Updated 30 August 2026. Umar Nurmagomedov is 20-2 as a professional. On 29 August in Shanghai he was knocked out by Song Yadong at 1:48 of the second round — the first stoppage loss of his career — in a fight the division had effectively made a title eliminator. The full report is here.
He is 30, fights out of Dagestan, stands 5’8” with a 69-inch reach, and made his octagon debut on 20 January 2021. He carries seven submission wins and five first-round finishes.
The two losses
The second one is the one that changes the profile. Shanghai was not a close decision or a bad night on the cards — he shot for a takedown, took a right hand coming in, and the fight was over. He had never been finished before. He started his career 18-0 and is now 2-2 across his last four.
The first one was easier to explain away. On 18 January 2025 at UFC 311 he challenged Merab Dvalishvili for the bantamweight title and lost a unanimous decision. That is the entire blemish on the record — one fight, at the highest level, against a champion in the middle of a fourteen-fight run.
What he has done since is rebuild without shortcuts. A unanimous decision over Mario Bautista at UFC 321 in October 2025, then a unanimous decision over former flyweight champion Deiveson Figueiredo at UFC 324 in January 2026.
The Song Yadong problem
Song went in 23-9-1, off a submission win over the same Figueiredo — a second-round guillotine at UFC Fight Night Macau in May, which was a very different way of solving the same opponent.
The obvious framing was grappler against boxer: UFC.com lists Song’s fighting style as boxer, and Nurmagomedov’s seven submissions speak for themselves. The question nobody asked loudly enough was what a level change looks like to a counter-puncher — and that turned out to be the entire fight.
Where the title picture goes now
The bantamweight belt is held by Petr Yan, who defends against Dvalishvili in a trilogy fight at UFC 333 in Abu Dhabi on 24 October. Before Shanghai, the winner of this fight was next in a very short queue.
That queue now has Song in it and Nurmagomedov out of it. A third straight win would have made his case difficult to argue against. Instead he has a stoppage loss on the record, a 2-2 stretch, and a rebuild to do at 30 — with the division’s two most valuable slots occupied by the champion, the challenger, and the man who just knocked him out.
