Brunei won big at the Ultimate Beatdown 55 competition in Johor Bahru, Malaysia, last November with both fighters from Wolfpack MMA gym clinching their respective fights in what is known as ‘Malaysia’s Premier Grassroots Fight League’.
Azizan Ariffin, 31, thrilled spectators while making his MMA debut in the Below 77kg category, with a win via stoppage using a front rear-naked guillotine submission as the second round against opponent Amar Putra from Malaysia. Danyal Johan, 28, won by unanimous decision with a dominant performance over his challenger, Eugene Sow from Singapore. “We trained for about two months, helping them to prepare for the fight camp, with our trainer, Haikal, assisting the athletes during the match as well,” said coach and Wolfpack MMA founder, Adib Sulaiman. The Ultimate Beatdown competition is a crucial event in competitive fighting, and is held regularly for fighters to work on improving their professional rankings and ability to progress to major league platforms such as The One. Matches are often live-streamed on the Ultimate Beatdown’s YouTube channel.
“We wanted to participate in the competition to show people that Bruneians are capable and help grow the MMA scene here in Brunei,” explained Adib, who added that with things still being relatively new and no Bruneians having competed for a while, it was a good time to do so. Ultimate Beatdown’s first event of 2025 took place in February and the competitions will be held regularly throughout the year.
