The Lowdown<\/p>\n
Jacksonville Beach, Florida. Five foot seven, 136 pounds on the scale, switch stance, and a Bantamweight who has never once needed a judge\u2019s scorecard to get his hand raised. Six professional wins. Six submissions. Every single one inside the first round.<\/p>\n
Then a loss in the UFC that stopped everything cold.<\/p>\n
He is the son of bail bondsmen and bounty hunters, a former construction worker who has also picked buds on a weed farm, and the owner of what might be the longest nickname the sport has ever printed on a banner.<\/p>\n
Obi Won Shinobi The Pillow<\/p>\n
Two nicknames welded into one. \u201cObi Won Shinobi\u201d was Koslow\u2019s own pick, a bit of Star Wars wordplay he leaned into hard enough that the UFC ran a debut feature headlined around the Force. \u201cThe Pillow\u201d was handed to him by other people, for the simple reason that he keeps putting them to sleep. By the time he signed with the promotion he had, as reported by MMA Junkie via Yahoo Sports<\/a>, choked opponents unconscious roughly twenty times across his amateur and professional careers.<\/p>\n Nobody in the UFC has a longer one.<\/p>\n Bail Bonds, Bounty Hunters and a Punching Bag in the Garage<\/p>\n Koslow was born on 22 January 1997 and raised in Jacksonville. His parents worked the bail bonds and bounty hunting trade his entire childhood, and for a while the plan was for him to follow his father into it. That is not how it went.<\/p>\n He started karate at nine. MMA came at fifteen, and the reason he gave on his official UFC bio form was blunt enough that it made headlines. Koslow later told UFC.com he joined the gym and got himself a heavy bag because he wanted to get strong enough to beat up his dad<\/a>, the two of them going through a rough stretch at the time.<\/p>\n They patched things up. By the time Koslow had grown into the man of the house, his father had got older and got sick, and the square-up he had spent his teenage years training for never happened. His dad died in 2022, months before the UFC call came.<\/p>\n His mother is the one he calls his hero. His grandmother is the one who prays in the back room on fight night and smokes cigarettes she would never smoke in the house any other day of the year.<\/p>\n Born and Raised From Combat Night<\/p>\n Almost the entire Koslow career happened under one banner. Combat Night, the Florida regional promotion co-founded by the late UFC Middleweight Josh Samman and Koslow\u2019s friend and mentor Mitchell Chamale, hosted every one of his professional bouts and all but two or three of his amateur fights. He went 10-1 as an amateur and won a Combat Night title along the way.<\/p>\n Samman died in 2016, before Koslow\u2019s pro debut. Koslow met him a handful of times through Chamale, read his book, watched the documentary, and later earned a scholarship from the foundation set up in Samman\u2019s name.<\/p>\n He turned pro in 2019 and immediately started collecting first-round finishes. An armbar on Joshua Ciulla in May. A twenty-one second triangle choke on Jonathan Ortiz in July. Rear-naked chokes on Ginseng Poit Du\u2019Jour, Marcelo Willian and James Dunn, and a kimura on Anthony Retic. Six for six, all of them submissions, none of them past the five-minute mark.<\/p>\n There is no college degree on the CV and he has never pretended otherwise. Construction sites, odd jobs, a stint on a weed farm.<\/p>\n Ten Days That Changed The Career<\/p>\n Late November 2022. Ronnie Lawrence pulled out of UFC 282 with a fortnight to go, and the promotion needed a Bantamweight who could make weight and get on a plane. Sherdog reported that Koslow would replace Ronnie Lawrence against Cameron Saaiman<\/a> on ten days\u2019 notice.<\/p>\n Two undefeated debutants, both 6-0, on a pay-per-view at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. It was the kind of matchmaking that gets a prospect noticed either way.<\/p>\n Koslow could not get it to the mat on his terms. Saaiman picked him apart on the feet and got the TKO at 4:13 of the third round, the first stoppage loss of Koslow\u2019s life and the first time in his professional career a fight had gone past round one.<\/p>\n The undefeated record was gone. So was the run of finishes.<\/p>\n Duval Mats and Orlando Miles<\/p>\n His base is 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu Jacksonville, the no-gi system that produced the leg-lock heavy, scramble-first grappling that shows up every time he gets a body to the floor. Bryan Brown heads up his coaching staff, with Jeff Oxley also in the corner, and he has trained his jiu jitsu at Gracie Barra Jacksonville too.<\/p>\n For strength and conditioning and the harder sparring rounds, Koslow makes the drive down to Fusion X-cel Performance in Orlando.<\/p>\n Nearly Four Years Off The Grid<\/p>\n After UFC 282, nothing. No regional comeback, no short-notice call-up, no return date. Koslow went from a 25-year-old with a UFC contract and an unbeaten record to a name that fell off the rankings eligibility lists entirely through inactivity. Fighters get lost in that gap all the time.<\/p>\n He did not get released.<\/p>\n On 17 October 2026 at Rogers Place in Edmonton, Koslow is scheduled to face Chad Anheliger<\/a> on a card headlined by Joaquin Buckley<\/a> against Mike Malott<\/a>. Two men coming off long layoffs, matched against each other, which is exactly the sort of booking that gets hammered online. Sports Illustrated noted that news of the Bantamweight bout drew unimpressed reactions from fans<\/a> when the UFC announced it.<\/p>\n Koslow will be 29 and fighting for his UFC life in front of a hostile Canadian crowd, on the road, against a local. He said something before his debut that reads differently now.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce I\u2019m making that walk and I get patted down and hug my teammates and I step into the cage, it\u2019s bliss.\u201d<\/p>\n Steven Koslow MMA Record and Fighter Stats<\/p>\n \n Name \n Nationality \n Weight Class \n Date of Birth \n Height \n Pro Record \n UFC Record Recent Fight Record<\/p>\n \tDateEventOpponentResultMethod<\/p>\n \t10-Dec-22UFC 282Cameron SaaimanL3rd Round TKO<\/p>\n \t16-Jul-22Combat Night ProJames DunnW1st Round Rear Naked Choke<\/p>\n \t6-Nov-21Combat Night ProMarcelo WilliamsW1st Round Rear Naked Choke<\/p>\n \t13-Mar-21Combat Night Pro 20Anthony ReticW1st Round Kimura<\/p>\n \t21-Mar-20Combat Night Pro 18Ginseng Du JourW1st Round Rear Naked Choke<\/p>\n \ud83d\udc49 Explore: Fightomic Rankings<\/a> | Fightomic Bantamweight Rankings<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Lowdown Jacksonville Beach, Florida. Five foot seven, 136 pounds on the scale, switch stance, and a Bantamweight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":871436,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,638,82],"class_list":["post-871435","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\/871435","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=871435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/871436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=871435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=871435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n Steven Koslow<\/p>\n
\n American\n <\/p>\n
\n Bantamweight\n <\/p>\n
\n 22 January 1997 (Age 29)\n <\/p>\n
\n 5\u20197\u2033\n <\/p>\n
\n 6-1. 6 wins by submission\n <\/p>\n
\n 0-1\n <\/p>\n