The Lowdown
Italian. Bantamweight. Born in Altamura, a limestone town in Puglia better known for its bread than its cage fighters. Fights out of Wolf Temple, the gym that put southern Italian MMA on the map. Nickname: Berserker, and he earns it early. Five of his eleven wins have come by knockout, three more by submission, and the vast majority of his finishes arrive inside the first round. Turns 30 the day before he walks out in Shanghai.
Record sits at 11-2 with two no contests. Both losses came by submission. Nobody has ever knocked him out.
A Gym Built Out of Spite
Altamura sits inland from Bari, closer to Matera than to anywhere glamorous. When Francesco Nuzzi started training, MMA in the Italian south was treated as thuggery. Traditional combat sports gyms looked down on it. Parents did too.
Agostino De Rosa built Wolf Temple anyway. He is still the head coach, and Nuzzi is still his fighter, which in a sport built on gym-hopping and Vegas relocations counts for something. The wolves of the Wolf, as the gym calls its own fighters, were competing on small shows in Puglia and Basilicata long before anyone in the UFC knew the postcode.
Nuzzi has never left. No move to American Top Team. No camp in Thailand. The same coach, the same mats, the same town.
Beaten by a Man He Would Beat Twice
The origin story is not a clean one. Nuzzi’s first five outings across amateur and professional competition left him at 2-3, and in July 2016 he was submitted by rear-naked choke in 47 seconds by fellow Italian Adrian Claudiu Iancu. Forty-seven seconds. That is barely a fight.
He got Iancu back in March 2017 at a Shooto Italy show, this time with a guillotine inside two minutes. Then he beat him again on the scorecards.
By 2020, when Cageside Press profiled him as one of the five best MMA prospects in Italy, Nuzzi had rattled off seven straight wins and picked up a regional belt along the way. The scouting note was blunt about what he still needed: a step up in competition. It would take him a while to get it.
Beijing, Then the Belt
Before any of the big promotions came calling, Nuzzi fought a Chinese opponent in Beijing at a Kung Fu World Cup event in 2017 and won. He returns to China nine years later with a UFC contract in his back pocket.
The belt came in October 2018. Italian Cage Fighting put him in the main event against Giorgio Belsanti with the ICF Bantamweight Championship on the line, and Nuzzi took it with a guillotine in the opening round. He added a first-round TKO of Ibragim Navruzov at Venator in June 2019.
Then the calendar went quiet.
The Missing Years
Nuzzi’s record is a chaotic patchwork of gaps, cancellations and cage time that never happened. Twenty-one months between the Navruzov win and a split decision over Bernardo Sopaj at Brave CF 49 in March 2021. Another seventeen months before his PFL debut.
That debut, against Mokhtar Benkaci at the 2022 PFL Playoffs in Cardiff, was a European qualifier and a genuine opportunity. It lasted until 4:10 of the second round, when Benkaci’s fingers found his eye and the referee waved it off. Sherdog’s fight facts for the event filed it alongside the weekend’s other eye-poke stoppage. No result, no momentum, nothing to take home.
He waited another eleven months for the rematch with opportunity.
Berlin, and the Kick That Travelled
8 July 2023, Berlin. PFL Europe 2. Nuzzi is in enemy territory against German-based headliner Farbod Iran Nezhad, a boxing specialist riding three straight wins.
It took 112 seconds. Nuzzi landed a head kick knockout so clean that PFL’s own report described him as blasting his way into the Bantamweight playoffs. Back in Altamura, the local sports press led with it.
He never made the playoffs. Benkaci, the man who had poked him in the eye, was drafted in as a short-notice replacement for Nuzzi in the semifinal that September. A booking against Shinobu Ota at Bellator’s Dublin card in June 2024 was scrapped before it happened. Twenty-one more months passed without a fight.
Four Minutes in Orlando
When PFL finally brought him back, in April 2025, they put him in the World Tournament bracket at Universal Studios Florida against Mando Gutierrez, a submission specialist with six wins by tap and Contender Series experience on his CV.
Nuzzi walked in 10-1. The betting public and the Tapology picks had him overwhelmingly. Gutierrez took his back and finished him with a rear-naked choke at 4:13 of the first round, a submission good enough to land on year-end lists.
It was his first loss in almost nine years.
Rome Reset It
Cage Warriors gave him the platform to answer, and he took it with both hands. At Cage Warriors 195 in Rome on 4 October 2025, Nuzzi met Brazilian Lucas Rodrigues in the co-main event and dismantled him with knees and punches at 3:53 of the opening round. Statement win, home crowd, highlight-reel finish.
Six months later he headlined Cage Warriors 204 in Rome, top billing on the card that closed out Mauro Cerilli’s career. His original opponent Matheus Malta fell out. Manoel Silva stepped in, the feud got genuinely heated, and then it ended in the flattest way imaginable: Cage Warriors reported that Silva could not continue after an unintentional groin strike, and the main event went into the books as a no contest.
Two of his last five scheduled fights have been decided by accidental fouls.
The Call, at Last
On 19 August 2026 the UFC signed him and slotted him straight into UFC Shanghai on 29 August, opposite Chinese veteran Xiao Long on a card headlined by Umar Nurmagomedov and Song Yadong at the SPD Bank Oriental Sports Center.
Ten days’ notice. A decade after his first professional fight, on a card in a country he has fought in before, against a Bantamweight with twenty-seven professional wins and four Octagon appearances behind him.
Nuzzi turns 30 on 28 August. He debuts in the UFC the following night.
Francesco Nuzzi MMA Record and Fighter Stats
Name
Francesco Nuzzi
Nationality
Italian
Weight Class
Bantamweight
Date of Birth
28 August 1996 (Age 29)
Height
5’6″
Pro Record
11-2, 2 NC. 5 wins by KO, 3 wins by submission
UFC Record
0-0
Recent Fight Record
DateEventOpponentResultMethod
11-Apr-26Cage Warriors 204Manoel SilvaNC1st Round No Contest
4-Oct-25Cage Warriors 195Lucas RodriguesW1st Round TKO
11-Apr-25PFK World Tournament 2Mando GutierrezL1st Round Rear Naked Choke
8-Jul-23PFL Europe 2Farbod Iran NezhadW1st Round KO
13-Aug-22PFL 8: 2022 PlayoffsMoktar BenkaciNC2nd Round No Contest
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