September 12, 2026 · Desert Diamond Arena, Glendale, Arizona, United States
McMillen
11-0-0
UnrankedGreat Falls, Montana | 28 years old
Rahiki
9-0-0
UnrankedRabat, Morocco | 24 years old
Somebody Leaves Glendale Without the Zero
20 combined wins, 19 finishes, not a single loss between them. One of these guys finds out Saturday what losing feels like.
Conviction
Conviction 6 rather than 7 because McMillen's documented hole is exactly Rahiki's weapon: 59% striking defense, 4.96 strikes absorbed per minute, and a round one against Mgoyan where he was outlanded 22 to 10 and still ended up in a mounted guillotine. Across from him is a man with eight knockouts in nine pro wins and a 2.25 knockdown average per 15 minutes of cage time, and those are the numbers carrying the weight here, not the Oceania K1 belt, which is an amateur title from 2022. That isn't a spreadsheet footnote. What holds it at 6 instead of dropping it to 5 is something no stat sheet shows: Rahiki has never seen a third round in a three-rounder, and the one night anybody made him fight outside his plan, the HEX title fight with Kakembo, he calls the hardest of his career. McMillen is precisely the opponent who doesn't go away and who gets more accurate as the fight ages. The market drifted his way too, but not in a shape I can use as an argument: it opened and today runs from at at, with and at 62 cents. Thirty-six points between the best and worst price, in a thin market on two unranked prospects, is not money saying anything firm. I log it and leave it out of the math. What keeps this at 6 is still the same question: what happens if the Moroccan lands clean in the first five minutes.
Conviction 6 rather than 7 because McMillen's documented hole is exactly Rahiki's weapon: 59% striking defense, 4.96 strikes absorbed per minute, and a round one against Mgoyan where he was outlanded 22 to 10 and still ended up in a mounted guillotine. Across from him is a man with eight knockouts in nine pro wins and a 2.25 knockdown average per 15 minutes of cage time, and those are the numbers carrying the weight here, not the Oceania K1 belt, which is an amateur title from 2022. That isn't a spreadsheet footnote. What holds it at 6 instead of dropping it to 5 is something no stat sheet shows: Rahiki has never seen a third round in a three-rounder, and the one night anybody made him fight outside his plan, the HEX title fight with Kakembo, he calls the hardest of his career. McMillen is precisely the opponent who doesn't go away and who gets more accurate as the fight ages. The market drifted his way too, but not in a shape I can use as an argument: it opened and today runs from at at, with and at 62 cents. Thirty-six points between the best and worst price, in a thin market on two unranked prospects, is not money saying anything firm. I log it and leave it out of the math. What keeps this at 6 is still the same question: what happens if the Moroccan lands clean in the first five minutes.
THE PARADOX
Power Has a Window, Volume Has a Clock
Marwan Rahiki looked at the 252 significant strikes Tommy McMillen dumped on Alberto Montes and delivered the sharpest line of the buildup: if you need 252, you don't have knockout power. As a description, he isn't wrong. McMillen doesn't own the one shot that ends it, both of his octagon wins came by accumulation, and the Moroccan has eight knockouts in nine wins with a 2.25 knockdown average per 15 minutes. Rahiki's window is real, and it opens in round one. The problem is what sits on the other side of that window. Rahiki has never been past the second round of a three-round fight in nine pro bouts. The one time somebody dragged him into deep water was Kakembo in May 2025, a man who shelled up, refused to trade, and forced Rahiki to tear up the plan and go hunting on the mat for a fourth-round guillotine. He still calls it the hardest night of his career. And on the Contender Series, Mulumba put him on the floor twice in five minutes and sank a deep rear-naked choke before getting finished himself. McMillen throws between 34 and 38 significant strike attempts per minute across his two UFC fights. Rahiki throws between 14 and 17. That isn't a stylistic edge, it's arithmetic that gets worse every minute the clock runs. And McMillen's accuracy climbed round by round in both of his fights that passed the 10-minute mark: 37, 43 and 58 percent against Mgoyan, 43, 49 and 55 against Montes.
