Fast facts
- Division: Middleweight (UFC)
- Record: 9-9-1 in the UFC, after going 10-2 on the European circuit
- Nationality: Italian, born in Trento
- Team/gym: Kings MMA, with striking coach Rafael Cordeiro and wrestling and cage work alongside Mark Muñoz
- Notable wins: Paulo Costa, Jack Hermansson, Kevin Holland, Roman Dolidze, Karl Roberson, Cezar Ferreira
On October 3 in Salt Lake City, UFC 332 produced 11 knockouts, the most of any event in company history. Marvin Vettori was not part of that count. He spent three full rounds trading with Ismail Naurdiev on the early prelims, in what MMA Mania called “a scrappy and enjoyable clash,” and it was the only fight in that opening block to reach the scorecards. All three judges gave it to Naurdiev, 29-28.
The loss was Vettori’s fifth in a row. That’s the longest losing streak of his career, and he hasn’t won a fight since March 2023. MMA Junkie’s post-event numbers added the stat that explains him better than any highlight could: every loss of his career has come by decision. Nobody has ever finished Marvin Vettori. Lately, nobody has needed to.
Six gyms and a plane ticket
Vettori was born September 20, 1993, in Trento, the oldest of three kids. He started kickboxing around 13. At 16 he was watching Fedor Emelianenko fight in PRIDE on television, and that’s when mixed martial arts got its hooks in him.
The trouble was geography. MMA in Italy was still finding its feet, and a proper gym that taught the whole sport was hard to come by, so Vettori stitched one together himself, training at six different gyms to collect the pieces. I love that detail. A teenager in the Alps building his own fight camp out of spare parts is how a lot of good careers actually start, quietly and inefficiently, with a lot of bus rides.
In 2012 he turned pro and moved to London for two years of training. Later he crossed to the United States and landed at Kings MMA, where his day still runs on a split schedule six days a week. Striking with Rafael Cordeiro starts at 10 a.m. for an hour, then wrestling drills and cage work with Mark Muñoz. The evening session is conditioning or jiu-jitsu, and it usually wraps around 10 p.m. Before the UFC called, he’d gone 10-2 in Europe and held the Venator FC welterweight title.
The Adesanya fights
He debuted at UFC 202 in August 2016 and choked out Alberto Emilliano Pereira with a guillotine in the first round. A decision loss to Antônio Carlos Júnior followed, then a win over Vitor Miranda, then a majority draw with Omari Akhmedov at UFC 219 where Vettori lost the first two rounds on most cards and dragged it back with a 10-8 third.
The fight that followed him for years came in April 2018 at UFC on Fox 29. Israel Adesanya, not yet champion, took a split decision. One judge had it 29-28 for Vettori. Fifteen of 17 media outlets scored it for Adesanya, so the scorecard dispute was thinner than the Italian probably felt it was.
Then a stall. In April 2019 it was reported he’d been suspended six months for ostarine from an out-of-competition test in August 2018. USADA found the positive came from a contaminated supplement and found no evidence of intentional use.
What came next was the best stretch of his career. He beat Cezar Ferreira and Andrew Sanchez by decision in 2019. He submitted Karl Roberson in the first round in June 2020 for Performance of the Night, after Roberson missed weight twice and was pulled once with rhabdomyolysis. He outworked Jack Hermansson in December 2020 for Fight of the Night, then spent most of an April 2021 fight on top of Kevin Holland. Five wins in a row earned him the rematch with Adesanya, for the belt, in the UFC 263 main event on June 12, 2021. Adesanya won a unanimous decision.
Four months later Vettori took on Paulo Costa at light heavyweight, because Costa couldn’t make middleweight that week, and won a decision with a Performance of the Night bonus attached. That’s the fight I’d show someone who wanted to understand him. He took the bout on worse terms against a bigger man and just kept coming.
How he fights
Vettori’s game is volume and stubbornness, backed by real grappling. The record book bears it out. At the time of the most recent listing, he ranked third in UFC middleweight history in total strikes landed (1,687) and significant strikes landed (1,274), third in average fight time (16:42) and fourth in total fight time (4:43:47). He has two submission wins in the UFC and won a no-gi match against Tarek Suleiman at ADXC 1 in October 2023, stepping in for Belal Muhammad.
The flip side of a fighter who’s never been stopped is a fighter whose fights are always close enough to lose. Robert Whittaker beat him on the cards in September 2022. He edged Roman Dolidze at UFC 286 in March 2023 in a fight the media split down the middle, 14 outlets to 14. Then Jared Cannonier beat him in June 2023, a fight that won Fight of the Night and MMAjunkie’s Fight of the Month and turned out to be the start of the skid.
The hard part
An injury pulled him from a Brendan Allen fight in April 2024. He returned in March 2025 to headline against Dolidze again and lost. On April 14, 2025, he announced that his younger brother Patrick had died at 30 in a house fire in Italy.
He kept fighting. The Allen bout finally happened at UFC 318 in July 2025, another decision loss and another Fight of the Night. At UFC 323 in December, Brunno Ferreira came in three pounds heavy, gave up 20 percent of his purse to Vettori and then won the decision anyway. A rib injury scratched the first Naurdiev date in June 2026 before they met in October.
MMA Mania described the veterans on that early prelim block, Vettori included, as “long in the tooth,” and the outlet also pointed out they were better known than half the main card. Both things are true. He’s 33, he hasn’t been knocked down into retirement the way Rafael dos Anjos and Court McGee were that same night, and he’s still drawing bonuses for effort.
What he needs next is a matchup where the scorecards aren’t a coin flip, someone who’ll stand in front of him for 15 minutes and let the volume pile up. The UFC already pays him at its 16-to-20-bout tier, $16,000 for walking out on October 3. Nineteen fights in, he’s earned one more booking that gives him a fair shot at the judges.
