“The PFL Heavyweight World Title will be on the line in Dubai!” the promotion wrote on X on Tuesday, attaching a by-the-numbers graphic for Vadim Nemkov vs. Sergei Bilostenniy and confirming the fight for Saturday, November 14 at the Coca-Cola Arena.
The card is billed as PFL Returns to Dubai: Nemkov vs. Bilostenniy, and the heavyweight belt is the headline attraction.
Nemkov is the reason that belt carries weight. The 34-year-old Russian is the PFL’s current and inaugural heavyweight champion, and before he moved up he held the Bellator light heavyweight title longer than anyone in the division’s history. He sits at 20-2 and No. 9 in the Knockout Daily heavyweight rankings. The PFL had him at No. 3 on its men’s pound-for-pound list as of March 26.
View post on X
He trains out of FedorTeam. That’s literal. Nemkov started showing up to Fedor Emelianenko’s camp in Stary Oskol as a ninth grader, served in the Russian Spetsnaz GRU after high school, and then joined the team full-time. His older brother Viktor fought too.
The résumé goes deep. Nemkov opened his pro career in 2013 with four straight early finishes, then landed in Rizin’s 2015 heavyweight grand prix, where he knocked out Goran Reljic in the first round before losing to Jiří Procházka two days later in the semifinals, retiring from exhaustion at the end of a 10-minute first round. In August 2017 he walked into Bellator and knocked out Philipe Lins in one round on debut, which kicked off the run that made his name.
Nemkov hasn’t competed since December 13, 2025, so Dubai ends a layoff of roughly 11 months. The PFL post didn’t include records or recent results for Bilostenniy, and we’re not going to fill in blanks the promotion left empty.
What’s clear is the matchup. Nemkov is a sambo competitor who built a title reign at 205 before taking his game up a weight class, and Bilostenniy gets the champion in a five-round title fight. If Nemkov keeps the belt, his case near the top of the PFL pound-for-pound list gets stronger. If Bilostenniy takes it, he takes it from the man who has held it since the day it was created.
The belt goes on the line November 14 in Dubai.
