Chris Leben is coming back. The 46-year-old former UFC middleweight will end a retirement of nearly 13 years to fight Yoshihiro Akiyama at Black Combat 17 on November 21, 2026, at Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul, South Korea. MMA News first reported the matchup, and Athlon Sports followed with the details. If the name across the cage sounds familiar, it should. Leben beat Akiyama at UFC 116, and that fight still gets passed around whenever someone wants to explain why they fell for this sport.
Akiyama is 51 now. According to Athlon, the bout is expected to be his MMA farewell, so the Seoul crowd will be watching the last chapter of one man’s career and the surprise reopening of another’s.
The UFC 116 fight
The first meeting came in July 2010, and Leben had no business being in it. He had just beaten Aaron Simpson two weeks earlier. Then Wanderlei Silva pulled out of his fight with Akiyama because of an injury, and Leben said yes on short notice. Two fights in roughly a fortnight, against a judoka who was supposed to be facing a legend.
What followed was nearly three rounds of trading momentum, the kind of fight where you stop checking the clock because you don’t want it to end. Leben found a triangle choke late in the third and Akiyama tapped at 4:40 of Round 3. It took home Fight of the Night, and it sits near the top of any honest list of Leben’s best UFC nights.
Where they’ve been since
Leben’s last MMA appearance was UFC 168 on December 28, 2013, when Uriah Hall stopped him in the first round after a doctor waved it off. He walked away from MMA after that but didn’t walk away from fighting. He moved to bare-knuckle boxing, and his final appearance there came in February 2021, a first-round knockout of Quentin Henry.
Akiyama has stayed active far more recently. His last MMA fight was in March 2022 at ONE X, where he stopped Shinya Aoki by TKO in the second round. That’s a 51-year-old with a recent stoppage win over one of the most decorated grapplers of his generation, which tells you he isn’t showing up to Seoul as a ceremonial opponent.
The gap is the story here. Akiyama last fought in MMA four and a half years ago. Leben last fought under MMA rules almost 13 years ago, and his most recent fight of any kind was more than five years back.
Quick take
I’ll be honest, part of me loves this and part of me is nervous. UFC 116 was a perfect fight with a perfectly timed finish, a guy fighting on fumes and pulling a triangle out of nowhere with 20 seconds left. You can’t recreate that, and nobody should buy a ticket expecting to. But Akiyama gets a shot at the one loss people still bring up, in a farewell setting, against the same man. That’s worth booking. My only ask is for the referee in Seoul. With two fighters this age and this much time away between them, I want a stoppage that’s on time in both directions. Don’t rescue anyone early, and don’t let anyone eat punches he can’t answer. November 21 can’t come soon enough, and I’ll be watching the first exchange very closely.
