Athletes
The Newcomers | 2025 UFC.com Awards
A Banner Crop Of First-Year Talents Resulted In A Close Race For Top Rookie
Coming into this year, you could tell it was going to be a good year as far as first-year talents were concerned because the graduating class from Season 8 of Dana White’s Contender Series looked full of promise, with a couple of those athletes impressing towards the end of 2024. Combined with the usual collection of new signees that show up and show out, you got the sense 2025 was going to be special, and yet it still managed to exceed expectations.
In total, 15 different athletes received votes, including one athlete from the first event of the year and one from the last, and when you factor in that competitors like Fatima Kline and Mansur-Abdul Malik were ineligible because they each made an appearance in 2024, it makes those totals even more impressive.
For those curious about the process, our seven-person panel was asked to submit their top five in each of the categories — newcomer, submission, knockout, fights, and fighter — with points from 5 to 1 awarded for first-place, second-place, third-place votes, et cetera until all the votes were in and everything was tallied.
And so, without any further ado, let’s kick off our year-end awards with a look at the newcomers that impressed us the most in 2025.
1 – Quillan Salkilld
The Perth man came out of the gates strong in his rookie campaign, debuting at UFC 312 in Sydney with a 19-second knockout win over Anshul Jubli and followed it up with a gritty unanimous decision win over Yanal Ashmouz in June.
But the first-year class was strong, and Salkilld couldn’t crack the Top 5 at the midway point of the year, landing in our Others Receiving Votes section. So what got him from outside the Top 5 to standing atop the podium? In October, the Luistro Combat Academy representative took a short-notice fight with Nasrat Haqparast in Abu Dhabi, rolled into Etihad Arena, and chalked the talented lightweight mainstay with a crisp head kick at the literal midway point of the opening round.
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Three starts, three wins, two first-round finishes, and two bonuses while putting yourself on the cusp of cracking the rankings in one of the deepest, most competitive divisions going, is an outstanding way to kick off your UFC career.
2 – Ateba Gautier
Gautier also landed in the ORV section of our mid-year check-in after sparking Jose Daniel Medina at the February Fight Night event in Mexico City to begin his time as a UFC middleweight.
Ateba Gautier Knocks Out Jose Daniel Medina In The First Round | UFC Mexico
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Ateba Gautier Knocks Out Jose Daniel Medina In The First Round | UFC Mexico
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In the second half of the year, the physically imposing and still developing native of Cameroon added first-round stoppage wins over Robert Valentin and Tre’ston Vines, dispatching each with punishing ease to establish himself as one of the top freshmen in this year’s class.
Now here’s the scary part: Gautier is only 23 years old, still developing as a fighter, and is the first to recognize that he has a lot of development still ahead of him. The Manchester Top Team man could become an absolute force down the road.
3 – Kevin Vallejos
Can you call it recency bias when someone delivers a Knockout of the Year caliber effort in the penultimate fight of 2025, and it helps catapult them to the bronze medal spot on the podium?
Vallejos was already in the running for a spot in the upper tier of first-year talents heading into his clash with Giga Chikadze on last weekend’s final event of the calendar, having collected a first-round stoppage win over SeungWoo Choi in his debut and edged out Danny Silva in a competitive sophomore showing. Had he simply beaten the Georgian veteran on the scorecards and moved to 3-0 while earning a spot on the Top 15, he probably still would have made this collection.
But Vallejos put a stamp on things by finishing Chikadze with a gnarly spinning back fist, hitting him with a torrent of rapid-fire follow-ups as he fell to the canvas. The Argentine — who turned 24 on December 8 — was one of the most highly regarded members of the rookie class coming off Season 8 of Dana White’s Contender Series and made good on that advanced billing in Year One.
And like with everyone on this list, none of us can wait to see what comes next.
4 – David Martinez
Here’s how you know this year’s rookie class was incredibly special: Martinez went 2-0 and sits at No. 10 in the bantamweight rankings, and yet he missed the podium because there legitimately (in our opinions at least) were three other first-year fighters that had better overall years.
The 27-year-old opened his campaign with a first-round stoppage win over Saimon Oliveira at home in Mexico City that pushed his overall winning streak to eight, but his breakthrough moment came several months later at Noche UFC in San Antonio, when he jumped at the chance to step in opposite divisional stalwart Rob Font and handed the veteran a unanimous decision loss.
RELATED: Best Short-Notice Wins Of 2025
There are only more big fights in his future, and it’s going to be amazing to watch how the ascending “Doctor” continues to progress in the 135-pound weight class.
5 – Malcolm Wellmaker
The top rookie at the midway point of the year managed to hold onto the final spot on our year-end Top 5, which is a testament to just how good he looked in his first two outings and our voting panel not being prisoners of the moment. Good job, team!
Malcolm Wellmaker Earns First-Round KO In His Debut | UFC Kansas City
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Malcolm Wellmaker Earns First-Round KO In His Debut | UFC Kansas City
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“Walla” detonated a counter hook on the jaw of Cameron Saaiman in his promotional debut in April that sent the South African bantamweight falling backwards in a motion that honestly looked exaggerated, like if you pantomime getting hit by a little kid and crash backwards in slow motion to make them laugh. Less than two months later, he put the same right hook on the chin of Kris Moutinho in Atlanta, sending the partisan crowd at State Farm Arena into hysterics.
His third appearance of the year didn’t go as planned in any way, shape, or form, as Wellmaker’s original opponent withdrew a month out from the fight only for his initial replacement, Cody Haddon, to suffer a foot injury a couple of days prior to the event. The UFC hustled to find another replacement, and Wellmaker dropped a competitive bout to Ethyn Ewing, which certainly wasn’t how the 31-year-old wanted to close out his rookie campaign.
Others Receiving Votes: Bia Mesquita, Jacobe Smith, Baisangur Susurkaev, Islam Dulatov, Ethyn Ewing, Yaroslav Amosov, Mario Pinto, JooSang Yoo, Alexia Thainara, Luke Riley