Fast facts
- Division: UFC middleweight
- Record: 3-0 in the UFC, all by TKO; 10-3 across his listed professional MMA bouts
- Nationality: Tunisian-Dutch, born in Amsterdam on June 2, 1992
- Team/gym: Head coach Glover Teixeira
- Notable wins: Alex Pereira (Glory 40 kickboxing final, 2017), Mansur Abdul-Malik (UFC Fight Night 271), Azamat Bekoev (UFC Fight Night 262), Djorden Santos (UFC Fight Night 288)
There’s a habit Glover Teixeira keeps coming back to when he talks about Yousri Belgaroui. Practice ends, the room is spent, people are peeling off wraps and reaching for water, and Belgaroui grabs somebody for more. Wrestling, jiu-jitsu, it doesn’t much matter. Teixeira told Sherdog his fighter will often go another 20 minutes on the mat after everyone else has quit for the day.
“Yousri trains a lot and picks things up very quickly. And he likes training on the ground,” Teixeira said.
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That detail matters more than it would for most fighters, because for most of his adult life the ground was the one place Belgaroui never had to be. He spent his twenties as one of the best middleweight kickboxers on the planet. On November 14 at Madison Square Garden he faces Caio Borralho at UFC 334, which is the first time the UFC has asked him to beat a man who’s already established near the top of the division.
Amsterdam, a degree, and a microphone
Belgaroui was born in Amsterdam to a Tunisian father and a Dutch mother. He went to the University of Amsterdam and came out with a degree in Public Governance and Management, which is an unusual line on a fight résumé and tells you something about a guy who apparently saw a life outside the ring. He also works as a commentator for Veronica TV, so he’s spent time on both sides of the broadcast.
He built his name in Glory, and his kickboxing record reads like a short history of the middleweight division’s last decade.
Adesanya, then Pereira, then Pereira again
In October 2016 at Glory 34 in Denver, Belgaroui entered the middleweight contender tournament, beat Ariel Machado by unanimous decision in the semifinal, and then lost a split decision in the final to Israel Adesanya. That’s a close loss to a man who would go on to hold UFC gold, and it came in Belgaroui’s first real run at the top of Glory.
He came back the next spring. At Glory 40 in Copenhagen in April 2017 he beat Agron Preteni in the semis, then beat Alex Pereira by unanimous decision to win the tournament. Pereira was the future Glory champion at that point. He’s since become a two-division UFC champion, and Belgaroui remains one of the few people who can say he got the better of him over a full fight.
The rematches went the other way. Pereira stopped him in Round 3 at Glory 49 in Rotterdam in December 2017 with the title on the line, then knocked him out in Round 1 at Glory 55 in New York in July 2018. Between and after those nights Belgaroui kept winning when the belt wasn’t involved: a first-round doctor’s stoppage of Jason Wilnis in his hometown, a second-round TKO of Dawid Kasperski, a first-round knockout of Yassine Ahaggan, a decision over Ulric Bokeme, a second-round TKO of Jakob Styben. Donovan Wisse beat him twice, including a third-round TKO for the vacant title at Glory 78 in September 2021. Three title shots, no belt. Combat Press still had him ranked in its middleweight top 10 from November 2021 to March 2022, as high as No. 2.
The long way into the UFC
His MMA career started at UAE Warriors with a unanimous decision over Badreddine Diani, followed by a first-round knockout of Sallah-Eddine Dekhissi three months later. Then it got bumpy, the way it does for strikers learning a new sport in public. He lost a split decision to Ahmed Sami, stopped Samir Zaidi in Round 1, then dropped a unanimous decision to Mohamad Osseili in July 2022.
He went to Levels Fight League and knocked out Bogdan Kotlovyanov in Round 1 in February 2023, then turned around in less than a month to stop Stefan Pretorius in Round 2 at UAE Warriors 35. That earned him a short-notice spot on Dana White’s Contender Series in August 2023, replacing Val Woodburn against Marco Tulio. He lost a unanimous decision. Two months later he stopped Giorgi Kvelidze in Round 1 at light heavyweight in LFL, and he holds the LFL light heavyweight title.
The second Contender Series trip is the one that should have stung most. In September 2024 he faced Taiga Iwasaki, was docked a point in Round 2 for repeated eye pokes, and then finished Iwasaki by TKO in Round 3. No contract. A finish on that show usually gets a guy signed, and it didn’t for him. He was 32.
Three fights, three stoppages
He got in anyway. The UFC called him as a replacement for Torrez Finney against Azamat Bekoev, the former LFA middleweight champion, for August 2025. Belgaroui couldn’t get a visa in time, so the fight moved to UFC Fight Night 262 on October 18, 2025. He stopped Bekoev in Round 3.
On March 28, 2026, at UFC Fight Night 271, he handed undefeated prospect Mansur Abdul-Malik his first loss, again by third-round TKO. That’s the kind of fight where a hyped young guy is supposed to walk through the veteran kickboxer, and it went the other way.
He was booked against Kelvin Gastelum for September 12. Gastelum pulled out on August 13, Djorden Santos stepped in, and Belgaroui finished him in Round 1.
I don’t love hype trains built on three wins, and I’ll say plainly that Bekoev, Abdul-Malik and Santos aren’t Borralho. What makes Belgaroui different from the usual three-fight sensation is everything that came before: the Adesanya split, the Pereira decision, the Wisse losses, a Contender Series finish nobody rewarded. He’s been taking hard fights against good people for 10 years. The UFC run is recent. The résumé isn’t.
Borralho at the Garden
The Borralho fight sits on a crowded UFC 334 card headlined by Ciryl Gane against Josh Hokit for the heavyweight title, with Kayla Harrison defending against Amanda Nunes in the co-main. Bloody Elbow and Yahoo Sports both list Borralho vs. Belgaroui on the main portion of the card even as the event has lost Adrian Yanez, Baisangur Susurkaev, Nazim Sadykhov and Jefferson Nascimento in recent weeks.
Borralho has far more UFC experience and is coming off a unanimous decision over Reinier de Ridder in March. Teixeira isn’t pretending otherwise.
“One step at a time. Caio is without a doubt one of the biggest challenges in the division, but Yousri has an impressive sense of distance and is getting more and more confident in his grappling,” he told Sherdog. “There’s no doubt he’s becoming a complete MMA fighter and he’ll be very well prepared for this fight.”
The distance part I believe without question. You don’t take a decision off Pereira without knowing exactly where the edge of the danger zone sits. The grappling part is what November 14 is for, and it’s the reason those extra 20 minutes on the mat matter.
In the middle of a hard camp, he still found time to be a little silly. On October 18, the X account @DovySimuMMA posted a clip of Alex Pereira’s son and Belgaroui recreating the Wanderlei Silva and Chael Sonnen meme. The man who once outpointed Pereira, playing around with Pereira’s kid, four weeks before the biggest fight of his MMA life at Madison Square Garden.