Marwan Rahiki looked at the 252 significant strikes Tommy McMillen dumped on Alberto Montes and delivered the sharpest line of the buildup: if you need 252, you don't have knockout power. As a description, he isn't wrong. McMillen doesn't own the one shot that ends it, both of his octagon wins came by accumulation, and the Moroccan has eight knockouts in nine wins with a 2.25 knockdown average per 15 minutes. Rahiki's window is real, and it opens in round one. The problem is what sits on the other side of that window. Rahiki has never been past the second round of a three-round fight in nine pro bouts. The one time somebody dragged him into deep water was Kakembo in May 2025, a man who shelled up, refused to trade, and forced Rahiki to tear up the plan and go hunting on the mat for a fourth-round guillotine. He still calls it the hardest night of his career. And on the Contender Series, Mulumba put him on the floor twice in five minutes and sank a deep rear-naked choke before getting finished himself. McMillen throws between 34 and 38 significant strike attempts per minute across his two UFC fights. Rahiki throws between 14 and 17. That isn't a stylistic edge, it's arithmetic that gets worse every minute the clock runs. And McMillen's accuracy climbed round by round in both of his fights that passed the 10-minute mark: 37, 43 and 58 percent against Mgoyan, 43, 49 and 55 against Montes.
Truth A
Rahiki is right. McMillen has no fight-ending single shot, he's already been clearly outworked in a first round, and the Moroccan has eight knockouts in nine pro wins plus a 2.25 knockdown average per 15 minutes of cage time. The Oceania K1 belt in his bio is an amateur title from 2022, so it's the pro numbers doing the talking here. For the first five minutes, all the danger belongs to him.
Truth B
But McMillen has absorbed 161 significant strikes across his three statistically tracked fights and has never hit the floor. Rahiki went down twice in a single round. If this turns into an attrition war, both chins have been tested and only one of them failed.
Tale of the Tape
Rahiki is four years younger
Sources don't agree on Rahiki's height: UFC.com and UFCStats list 5'8", Sherdog and ESPN list 5'10". McMillen's edge is somewhere between two and four inches, which is why the analysis leans on reach instead, where nobody disputes the number
A two-inch reach edge for the American
Opposite roots, same aggressive style
Current Form
Tommy McMillen
252 significant strikes over three rounds, the UFC record for a three-round fight in any division, taking down the 238 Nate Diaz had held since UFC 141. Two knockdowns in round 3 and a punch stoppage at 3:29. His sharpest round of the night was the third, at 55 percent.
TKO R3Octagon debut. Turned the opening minutes into a phone-booth brawl, landed 74 of 134, and ended it with a knee to the body in the clinch at 3:57 of round 1. Fight of the Night.
TKO R1Contender Series. He lost round 1 badly to the undefeated Russian, 22 strikes to 10, gave up two takedowns and got caught in a mounted guillotine. Turned it around in the second and buried him in the third with 77 strikes. The only fight of his career to reach the scorecards.
Majority DecisionHeadlined RUF 62 in Arizona. Rear-naked choke at 1:58 of the first round.
Sub R1Guillotine at 1:10, the third in a row on his regional run. None of the three got past 2:13.
Sub R1Eleven fights, eleven wins, 10 finishes, and two bonuses in two octagon appearances: Fight of the Night on debut against Zecchini, Performance of the Night against Montes. The pinched sciatic nerve that had him taking regional fights at 160 and 170 pounds with a dead foot cleared roughly six weeks before his UFC debut and hasn't come back. The caveat is the turnaround: he's back eight weeks after a 13-and-a-half-minute fight in which he threw 513 strikes. On the flip side, he publicly asked to be on this card, and Desert Diamond Arena is a 20-minute drive from his gym in Peoria.
Marwan Rahiki
Main card in Perth. Knockdown and a punch knockout at distance at 2:47 of round 1, landing 22 of 40. The cleanest night of his career.
TKO R1UFC debut. He broke the Englishman's jaw and the corner threw in the towel at the 5:00 mark of round 2. Fight of the Night, but he ate 65 significant strikes across two rounds to get there.
TKO R2Contender Series. Dropped twice in round 1 and survived a deep rear-naked choke, then came back and ended it with a knee, two elbows and an uppercut at 2:13 of round 2. Contract signed on the spot.
TKO R2Beatdown Promotions 11 title, a second-round stoppage by strikes. His second Australian belt in two years in the country.
