CMMA News and Events

Big Week for CMMA in the UFC

August 24, 2026•7 min read

Five Days, Two Octagons, and the Room in Gardena That Keeps Producing Them

Roman Puga fought his way onto the UFC roster in Las Vegas on Tuesday night. Four nights later, Chris "Taco" Padilla put a man to sleep in Sacramento with one second left on the clock.

Same week. Same gym.

If you follow CMMA, you already know this wasn't a fluke. Here's what happened and, more to the point, why it keeps happening.

Tuesday: Puga earns the contract the hard way

Dana White's Contender Series is called the ultimate job interview for a reason. Ten weeks, five fights a night, one man deciding who gets a UFC deal and who goes home. Roman Puga drew the opening slot of Season 10, Week 2 at the UFC APEX Center; the spot where a fight either sets the tone for the night or gets forgotten by the third bout.

Nobody forgot this one.

Puga came out behind a hard jab and a straight right, found Taner Trembley's chin early, and put him on the canvas in the first round. Then Trembley got up. What followed was three rounds of two featherweights refusing to break. Both men spent fifteen minutes trading the momentum back and forth. Dana White stood up after every round.

All three judges scored it 29-28 for Puga. Both fighters were awarded UFC contracts, and one national outlet graded the bout among the best in the show's history.

Puga isn't treating the contract as the finish line. His stated plan is to stay busy, take anything the matchmakers put in front of him, and build toward a title shot. In his words: "I want that UFC belt around my waist."

Saturday: Taco finds the finish with the clock running out

Four nights later, Chris "Taco" Padilla walked into a packed Golden 1 Center for the UFC's first Sacramento card in more than seven years, matched against Nasrat Haqparast, a dangerous lightweight, and on paper, a striker's fight.

Taco didn't give him a striker's fight.

For two rounds he stayed disciplined: sharp defense, kicks from range, refusing to get drawn into the boxing exchanges Haqparast wanted. It was close. It was heading to the scorecards.

Then, deep in the third, Padilla landed a counter that hurt Haqparast badly. He followed with elbows in the clinch, kept the damage coming on the ground, and locked up a standing arm triangle and squeezed. Haqparast went out. Technical submission, in the final seconds of the fight.

The win moves Padilla to 5-0-1 in the UFC.

This is nothing new for CMMA

Two wins in one week makes headlines. The roster behind them is the real story.

Luis Francischinelli was scheduled to headline LFA 239 in Ventura on August 21. LFA released him from his contract so he could accept a Contender Series invitation, and the promotion's CEO confirmed the call-up publicly when the card had to be rebuilt around his exit. Francischinelli is a welterweight who stands 6-foot-6, several inches taller than almost anyone in the division, and he's never used that length as an excuse to be passive. He's 6-1 as a pro. All six wins are knockouts.

Erick Visconde is also headed to the Contender Series this season, and he brings the opposite problem for an opponent. The Curitiba native is a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt with 17 professional wins split almost evenly between knockouts and submissions.

Meanwhile, the PFL has been shopping the same room. Rafael "Mulisha" Nascimento signed and went to work immediately, submitting his man by rear-naked choke in the second round at PFL Austin in July. He's a top-ten ranked bantamweight in North America with a submission catalog that runs from textbook chokes to a calf slicer and a ninja choke — the kind of variety that only comes from a training floor deep enough to give him every look. Rosario "Nino" Romero joins him on the PFL roster, a Southern California product who came up through the amateur ranks undefeated.

Count it: two men in the UFC, two headed to the Contender Series, two more in the PFL. From one 9,000-square-foot building in Gardena. And this is just the tip of the iceberg with how skilled this gym is!

Chad George doesn't coach from an office

CMMA opened in 2014 under Chad George: a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt and MMA veteran with more than twenty-six professional fights, a career that ran through the WEC and Bellator, and a spot on the very first sanctioned MMA card in California back in 2005. He fought when the sport was still fighting for the right to exist here.

He is also on the mats. Not watching from the side. Not scheduling a private if you can afford one. On the mats, teaching, six days a week.

Ask Chad what the gym is for and he won't lead with the pro roster. His answer is champions on and off the mats. The fighters are proof the system works and they are not the point of the system. CMMA is built to take whatever a person walks in with and pull the potential out of it. A kid who won't make eye contact. An adult who hasn't trained in fifteen years. A welterweight with a UFC contract on the line. Martial arts is the vehicle. Where you drive it is your business.

You're not learning from a video. You're learning from the guys on the broadcast.

Here's what separates CMMA from almost every academy you could walk into instead.

At most gyms, the fight team is a closed shop. They train at 6 a.m. behind a locked door, they have their own coaches, and you will never once share a mat with them. You pay your dues, you learn from an instructor who learned from someone else, and the pros are a poster on the wall.

That is not how this building works.

The fighters who represent CMMA in the UFC, on the Contender Series, and in the PFL not only train here but they teach here as well. They lead classes. They run drills. They stay after to show you the grip you couldn't figure out. The competition classes and the beginner classes happen under the same roof, in the same week, out of the same curriculum.

So when Taco Padilla locks up a standing arm triangle on national television, that isn't a highlight you watch on your phone. It's a position you can learn from the man who just hit it. From the same details, in the same order, corrected in real time by someone who has made it work against elite opposition with the fight on the line.

Chad built the staff that way deliberately. Elite coaches he has trained, working professionals rather than resume lines, teaching tested curriculums from white belt to main event. The knowledge doesn't get diluted on its way down to you. It gets handed to you directly.

For adults, that means your technique is pressure-tested by people who actually pressure-test things. For kids, it means their role models are standing in front of them in a rash guard instead of living inside a screen.

Built for the person who has never thrown a punch

Most people on the CMMA mats are not fighters and never will be. That is entirely by design.

For adults: Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, no-gi, boxing, Muay Thai, wrestling, MMA, all-women's kickboxing, group fitness, and private training — six days a week, from 6 a.m. before work to 9 p.m. after it. Come to get in shape. Come to learn to defend yourself. Come because your job is grinding you down and you need ninety minutes where nothing else exists.

For kids: The California Champions Program for kids blends Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, boxing, Muay Thai, and MMA, with a dedicated anti-bullying course alongside it. Our young athletes compete and they win but the thing parents tell us about isn't the medals. It's the kid who started making eye contact. The kid who stopped shrinking in a hallway. The kid who lost a match on Saturday and showed up Monday anyway, because that's the actual skill, and it transfers to every hard thing they will ever face. This past weekend at the NABJJF LA Open, CMMA had 3 kids compete and they each placed on the podium (2 golds and 1 silver).

A 9,000-square-foot facility. Eleven years in Gardena. Six athletes in the UFC, the Contender Series, and the PFL. And classes tonight for everyone.