Missed Fists: Grapplers attempt to dunk each other in Ultimate Tire Wrestling

Pro League Network, YouTube

Welcome to the latest edition of Missed Fists where we shine a light on fights from across the globe that may have been overlooked in these hectic times where it seems like there’s an MMA show every other day.

You know, halfway through 2025, I was worried the combat sports world was starting to lose its beautiful weirdness and soon we’d be left with only incredible knockouts and mind-blowing submissions. How boring would that be?

Fortunately, we’ve seen an uptick in bizarre shenanigans recently, with a fighter receiving a frightening (and entirely predictable) electric shock in a ring surrounded by water, and a referee hitting a pretty sweet form tackle on a competitor.

This week, thanks to the always keen eyes of Matysek and Caposa, we’ve been blessed with not one, but two exemplary oddities.

(Big thanks as always to @Barrelelapierna for their weekly lists of the best KOs and submissions, and to @Grabaka_Hitman for uploading many of the clips you see here. Give them a follow and chip in on Patreon if you can.)

Let’s begin with whatever the hell this is from an event called Friday Night Fights (available on YouTube), which also included slap fighting, car-jitsu, and coffin-jitsu (?), among other strangeness.

And before you ask any further questions, yes, Jason “Mayhem” Miller is involved.

The rules for Ultimate Tire Wrestling are pretty simple. Bouts are contested over three five-minute rounds. Points are given for lifting your opponent off their feet (one second = one point) and whoever has the most points at the end of five minutes wins that round. Should you manage to dunk your opponent into the tire—defined as forcing more than 50 percent of their body into it—you immediately win the round. First fighter to take two rounds is the winner.

My only tweak would be to treat a successful dunk as a finish, so if you dunk someone the fight is just over and you win. Because watch one round of this and you’ll see how frigging exhausting it is. Lifting another similarly sized human being up and dropping them into a tire once is a Herculean task. Two times is nearly impossible.

Then again, no one told that to “Mallet,” who had an incredibly entertaining duel with “Firecracker” that included not one, but two huge throws to win the match.

As grueling as the competition is for the grapplers, there is serious potential in this gimmick and I’m definitely tuning into more UTW in the future.

This next outside-the-box idea, though? Maybe… we shouldn’t?

It’s difficult to articulate, but this robot kickboxing match from a Kunlun Fights event in China is somehow both patently ridiculous and oddly menacing at the same time. It’s uncomfortable. I don’t like looking at it.

The technology is certainly impressive, if nothing else, but I’m not ready to cede the sacred world of martial arts to our mechanical overlords just yet.

I don’t know. Give me another 10 years and maybe I’ll be shouting “RIGHT UPPERCUT” along with everyone else.

OK, I’m tugging on my rope. Take me back to the safe and sane world of human MMA.

Joshua du Toit vs. John Yona Mubatiza

I’ve made a huge mistake.

At a Versus Fight Night 14 event in Pretoria, South Africa, Joshua du Toit showed off his submission skills and John Yona Mubatiza showed off a staggering lack of awareness as he was trapped in a kimura and refused to tap out.

By the end of the sequence, Mubatiza’s arm was no longer an arm by the strictest anatomical definition. Surgeons, save this man.

The worst part? This was an amateur fight.

Kamal Guseynov vs. Mavlonbek Mirkomilov

I’m guessing it will be a while before they build a robot that can do this:

Or, at least, I hope it is. Can you imagine a Terminator-esque apocalypse where sophisticated machines are hunting down humans and their preferred choice of execution is a spinning backfist to the skull? That would super suck.

Anyway, that’s Kamal Guseynov with a beautiful finish of Mavlonbek Mirkomilov just 17 seconds into their fight.

A free replay of Octagon League 75 from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, is available on YouTube.

Isaiah Zamora vs. David Flores

This head kick knockout, from Combat Fighting Championship 4 in El Paso, Texas, has a bit of backstory to it.

The winner? That’s Isaiah Zamora. According to Tapology, before this past Saturday, Mr. Zamora had never won a single combat sports contest. He was 0-4 in MMA and had also dabbled in kickboxing and something called cage boxing (self-explanatory, I guess), also to no avail.

But facing fellow winless wonder David Flores, magic happened for Zamora.

As the great Bob Dylan once said,

Don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’

Pretty sure this is what ol’ Bob was singing about.

Patrick Habirora vs. Danny Roberts

We’re in such a dense period of combat sports goodness, you can’t be blamed if you missed PFL hosting two events last week in its MENA and Europe series’. Like much of the 2025 season, the league has been putting on solid cards, and there have been plenty of highlights.

Stealing the show in Brussels, Belgium, was undefeated welterweight prospect Patrick Habirora.

“The Belgian Bomber” scored an amazing head kick knockout of UFC veteran Danny Roberts to cap off Saturday’s show and looks to be a keeper for the PFL. We mentioned Habirora in Missed Fists this past December and said the league should make him a permanent fixture on the roster and it sounds like they listened.

And in case you didn’t see our write-up of Gustavo Oliveira’s Knockout of the Year-candidate spinning back elbow, you can check that out here.

If you know of a recent fight or event that you think may have been overlooked, or a promotion that could use some attention, please let us know on X — @AlexanderKLee — using the hashtag #MissedFists.