{"id":819535,"date":"2026-07-22T22:31:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T22:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/819535\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T22:31:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T22:31:10","slug":"gable-steveson-added-to-stacked-raf-12-card","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/819535\/","title":{"rendered":"Gable Steveson Added To Stacked RAF 12 Card"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fresh off his Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) debut, Olympic gold medalist and two-time NCAA Division I Heavyweight champion Gable Steveson will make his second appearance for RAF against Anthony Cassioppi on Sat., Aug. 22, 2026, inside Rocket Arena in Cleveland, Ohio.<\/p>\n

Steveson and Cassioppi have plenty of history, having competed against each other several times in college. Steveson won all of those meetings, but the matches were ultra-competitive, making this a very fun rematch on the freestyle stage.<\/p>\n

The promotion announced the matchup today on social media.<\/p>\n

Steveson was successful in his RAF debut earlier this year, crushing former UFC Heavyweight Alexander Romanov via technical fall at RAF 09<\/a> (watch highlights<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The 26-year-old wrestling standout also shined in his UFC debut earlier this month at UFC 329, knocking out Elisha Ellison in the first round (watch highlights<\/a>).<\/p>\n

As for Cassioppi, he scored his first RAF win this past weekend at RAF 11<\/a>, defeating Mostafa Elders via points. While he is just 1-2 under the RAF banner, Cassioppi has faced nothing but elite competition, including Shamil Sharipov and Akhmed Tazhudinov.<\/p>\n

Cassioppi is also a four-time NCAA All-American, so this is not exactly some random opponent being thrown in there with Steveson.<\/p>\n

RAF 12 will be headlined by wrestling legend Jordan Burroughs against UFC Welterweight contender Sean Brady, but the anniversary card is absolutely stacked from top to bottom.<\/p>\n

In addition to Steveson vs. Cassioppi, the card will feature Colby Covington vs. Belal Muhammad, Bo Nickal vs. Max McEnelly, Tyron Woodley vs. Joaquin Buckley and David Carr vs. Tajmuraz Salkazanov.<\/p>\n

For much more on RAF and wrestling news click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fresh off his Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) debut, Olympic gold medalist and two-time NCAA Division I Heavyweight champion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":819536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,33601,638,264316,82],"class_list":["post-819535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","tag-mma","tag-real-american-freestyle-raf-wrestling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819535","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=819535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}