TKO R2HEX 35 title fight. His opponent shelled up, refused to trade and forced him to rewrite the plan mid-fight and hunt on the ground. Guillotine in the fourth. The only win of his career that didn't come from punching a man out, and he calls it his hardest night.
Sub R4Nine fights, nine finishes, and not one judge has ever had to score a Marwan Rahiki bout. Fight of the Night on debut, then a knockout in Perth seven weeks later in front of a crowd that had already adopted him. He left Rabat at 19 without his family, found his gym in a Sydney sauna, and won titles in two Australian promotions inside two years. The caveats are the calendar and the test: he took this fight while visiting family in Morocco on a little over a month's notice, and exactly once in nine fights has anybody dragged him past round two, the HEX 35 night against Kakembo that he closed with a fourth-round guillotine.
Level of Competition
These two came from the same place in the same year: Contender Series contracts in 2025, two octagon wins apiece, and not one ranked opponent between them across their entire careers. McMillen owns the best name on either list, with Alberto Montes arriving at 12-1 off a submission of Ricky Turcios at UFC 326. Rahiki beat English veteran Harry Hardwick, who was 13-4-1, and Ollie Schmid, who was 4-2 and took the fight on four days' notice as an injury replacement for Jack Jenkins. Neither man has been tested against the top of the division, which is exactly why this fight exists: it measures both of them at once, with no resume gap either way.
Statistical Comparison
Sig. Strikes per Minute
Nearly double the output. Across his two UFC fights McMillen threw 34 to 38 attempts per minute; Rahiki, 14 to 17.
Striking Accuracy (%)
Strikes Absorbed per Minute
Both men are easy to hit. It's the number that keeps this fight live for either side.
Striking Defense (%)
Knockdowns per 15 Min
The pop sits with the Moroccan: one knockdown every six and a half minutes of cage time.
Takedowns per 15 Min
Neither man wrestles. That's two takedown attempts combined across six statistically tracked fights.
Takedown Defense (%)
McMillen's 83% comes from stuffing 10 of Mgoyan's 12 attempts. Rahiki's 100% comes off three attempts total, one from Hardwick and two from Mulumba, so it's a thin sample, not a wall.
Submissions per 15 Min
Neither hunts submissions in the octagon, but both have won with a guillotine outside it.
McMillen leads in 3 categories · Rahiki leads in 4
Win & Loss Distribution
Wins
KO/TKO
Submission
Decision
This is the contrast that defines the fight. Rahiki finishes everything, and only one way: eight knockouts in nine wins, one guillotine, zero decisions, no judge has ever scored one of his fights. McMillen finishes nearly everything too, but through two different doors: five knockouts and five submissions, three of them guillotines and two rear-naked chokes, with a single decision in 11 wins. That matters for the method here. The Moroccan has one route; the American has two. And McMillen's second route points straight at the spot where Rahiki has already been in trouble, when Mulumba took his back and sank a deep rear-naked choke on the Contender Series.
Losses
KO/TKO
Submission
Decision
There is no loss map to draw here, and that's the information. Both men are unbeaten at 11-0 and 9-0, and neither has been knocked out, submitted or outpointed a single time as a professional. So what's left is reading the moments each of them came close. McMillen's came in round one against Mgoyan on the Contender Series: he lost the round 22 significant strikes to 10, gave up two takedowns, and got caught in a mounted guillotine. Rahiki's came against Mulumba, also on the Contender Series: dropped twice in five minutes and forced to survive a deep rear-naked choke. The difference that matters is the chin. McMillen has absorbed 161 significant strikes across his three tracked fights without ever going down; Rahiki has hit the floor twice in one round.
Skills Profile
McMillen
vs
Rahiki
Striking at Range
+2 McMillen
Two inches of reach and 92% of his strikes against Montes landing at distance. It's where McMillen's output gap turns into a real problem. Height stays out of the argument because the sources split: 5'8" on UFC.com and UFCStats, 5'10" on Sherdog and ESPN.
Close-Range Striking
+2 Rahiki
Rahiki's close-range arsenal is nastier and more varied: a knee, two elbows and an uppercut ended Mulumba, and he's knocked men out with a spinning back kick and a body shot.
Knockout Power
+2 Rahiki
Eight knockouts in nine wins and a 2.25 knockdown average against five in 11 and 1.39. McMillen breaks people down; Rahiki turns their lights off.
