Punahele Soriano

Punahele Soriano is a Hawaii-born grappler whose path to the UFC reads like a natural progression: state wrestling and judo champion, Division-III All-American, then a meteoric rise through regional MMA with explosive early finishes. A Dana White's Contender Series veteran, Soriano made his mark in the UFC with first-round knockout wins over Oskar Piechota and Duško Todorović, announcing himself as a submission and ground-strike threat. However, his middleweight tenure proved humbling, with losses to Brendan Allen and Nick Maximov exposing him to the octagon's elite strikers and outpointing him on scorecards.

Soriano found new life after moving to welterweight in mid-2024, beginning a four-fight winning streak that includes some of the most dominant wrestling-and-striking performances in recent UFC history. His June 2024 decision over Miguel Baeza stands out as the watershed moment: Soriano landed 136 significant ground strikes and 331 total strikes, both records for the weight class, and took home scorecards across three rounds of relentless control and punishment. More recently he has notched quick finishes (a first-round KO of Uros Medic in January 2025) and gritty decision wins (unanimous verdicts over Nikolay Veretennikov and Ramiz Brahimaj).

What makes Soriano compelling and occasionally frustrating is the tension in his fighting personality. At his best he is a finishing machine with the wrestling base to impose his will and the ground-and-pound power to end fights decisively. At his worst he becomes too comfortable controlling the mat, riding out rounds without aggression or hunting a finish. Soriano himself acknowledged this after UFC 320, saying he was embarrassed by his own performance despite the unanimous decision, admitting he felt safe on the mat against a wrestler with poor bottom-game skills and simply rode out the victory. He knows his fans expect the banging, exciting finisher he was early in his career, not a point-grinding grappler. At 12-4, with momentum on his side and a welterweight division that suits his wrestling profile, Soriano remains a threat to contenders, but only when he chooses to hunt finishes rather than settle for control.