{"id":353054,"date":"2025-12-17T03:20:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T03:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/353054\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T03:20:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T03:20:07","slug":"usa-today-sports-mma-junkie-rankings-dec-16-manel-kape-enters-top-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/353054\/","title":{"rendered":"USA TODAY Sports\/MMA Junkie rankings, Dec. 16: Manel Kape enters top 5"},"content":{"rendered":"

The final UFC and second-to-last PFL events of the year caused key movements in this week’s rankings update.<\/p>\n

UFC on ESPN 73 saw the emergence of a new potential No. 1 contender in the flyweight division. Manel Kape made quick work of former title challenger Brandon Royval, finishing the fight<\/a> by TKO in the first round. Entering the week at No. 6, Kape’s performance chops that number in half, landing at No. 3, as he knocks on the door of a title shot.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

PFL returned to France for its penultimate event of 2025. In the main event, Vadim Nemkov won the vacant heavyweight title by tapping Renan Ferreira in the opening round<\/a>. Nemkov was unranked in the heavyweight division and now lands at the No. 11 spot after a dominant championship win.<\/p>\n

Check out all of the moves in the latest USA TODAY Sports\/MMA Junkie rankings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: MMA Junkie rankings update, Dec. 16: Manel Kape enters top 5<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The final UFC and second-to-last PFL events of the year caused key movements in this week’s rankings update.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,41113,786,8812,189371,785,109156,85,787,75594],"class_list":["post-353054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-brandon-royval","tag-fighting","tag-heavyweight","tag-manel-kape","tag-mma","tag-renan-ferreira","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-vadim-nemkov"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}