Striking Defense
+1 McMillen
Both defend badly, 59% to 57%, but McMillen absorbs less per minute and is the only one of the two who hasn't met the canvas.
Grappling & Clinch
+2 McMillen
Three-time state wrestling champion, five submission wins, and 83% takedown defense against Mgoyan. Rahiki is a purple belt with one guillotine, but he's had his back taken and has not completed a takedown across his three statistically tracked fights, going 0-for-1 on attempts.
Cardio (3 Rounds)
+3 McMillen
Round three is McMillen's sharpest round in both of his fights that passed 10 minutes, at 58% and 55%. Rahiki has never fought a third round in a three-rounder.
Rahiki wins this in the first 10 minutes or he doesn't win it. McMillen wins if he crosses that window on his feet and still working, because from there he's the bigger man, he throws more than double the strikes, and he gets sharper every round. The question isn't who hits harder. It's how long this thing lasts.
Final Prediction
The Thesis
Conviction6/10The thesis is: Tommy McMillen wins because the output gap is arithmetic rather than stylistic, 13.54 significant strikes per minute to 7.75, with 513 attempts in 13 and a half minutes against Montes while Rahiki has never thrown more than 164 in an entire fight, because he's the bigger man in a fight that gets settled standing, a 74-inch reach against 72 inches with 92% of his strikes landing at distance, and because Rahiki has never fought a third round in a three-rounder across nine pro bouts and the one night somebody forced him to fight outside his plan, the HEX title fight against Kakembo, he himself calls the hardest of his career.
The thesis is: Tommy McMillen wins because the output gap is arithmetic rather than stylistic, 13.54 significant strikes per minute to 7.75, with 513 attempts in 13 and a half minutes against Montes while Rahiki has never thrown more than 164 in an entire fight, because he's the bigger man in a fight that gets settled standing, a 74-inch reach against 72 inches with 92% of his strikes landing at distance, and because Rahiki has never fought a third round in a three-rounder across nine pro bouts and the one night somebody forced him to fight outside his plan, the HEX title fight against Kakembo, he himself calls the hardest of his career.
The path is McMillen surviving round one, which is the Moroccan's window and the American's loosest round, starting to pile it on in the second with the body work and pressure that folded Zecchini in the clinch, and reaching the third with his opponent in unfamiliar water, exactly the way it went against Montes. It breaks down if Rahiki lands clean on the entry inside the first five minutes, which is precisely what Mgoyan nearly did on the Contender Series when he took the round 22 strikes to 10 and locked up a mounted guillotine.
What Breaks This Pick
- 01
If Rahiki lands clean in the first five minutes and McMillen backs up or gets tentative, the volume thesis never gets started. That's how Mgoyan took round one on the Contender Series.
- 02
If McMillen comes in square and stationary in the pocket instead of circling and stringing shots together, he becomes a stationary target for a man who drops people every six and a half minutes.
- 03
If the short turnaround collects, eight weeks after a 13-and-a-half-minute fight in which he threw 513 attempts, and his pace drops off in round two, the arithmetic holding up the pick disappears.
- 04
If Rahiki shows in round one that he's learned to manage distance instead of hunt, he turns this into a counter-fight and McMillen's volume becomes a liability rather than an edge.
Underdog Path
Rahiki doesn't chase. He lets McMillen come, because the American always comes, and works the counter on the entry, which is the exact moment McMillen opens up to start his sequence. At 52% accuracy with a knockdown every six and a half minutes of cage time, he doesn't need many looks. The instant the American is hurt, the Moroccan closes and goes to work in tight with the knee, elbow and uppercut string that ended Mulumba at 2:13 of round two. All of it has to happen inside the first 10 minutes, because after that the volume math turns against him.
Required Conditions
- Refuse to chase the output, picking counters over exchanges and staying under 20 attempts per minute
- Land clean on McMillen's entry in round one, when the American's accuracy is at its lowest, 37% against Mgoyan and 43% against Montes
- Close the distance the moment the American is wobbled, and not let him reset walking backwards
- Get it done before the 10-minute mark, because he has never fought a third round in a three-rounder
— Precedent: Mgoyan vs McMillen (Contender Series, September 2, 2025): the undefeated Russian took round one 22 significant strikes to 10, landed two takedowns, and locked up a mounted guillotine that nearly ended the American's night. The caveat has to be said out loud: Mgoyan did it with wrestling, and Rahiki has not attempted a single takedown in either UFC fight, with one failed attempt on the Contender Series. Only the standing half of that blueprint transfers to this fight.
