighters stationed beyond the rankings — the Second 15, if you will — and while “The Joker” proved to be too much of a step up last year, a date with an experienced veteran occupying the same space to begin 2025 would serve as an outstanding opportunity to see where he’s at and how far he might go in the coming years.

Esteban Ribovics

It’s crazy that Silva was the second-best rookie from his own team in 2024, but that’s what happens when you train with the Fighting Nerds and Carlos Prates goes 4-0 while breaking into the welterweight rankings.

Silva actually headed into the dog days of summer ahead of his teammate in the “Rookie of the Year” race after delivering an incredibly impressive two-fight effort in the span of three weeks.

After making quick work of Westin Wilson in his promotional debut in January, Silva became the first person to stop Charles Jourdain with strikes at UFC 303 at the end of June, felling the French-Canadian in the early stages of the second round. Fourteen days later, he rolled into Ball Arena in Denver, up a division, and took on Drew Dober, earning a third-round stoppage win after leaving him with a gnarly gash above his eye courtesy of a slicing elbow.

The 28-year-old hasn’t competed since that win over Dober, but is slated to return to action (and the featherweight division) towards the end of February in a bout with Melsik Baghdasaryan. A fourth consecutive victory would likely merit another step up and give Silva the opportunity to follow Prates and team leader Caio Borralho into the rankings in 2025.

Oumar Sy

The light heavyweight division is slowly adding new depth and intriguing names to its ranks, and Sy is at the forefront of that movement.

Already 2-0 in the UFC after following his debut stoppage win over Tuco Tokkos with a unanimous decision victory over Da Woon Jung in Paris this past September, the 29-year-old is now 11-0 and just scratching the surface of who and what he can become inside the Octagon. Sy’s measurables are outstanding — he’s six-foot-four with an 83-inch reach — and the natural talents he possesses jump off the screen whenever he’s in there, which set him up as a quintessential “let’s see how he develops” type of fighter.

Check out Fighters On The Rise 2025: Part One

The challenge with light heavyweight, however, is that a couple wins get you moving forward at a greater rate than you would at welterweight or lightweight, which means serious tests come quicker than usual.

As such, Sy is slated to face Alonzo Menifield on the March 22 fight card in London, which sends him into the Octagon with a ranked opponent in just his third appearance with the promotion. While Menifield is coming off consecutive defeats, he has a wealth of experience at this level, and a scary combination of power and speed that will surely test the ascending French talent.

Of course, the flipside of the light heavyweight challenge is that athletes can scale the ranks in a shorter time, and if Sy can get by Menifield in London, he could find himself standing across the Octagon from a Top 10 opponent the next time out.

Payton Talbott

Van has been approaching his UFC career like a flyweight Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone, logging six appearances in the last 18 months, forcing his way in to the rankings in the process and cementing his standing as one of the top emerging names in a division that feels primed for change in 2025.

After logging a pair of appearances in 2023, Van made four trips into the Octagon in 2024, opening with a come-from-behind second-round stoppage win over Felipe Bunes on the first card of the year, ending the fight with a brutal body shot. He returned in July, suffering a knockout loss to Charles Johnson in a fight he was winning, then posted consecutive victories over Edgar Chairez and Cody Durden to close out an outstanding campaign.

Already 5-1 in the UFC and 12-2 overall, the native of Myanmar, who lives and trains in Houston, Texas, only turned 23 in October, and has only been fighting professionally for just over three years. He famously said heading into his first couple UFC appearances that he had never really wrestled before, but he showed in his bout with Durden that he’s been working on it diligently, as his takedown defense was largely solid.

And that’s the piece that makes Van such a compelling figure in the flyweight ranks: he’s hyper-athletic, has a strong foundation, and tons of room to grow given that he’s still pretty young. As good as he’s looked thus far — and there have been real flashes of brilliance — imagine what he’ll look like this time next year, when he’s logged another two or three fights against ranked opponents and other skilled competitors?

Do not be surprised if “The Fearless” becomes a Top 5 fixture in the not-too-distant future.

Youssef Zalal