OKTAGON 97 card, start times and how to watch Severino vs Holzer

OKTAGON 97 puts eight fights into ZAG Arena in Hannover, Germany on Saturday, November 7, and the one at the top is for the bantamweight title. The champion is No. 4 on OKTAGON's pound-for-pound list. The challenger is unbeaten, ranked No. 2 at featherweight, and comes down a division to take the belt off him over five rounds in front of a German crowd.

Igor Severino (10-1, 1 NC), a 23-year-old Brazilian, won the title at OKTAGON 85 in March with a second-round TKO of Khurshed Kakhorov, a fight that had already been booked and scrapped twice, at OKTAGON 78 in October 2025 and OKTAGON 84 in February. His first defense, against Zhalgas Zhumagulov at OKTAGON 89 in June, ended in the second round as a no contest after an accidental punch to the groin. His only loss came in the UFC in March 2024, a disqualification against André Lima at flyweight, six months after he had stopped Jhonata Silva in the second round on the Contender Series.

Max Holzer (12-0), 24, has won six OKTAGON fights since January 2024: three by submission, two by TKO and one on the cards. He headlined OKTAGON 69 in April 2025 and submitted Deniz Ilbay, then waited more than a year for his next fight, a first-round TKO of Khalid Taha in the OKTAGON 88 main event in May. That bout had first been booked for OKTAGON 75 in September 2025 and fell through. Holzer has fought twice at a 68 kg catchweight, but this is the first time we have him booked at bantamweight.

Start times

• Full card: 6:00 p.m. CET in Hannover (12:00 p.m. ET / 9:00 a.m. PT / 5:00 p.m. GMT), Saturday, November 7

OKTAGON has published one start time for the night, not separate clocks for parts of the card. The US left daylight time on November 1, so Hannover is back to six hours ahead of New York after a week in which the gap was five. The title fight is the last of eight, so it will start well after 6 p.m., and the event page keeps a running estimate as the night moves.

The full card

Main card

• Igor Severino vs Max Holzer, bantamweight title (five rounds)
• Gjoni Palokaj vs Zafar Mohsen, featherweight
• Ozan Aslaner vs Denis Frimpong, catchweight (72 kg)
• Karol Ryšavý vs Samuel Bark, featherweight
• Jan Holzer vs Ján Švagerko, welterweight
• Daniel Makin vs Petr Bartoněk, welterweight
• Haci Akseker vs Jonatan Kujawa, featherweight
• Justin Detzel vs Kacper Frątczak, middleweight

The fight under the title bout pairs the No. 3 and No. 4 featherweights, the two men ranked directly behind Holzer. Palokaj (13-4), 31, won six straight OKTAGON fights, every one of them on the cards, including a unanimous decision over Ryšavý at OKTAGON 63 in November 2024, before Mago Machaev knocked him out in the first round at OKTAGON 91 in July. Mohsen (15-4) is 2-0 in the promotion: a unanimous decision over Bark at OKTAGON 82 in January and a first-round knockout of Richie Smullen at OKTAGON 90 in June. So the fourth fight on the card matches the two men the co-main fighters have already beaten. Ryšavý (15-10-1) drew with Daniel Schordje at OKTAGON 89 in June; Bark (13-4) has lost two straight, the second a first-round knockout by Radek Roušal in April.

Aslaner, No. 5 at lightweight, has won his last two by decision. Frimpong, No. 8, was knocked out in the first round by Niko Samsonidse at OKTAGON 90 in June. The only change to the card so far came on October 24, when Jan Holzer's original opponent, Rastislav Zvara, came off; Švagerko replaced him the next day. Neither man has a professional fight on record (Holzer is 2-0 as an amateur, Švagerko 5-8). Changes are logged on the event page.

How to watch

OKTAGON sells this one directly. Worldwide, OKTAGON 97 is a pay-per-view on OKTAGON.TV. The German-speaking market, which is the home crowd again after Munich last week, has its own deal: RTL+ carries the card in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein. In Poland it is on TVP Sport. The full country-by-country grid is at how to watch OKTAGON 97.

Make your picks at the OKTAGON 97 pick'em, and results land on the event page as each fight ends in Hannover. The rest of the promotion's calendar is on the OKTAGON schedule.