Khizriev vs Braga 2: how Braga beats the 18-0 decision machine

The book on Timur Khizriev goes like this: American Top Team grinder, 18 fights, 18 wins, nobody can get him off them. On Friday he puts that record on the line in the co-main of PFL Chicago against Gabriel Braga (17-3), the man who came closest to taking it.

Here is the thing about that book. The first time these two fought, in the 2024 playoffs, Khizriev completed exactly one takedown and held control for 46 seconds across 15 minutes. It was not a wrestling match. It was a kickboxing match at range, Braga won the significant strike count 44 to 34, and he lost a split decision anyway.

So this is not a piece about how to stop a wrestler. It's a piece about how you beat a man who wins rounds you think you won.

The first fight, round by round

Let's take a look at what actually happened at PFL 9 in August 2024:

Rounds one and two were coin flips. Khizriev edged the first by three strikes and a short takedown, the second was dead even. Then in the third Braga found something: 25 significant strikes to 12, split evenly between head (11) and body (11), all of it at distance. He never attempted a takedown and never needed one.

Two of the three judges scored it 30-27 Khizriev. That means two officials watched Braga double his opponent's output in the final round and still gave the round away. The third judge had it 29-28 Braga.

I'm not going to relitigate the scorecards. The lesson for Braga is more useful than a grievance: close rounds go to the unbeaten guy with the wrestling reputation. If round three at 25-12 wasn't enough on two cards, rounds one and two at 9-12 and 10-10 were never going to be.

The decision machine

Khizriev's record has 14 decisions in 18 wins. His last stoppage was a first-round submission of Ruslan Ryskul in September 2021. Since then: seven straight decisions, three in Bellator and four in the PFL, the last of them a five-round win over Brendan Loughnane in the 2024 season final.

That Loughnane fight is the best film we have on how Khizriev builds a win, and it also shows the seam. He took Loughnane down five times in eight attempts and outlanded him 99 to 53 overall. But look at where the work happened. Rounds one and three carried his wrestling: two takedowns and 1:44 of control in the first, one takedown and 1:47 of control in the third. By the fourth round the strike count was 12-11. In the fifth, Loughnane outlanded him 21 to 19.

Same shape in the Braga fight. The takedown came in round one, the strike count drifted away from him in round three. Khizriev front-loads. He banks the early rounds with a takedown, a little control and a higher total output (65 total strikes to Braga's 59 in their fight, even while losing the significant count), then he manages.

That is not a flaw in a three-round fight he's winning. It becomes one if he's down a round going into the third.

Start where round three ended

The prescription writes itself: Braga has to open the fight the way he closed the last one.

What worked in that third round was simple. Braga has three inches of reach on Khizriev (72 to 69) and an inch of height, and he used it to stay just outside the takedown entry while landing to the body. Across the whole fight he landed 20 significant strikes to the body against Khizriev's 13. Body work against a wrestler does two jobs at once: it scores, and it makes every level change cost something, because a man who has eaten hooks to the ribs for ten minutes drops his hips a half-beat slower.

The problem was timing. Braga landed 9 and 10 significant strikes in the first two rounds. He needs his round-three volume from the opening bell, which means committing to the body before Khizriev has banked anything, not after.

Surviving the first takedown

The obvious counter-argument: start fast against a wrestler and you get taken down. Fair. So let's look at what happens when Braga does get put on the mat.

Against Cheyden Leialoha in April, Braga was taken down four times in four attempts in the first round and spent 2:09 of it under control. That is a lost round on any card. Then he outlanded Leialoha 30 to 18 in the second and 30 to 4 in the third, added a takedown and 3:21 of control of his own in the last round, and took the unanimous decision.

Across his 12 tracked PFL fights, opponents completed 12 of 32 takedown attempts against him. Jeremy Kennedy got one of eight on the 2024 Championships card. Bubba Jenkins went 0 for 3 and got stopped in the second round.

So Braga's wrestling defense is decent and his recovery after a bad round is real. But here is the trap: against Leialoha, giving away round one cost him nothing because he won the next two by a mile. Against Khizriev, giving away round one is the whole fight. Two judges have already shown how they score a near-even round between these two.

The risk he can afford

Braga's three losses are worth reading closely. Two are TKO losses to Jesus Pinedo, in November 2023 and June 2025, the second of them in 76 seconds. The third is the Khizriev split. His defense in exchanges is the leak in his game, and the same opponent has found it twice.

Khizriev is not that man. He has not stopped anybody in five years. That doesn't mean Braga can walk in with his chin up, but it changes the math on aggression. Against Pinedo, extra exchanges are a risk to finish. Against Khizriev, the documented risk of standing in the pocket is a lost round on points, which is exactly what Braga loses by standing outside it too politely. If any fight on his record invites him to throw more, this is the one.

One more data point, with a warning label. Both men have fought Justin Gonzales. Khizriev beat him by unanimous decision at Bellator 301 in November 2023. Braga knocked him out in the first round five months later. MMA math lies constantly, so treat that as a style note, not a forecast: Braga's best nights come when he lets his hands go early.

The layoff and the clock

Khizriev has not fought since the Loughnane final on November 29, 2024. By Friday that's 686 days. Braga has fought four times in the same stretch, going 3-1. I don't know what nearly 23 months off does to a man who wins by managing rounds, and neither does anyone else until about the four-minute mark of round one. But Braga is the one with recent reps against wrestlers, and he's the one who should want the pace high early, before Khizriev settles into the rhythm that won him the first fight.

The PFL's official featherweight rankings have Khizriev at No. 2 and Braga at No. 5, which tells you who the division thinks should win. The first fight says it's closer than that, and the third round says Braga already has the tool. None of this guarantees anything. Khizriev has heard every version of "this is the guy" for 18 fights.

But if Braga wants a different result, the job is not to land 25 in the third again. It's to land 25 in the first, so nobody has a close round to give away. The full card and the bout page are up now, and the main event gets its own breakdown in our Carmouche vs Bishop 2 preview.