The Newcomers | 2025 UFC.com Awards

Coming into this year, you could tell it was going to be a good year as far as first-year talents were concerned because the graduating class from Season 8 of Dana White’s Contender Series looked full of promise, with a couple of those athletes impressing towards the end of 2024. Combined with the usual collection of new signees that show up and show out, you got the sense 2025 was going to be special, and yet it still managed to exceed expectations.

In total, 15 different athletes received votes, including one athlete from the first event of the year and one from the last, and when you factor in that competitors like Fatima Kline and Mansur-Abdul Malik were ineligible because they each made…