Rozenstruik and Pogues Were Removed After Riyadh Losses
Jairzinho Rozenstruik and Jamal Pogues were removed from the promotion roster after losing on the February 1, 2025 card in Riyadh. The roster change was confirmed to MMA Fighting by promotion officials on February 3. Neither public confirmation detailed a performance-based explanation for the roster decisions.
The video below is a full-fight recap of Rozenstruik’s heavyweight bout with Sergei Pavlovich. It is relevant to one of the two results discussed here, but it does not show Pogues’ fight or the separate roster announcement.
Rozenstruik faced Pavlovich in the heavyweight main event and lost by unanimous decision. All three judges scored it 30–27 for Pavlovich, so the result was clear on the cards even though it went the distance. Pogues met Hamdy Abdelwahab on the prelims and lost by split decision: one judge scored the bout 30–27 for Pogues, while two gave it 29–28 to Abdelwahab. Pogues publicly disagreed with the verdict. The official event results record both outcomes; the roster removals were separately confirmed.
The distinction between the two decisions is important. Rozenstruik lost every round on the judges’ cards, while Pogues had one judge score the fight for him. That does not prove why either roster decision was made, and the public report did not attribute the changes to a specific reason. It does clarify what happened inside the cage and prevents the roster news from being mistaken for two identical losses.
Neither departure ended the fighters’ careers. Rozenstruik returned to action in Dirty Boxing in June 2025, stopping Victor Cardoso in the second round. In August he knocked out Rakim Cleveland in the first round to win the promotion’s inaugural heavyweight title. The DBX 2 event page and DBX 3 event page document those later appearances. The change in ruleset gave him a different competitive path after his departure from the roster.
Pogues returned to regional mixed martial arts, submitting Dylan Potter by arm-triangle choke in August 2025 before losing a five-round unanimous decision to Ty Flores in December. His next results show he continued competing, but they do not alter the Riyadh scorecards or establish the promotion’s reason for removing him. The split decision remained a close, disputed result, with the official cards showing how the three judges differed.
Both bouts went to the judges, which is another useful detail behind the roster headline. Rozenstruik’s main-event loss was scored 30–27 on all three cards; Pogues’ three-round prelim produced a split, with one judge seeing him win. Neither result was a knockout or a submission. Those differences give readers a more accurate picture of the event than a brief “cut after losses” summary alone.
The Riyadh results marked the end of both men’s runs with the promotion, not the end of their fighting careers. Rozenstruik went on to win a title in another ruleset, while Pogues resumed competing on regional cards. Keeping the confirmed roster report separate from claims about either fighter’s future makes the story more precise: two losses were followed by roster removals, but the public record does not establish that one caused the other.
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Tags: Boxing, Combat Sports
