{"id":440341,"date":"2026-01-29T07:18:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T07:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/440341\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T07:18:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T07:18:08","slug":"patchy-mix-joins-rizin-fighting-federation-after-ufc-exit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/440341\/","title":{"rendered":"Patchy Mix joins Rizin Fighting Federation after UFC exit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Patchy Mix is heading back to Rizin Fighting Federation.<\/p>\n<p>The former UFC fighter and Bellator champion revealed at a press conference with Rizin on Wednesday that the UFC had released him of his contract roughly five-to-six weeks following his last bout, and that he&#8217;s moving up to featherweight.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The main thing was to go up to featherweight,&#8221; Mix <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/BodyslamNetMMA\/status\/2016721955643163081?s=20\" rel=\"nofollow\">said<\/a>. &#8220;I want to show Patchy 2.0 &#8230; Rizin was a no-brainer, if they gave me a choice, I wanted to come here.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Mix (19-4) re-joins the Japanese promotion after a one-fight stay in 2019 \u2014 a submission victory over Yuki Motoya. His move comes after an unsuccessful stint with the UFC, losing both fights by decision.<\/p>\n<p>It was a fairly surprising result given the success that followed the 32-year-old before joining Dana White&#8217;s roster.<\/p>\n<p>Mix dominated the bantamweight division in Bellator during his time with the promotion, going 8-2 during his tenure while holding the title for just over a year.<\/p>\n<p>He rattled off six-straight victories from May 2021 to November 2023, which included his title-winning bout and a successful defence. His final fight in Bellator was a controversial one against Magomed Magomedov for the belt, as Magomedov was named champion after a positive drug test from Mix resulted in the French MMA Federation overturning the result.<\/p>\n<p>Now, Mix heads back to Rizin up a weight class where he&#8217;s scheduled to fight Kyoma Akimoto at Rizin 52 on March 7.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Patchy Mix is heading back to Rizin Fighting Federation. The former UFC fighter and Bellator champion revealed at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,638,82],"class_list":["post-440341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}