A year ago in Charlotte, Liz Carmouche needed one round to put Jena Bishop away and win the 2025 PFL flyweight tournament. For most of the first round Friday night at Wintrust Arena, it looked like she would do it again. Then Bishop got off the canvas, started grabbing legs, and spent the next 20 minutes turning the fight into a grappling match. Three judges gave her the inaugural PFL women’s flyweight title by identical 48-47 scores, and Bishop is now 12-3.
MMA Fighting described Carmouche as a heavy favorite going in, and the résumé backed that up. She’d won four straight and 13 of her last 14, finished Viviane Araujo in June, and already owned the clean head-to-head win. This is how the rematch flipped.
Round 1: Carmouche wins the range, Bishop loses the shot
Carmouche opened with kicks low and high. Cageside Press noted that Bishop timed one of them and drove her to the fence, where she landed knees to the body and won the underhook battle. That exchange matters for everything that came later. Bishop had the exact position she wanted and still couldn’t finish the takedown, because Carmouche’s balance held.
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Back in open space, Carmouche was clearly the better striker. She unloaded lefts and rights on a covering Bishop and rocked her, and when Bishop shot to get out of the pressure, the entry came in late and bad. Yahoo Sports credited a short hook for putting her down. What followed was a flood of ground and pound and hammerfists, with the referee appearing close to stepping in, according to Yahoo and MMA Weekly. Bishop fired upkicks, grabbed a leg, and was back on her feet before the horn.
I hate early stoppages, and this is the kind of round that shows why. Bishop kept moving and kept giving the referee reasons to wait, and she won the title because he did.
The scorecards also tell you how that round was graded. A 48-47 result only adds up if every round went 10-9. Nobody gave Carmouche a 10-8 for the first, and if even one judge had, that card becomes a draw.
Rounds 2 and 3: The grappler finds her lane
Bishop’s adjustment was to stop trying to win clean entries from the outside and start winning scrambles. In the second, she punched her way forward to back Carmouche up, shot, got stuffed, and came up on top anyway in the scramble. Carmouche clamped onto a leg from the bottom to block the pass, which kept her safe from submissions but also kept her on her back while Bishop dug heavy punches into the body.
Then Bishop nearly handed the round back. An elbow to the back of the head during a volley drew a warning and a standup, per Cageside, with no point taken. Run the math again. A one-point deduction turns 48-47 into 47-47 on all three cards. Bishop recovered fast, pinning Carmouche to the fence and grabbing a leg for a takedown with just over a minute left, then dropping elbows.
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The third is where the jiu-jitsu took over (Cageside calls Bishop a jiu-jitsu world champ). Yahoo described a well-timed trip, and Cageside noted Bishop’s first attempt in the round was defended before her second shot landed along the fence. Either way she ended up on the back with hooks in, transitioned to a body lock, and hunted the rear-naked choke. Cageside called it tight. Carmouche survived a hand fight of roughly a minute to close the round, and that minute was pure veteran survival.
Round 4: The weight cut question
Carmouche shaved her head Thursday to hit 125 exactly, MMA Fighting reported, while Bishop weighed 124.6. Both MMA Fighting and Cageside raised the cut as a possible reason Carmouche faded after the first. My read lines up with theirs. When a fighter has to cut her hair to make championship weight, the bill usually comes due somewhere in a 25-minute fight, and Bishop made her carry weight for most of the second and third.
Bishop had spent plenty of gas herself, though. MMA Fighting thought she looked tired in the fourth, and Carmouche sprawled her way into top position and did damage. Bishop tried to isolate a leg, Carmouche stepped over, and the rest of the frame was even exchanges plus Bishop knees along the fence. Carmouche’s round, and by the final math, two rounds apiece heading into the fifth.
Round 5: The mistake
This is the round I’ll be rewatching. MMA Fighting had Carmouche coming out fresher, then called what happened next “shockingly reckless.” Cageside saw Bishop connect with a right, hit a quick takedown, and take the back immediately. The body lock went on again. MMA Fighting said Bishop briefly sank the choke before Carmouche peeled it off. Carmouche tried to turn into her while stripping the lock, Bishop adjusted and retook the back, and when Carmouche finally stood, she was carrying Bishop’s full weight and fell right back down.
My read on the whole fight is simple. Carmouche won both rounds where she decided where the fight happened. Bishop won every round where she got to Carmouche’s hips or back off a scramble. In Charlotte, Bishop never survived long enough to get there.
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“She made me cry again,” Bishop said afterward, a nod to Carmouche once revealing she’d made Bishop cry in training. She also said, “I knew this was going to happen and I knew I was coming home with this belt.”
Next up: Ditcheva
Dakota Ditcheva (16-0) came into the cage for the faceoff. She stopped Bishop by TKO in 2024, according to MMA Fighting, and said on the broadcast she’s been cleared for full contact after breaking both hands in her July decision win over Denise Kieholtz.
“Now that I’ve been cleared, I want to be the next person to fight for [the belt],” Ditcheva said. “I’m ready to go, February or March I would love to get in and challenge someone for the belt.”
Cageside reports the fight is expected early next year, which puts it right around the Most Valuable Promotions merger that Yahoo’s preview flagged for 2027. Bishop just proved she can absorb a striker’s best round and still win the fight on the mat. Against Ditcheva, she’ll have to prove it twice: once against the woman who already stopped her, and once against the