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Brett OkamotoAug 22, 2025, 02:00 PM<\/p>\n
Close<\/a>Brett Okamoto has reported on mixed martial arts and boxing at ESPN since 2010. He has covered all of the biggest events in combat sports during that time, including in-depth interviews and features with names such as Dana White, Khabib Nurmagomedov, Conor McGregor, Nate Diaz, Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao and Georges St-Pierre. He was also a producer on the 30 for 30 film: “Chuck and Tito,” which looked back at the careers and rivalry of Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz. He lives in Las Vegas, and is an avid, below-average golfer in his spare time.<\/p>\n Former two-time Bellator MMA title challenger Fabian Edwards<\/a> knocked out Dalton Rosta<\/a> in the third round of their PFL World Tournament finals matchup Thursday with nearly the exact kick his older brother, Leon, used to win a UFC championship three years ago.<\/p>\n Edwards (16-4) landed a left head kick at the 1:28 mark of the third round that put Rosta (11-2) down for good. It was eerily similar to the strike Leon landed on Kamaru Usman<\/a> in one of the greatest comebacks in the sport at UFC 278 on Aug. 20, 2022.<\/p>\n The middleweight finals bout headlined Thursday’s PFL event in Hollywood, Florida.<\/p>\n The victory earned Edwards, 32, the PFL’s $500,000 tournament prize and served as a bit of redemption for his two championship fights under the Bellator banner. Edwards challenged former champion Johnny Eblen<\/a> in 2023 and 2024 but came up short both times via TKO and decision. He overcame a couple of Rosta takedowns in the opening two rounds of Thursday’s contest for his sixth career win via knockout.<\/p>\n Thursday featured three PFL World Tournament finals. At heavyweight, Oleg Popov<\/a> (22-2), a protege of MMA legend Fedor Emelianenko<\/a>, defeated Alexander Romanov<\/a> (19-4) by split decision to claim his first PFL tournament championship. He advanced all the way to the finals of last year’s “regular season” championship format, before ultimately losing by submission to Denis Goltsov<\/a> in the opening round.<\/p>\n At light heavyweight, Antonio Carlos Jr.<\/a> (19-6) earned his second PFL tournament championship with a second-round submission of Sullivan Cauley<\/a> (8-1). Carlos actually went into the contest a small betting underdog, and Cauley certainly had his moments. Both light heavyweights scored a knockdown in the opening round, and Cauley suffered a bad cut in the second round before ultimately being finished on the ground.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brett OkamotoAug 22, 2025, 02:00 PM CloseBrett Okamoto has reported on mixed martial arts and boxing at ESPN…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-86972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86972","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=86972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Fabian Edwards lands a left head kick to knock out Dalton Rosta and win the PFL middleweight title, nearly three years to the day that older brother Leon landed a left head kick to win a UFC title.\u00a0Cooper Neill \/ PFL<\/p>\n