Verdict
Winner
Tommy McMillen
Method
TKO
Most Likely
- 01
Winner
Tommy McMillen
McMillen because the output gap is arithmetic, 13.54 strikes per minute to 7.75, and because Rahiki has been past round two exactly once in nine fights. But there's no price left: the best number on the board is at, which implies 60%, above the 57% I give him, and it gets worse from there out. Right read, no bet on top of it. Breaks if the Moroccan lands clean on the entry inside the first five minutes.
- 02
How It Ends (Either Fighter)
Fight does not reach the scorecards
No decision because between them they own 19 finishes in 20 wins, neither has a takedown game to slow anything down, and both absorb close to five strikes a minute. Markets tend to inflate the decision in unbeaten-versus-unbeaten fights, betting that both men respect each other. Breaks if one of them comes out cautious and turns this into a 15-minute counter-fight.
- 03
Method
McMillen by KO/TKO
McMillen by KO/TKO because both of his octagon wins came that way and the mechanism never changes: accumulation, body work, and pressure until the other guy stops answering. He ended Zecchini with a knee to the body in the clinch and Montes with two knockdowns in the third. The market discounts his method because there's no one-shot power. Breaks if Rahiki dictates the distance and turns it into a counter-fight.
- 04
Underdog Winner
Marwan Rahiki
Rahiki straight up, not by method and not by round, because his path is one single thing and he executes that thing at a high rate: 52% accuracy and a knockdown every six and a half minutes of cage time. The market read the 252-strike record as proof of dominance, when it's also proof that McMillen needs a long time to close the show. At the best available price, at, he pays exactly the 40% I give him: fair, not value, and anyone taking the dog should shop there rather than eat '. Breaks if he tries to match the volume instead of waiting on the entry.
Most Likely Outcome
Fight does not reach the scorecards
It's the one read where both resumes agree: 19 finishes in 20 wins, no takedown game on either side to slow the pace, and a Moroccan who has been past round two exactly once in nine fights. And it doesn't require picking the winner, which is exactly where conviction 6 says not to size up.
Stats That Matter
13.54
significant strikes per minute for McMillen, against 7.75 for Rahiki
Across his two UFC fights he threw 34 to 38 attempts per minute. The Moroccan threw 14 to 17.
252
significant strikes McMillen landed on Alberto Montes, the UFC record for a three-round fight in any division
That's 513 attempts in 13 and a half minutes, his sharpest round was the third, and the old mark was Nate Diaz's 238 at UFC 141 in December 2011
2
times Rahiki hit the floor in a single round against Mulumba on the Contender Series
He still survived a deep rear-naked choke before turning it around and finishing in the second
The Trap
Rahiki by first-round knockout
The Moroccan has promised exactly this in every interview and the market pays well for it, so it'll be the popular play of the night. The trouble is that it asks for two things at once: the right winner and the narrowest possible window. Across Rahiki's last five fights, only one ended in the first round. His two UFC wins took 2:47 and two full rounds, and the Contender Series one only came at 2:13 of the second after he'd been dropped twice. Across the cage is a man who has absorbed 161 significant strikes in his three tracked fights without going down once. If you like Rahiki, the straight moneyline pays you better for the same risk.
The Moroccan has promised exactly this in every interview and the market pays well for it, so it'll be the popular play of the night. The trouble is that it asks for two things at once: the right winner and the narrowest possible window. Across Rahiki's last five fights, only one ended in the first round. His two UFC wins took 2:47 and two full rounds, and the Contender Series one only came at 2:13 of the second after he'd been dropped twice. Across the cage is a man who has absorbed 161 significant strikes in his three tracked fights without going down once. If you like Rahiki, the straight moneyline pays you better for the same risk.
COLISEUM - Statistical and tactical analysis. Data sourced from ufcstats.com and public sources.
Tommy "Gun" McMillen vs Marwan "Freaky" Rahiki | Noche UFC: Silva vs Delgado | September 12, 2026 | Desert Diamond Arena, Glendale, Arizona, United States
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