Torrez Finney Finally Earned His UFC Contract After Third
Torrez Finney’s contract story took three tries. The middleweight won his first two appearances on Dana White’s Contender Series, but neither result secured him a deal. His third win, a first-round stoppage of Abdellah Er-Ramy on October 1, 2024, finally earned him a place on the promotion’s roster.
Related background: The video below discusses Dana White’s public feedback on Finney’s earlier Contender Series performances. It is commentary about the contract story, not a broadcast of the Er-Ramy fight.
Finney’s route began with a submission win over Yuri Panferov in 2023. He followed it with a unanimous decision over Cameron Rowston in August 2024, but Dana White said the performance showed Finney needed more experience before stepping up. On his third appearance, Finney stopped Er-Ramy with strikes at 4:10 of the opening round. The promotion’s account of his Contender Series run documents the three wins and the eventual contract.
The original report also described Finney as a welterweight and suggested his first assignment was still to come. Finney competes at middleweight, and he made his official debut against Robert Valentin on April 5, 2025. Finney won by split decision in a close fight. His official record now lists a second promotion bout, a unanimous decision loss to Jacob Malkoun on January 31, 2026.
That record puts the contract milestone in perspective. Since then, he has gone 1–1 in his first two official bouts. His path from repeated tryouts to the main roster is a story of persistence, while his next results will determine how far he can climb in the middleweight division.
The first two decisions showed why a winning record alone did not settle the question for White. After Finney submitted Yuri Panferov in 2023, White told him to gain more experience. Finney returned the following season and beat Cam Rowston by decision, but the fight was largely controlled and White criticized the lack of impact in his performance. MMA Fighting’s account of the contract run records White’s blunt assessment that Finney was not ready for the roster after that showing. The warning made the third booking a meaningful test of whether Finney could turn wins into a more convincing performance.
Against Er-Ramy, Finney changed the terms of the conversation with a quick finish. He secured the stoppage at 4:10 of Round 1, giving White a decisive result rather than another close or low-action decision to assess. The win also set a Contender Series milestone: Finney became the first fighter to earn a contract after three victories on the show. That record matters because the headline achievement was persistence across appearances, not a streak of three knockouts.
The next step came at the Apex facility, where Finney faced Robert Valentin on April 5, 2025. The split decision reflected a divided judges’ view: two scorecards favored Finney 29–28, while the third gave Valentin a 30–27 win. The close result was a difficult first assignment to summarize as a dominant debut. Finney’s official record then lists a second appearance against Jacob Malkoun at the Sydney event on January 31, 2026. Malkoun won unanimously, with all three judges scoring the bout for him.
Finney later said he tore his ACL early in the Malkoun fight, a detail that adds context to the loss but does not change the official result. MMA Fighting reported the injury and expected extended recovery. His roster record is therefore still at an early stage: one win and one loss in the first two official bouts, with rehabilitation now part of the path forward. The original contract story remains a useful starting point, while the later results and injury provide the current update.
