Tommy McMillen Stays Undefeated With Decision Over Marwan Rahiki
Tommy McMillen stayed undefeated on Saturday, taking a unanimous decision over Marwan Rahiki in a wild Noche UFC featherweight fight. Judges scored it 29-28, 29-28, and 29-27 at Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona, leaving McMillen 12-0 and handing Rahiki the first loss of his career.
McMillen moved to 3-0 in the UFC. Rahiki fell to 9-1 overall and 2-1 inside the Octagon after entering with nine finishes in nine wins.
Both men came in unbeaten, both came off Contender Series contracts, and both had stopped their first two UFC opponents. McMillen, 28, had set a three-round UFC record by landing 252 significant strikes in a July TKO of Alberto Montes.
Rahiki, 24, promised a different kind of night. The Moroccan knockout artist, fighting out of Australia, dismissed McMillen’s volume record and said he planned to end it early.
“I’m just gonna knock him out,” Rahiki said before the fight. “I think I go out there and knock him out in the first round. That’s my plan.”
That plan did not survive the first five minutes. McMillen slammed Rahiki to the canvas, returned to striking, and busted up his face with right hands as the two traded in a hectic opening round.
Round 2 swung the other way. McMillen bled from the nose, got rocked clean, and spent a stretch in survival mode while Rahiki smelled a finish that never came.
Fatigue hit both men late in that round. McMillen recovered, completed a takedown, landed ground-and-pound, and hunted a submission before the horn, a sequence that kept the fight from slipping fully away.
The third round decided it. Rahiki threw McMillen and took his back, McMillen scrambled out, then dropped Rahiki with a huge right hand and poured on chokes, takedowns, and cage work while talking to the opposite corner.
Rahiki kept getting up. He also kept fading, and McMillen’s late control plus the knockdown gave the judges a 29-28 path, with one card coming back 29-27.
The fight week heat made the result louder. Security had already broken up a hotel run-in between the two, and McMillen shoved Rahiki at the final faceoff after asking for a Noche UFC booking and treating the Moroccan as the man standing in his way.
McMillen had said he was the best undefeated prospect at 145 pounds. He did not finish Rahiki the way he finished Manolo Zecchini and Montes, but he did what Rahiki had never been forced to do: go 15 minutes and lose a scorecard fight.
That matters at featherweight, even without a ranking attached to either name. McMillen’s pace, scrambling, and late wrestling held up against a cleaner one-shot threat, and Rahiki’s first trip to the judges ended with a zero erased.
The American still has not been beaten as a pro. Ten of his first 11 wins were finishes, and Saturday’s decision was only the second time he has heard a scorecard read after his Contender Series majority decision.
Rahiki remains a problem for anyone who stands in front of him too long. He cracked McMillen, won stretches of the second round, and showed the heart that carried him through two UFC stoppages, but he could not close or outlast the Montana-born Red Hawk Academy fighter.
No next opponent has been announced for either man. Noche UFC continued Saturday on Paramount+ with a Brandon Moreno-Joseph Morales co-main event and a Jean Silva-Jose Delgado headliner, while McMillen leaves Glendale 12-0 and still unbeaten in the UFC.