With last week’s breaking news that Cage Warriors superstar Luke Riley is now officially a UFC featherweight, there’s been a lot of reminiscing done about the intense, exciting and action-packed four years he spent competing under the CW banner, cementing his status as one of the best 145lb prospects in the sport. Play-by-Play man Brad Wharton takes a look back over Riley’s journey through Europe’s Leading MMA Organisation.
Good things come to those who wait. Well Luke Riley has waited long enough, and last week the moment finally arrived. No longer the hottest free agent in European MMA, now he’s Luke Riley: UFC Featherweight. Trading in the Famous Yellow Gloves for the smooth black leather of the UFC has been the dream since day one. And despite a late delay that felt like an eternity for the Widnes man and his army of fans, the dream is now a reality.
On Wednesday, 20th of August, word got out that the ink on his contract had dried, making him the latest in a long line of Cage Warriors athletes to step off the conveyor belt into the world leading promotion.
It’s a story not dissimilar to that of many other CW alumni; a tale of perseverance, of staying on-mission even when the objective seemed to be fading from sight. Of trusting the process.
After years spent walking to the cage to Jamie Jones’ iconic remix of Azari and III’s ‘Hungry for the Power’ like it was a subliminal manifestation of his goals, the power now lies firmly in his hands. For the 26 year old, the grind is about to start paying off. The global spotlight, the world famous Octagon and the packed out arenas all await him.
And to think, it all started out in an almost empty York Hall at the tail end of a global pandemic.
The COVID Era of UK MMA was a dark time in the sport’s history. For fighters competing on the domestic circuit, particularly the amateurs or those on the cusp of turning pro, the avenues for competition dried up virtually overnight.
With live events off the menu, only a handful of elite level sports were granted permission to operate behind closed doors, and only then under strict conditions and government supervision. With MMA technically not even recognised as a sport by the UK government, things were looking bleak.
A lucky few were able to get some mat time by virtue of having a UFC contracted fighter in their gym. The world-leading promotion was able to issue paperwork to its athletes satisfying the government’s definition of an elite sportsperson, so as long as they had a fight booked, training sessions, with training partners, were permitted.
For everyone else though, the gym doors remained locked, forcing them to either risk fines by training covertly, or not train at all.
Then, like a beacon in the night, came Cage Warriors. After six long months of forced inactivity, the promotion returned with Elite Sport designation (the only MMA organisation in the country to be granted such status) and a plan to keep the scene alive.
Hosting multiple back-to-back cards in clusters of three, while keeping staff and fighters locked down and isolated from the world in strictly controlled bubbles, the promotion brought MMA back to the masses via UFC Fight Pass.
There was light at the end of the tunnel, and for a 22 year old Luke Riley, it couldn’t have come at a better time.
Riley wasn’t the type of fighter typically associated with Liverpool’s Next Generation team archetype. While most would have tabbed any new up-and-comer on their mats as a funky submission grappler, this kid had cut his combat sports teeth in the Thai Boxing ring.
With a wealth of high level competitive experience already under his belt, Riley had coasted through his four amateur MMA fights. His standard was too high and people weren’t exactly queuing up to fight him, so a quick leap to the pro ranks was the obvious next step.
There was just one problem; lockdown was in full effect.
That’s what led Riley to Cage Warriors, and a late 2021 debut at what was to be the final Trilogy. As a bonus, it was the first CW event to permit a small number of fans back to watch the action in person. A small step back towards normality.
For Riley, it was a long awaited opportunity to show the world what he could do after a frustrating year on the sidelines. And boy, did he make the most of it.
It was immediately apparent that we were witnessing something a little different. His hands danced across their various targets with blistering speed. One moment he’d be punishing the body, the next he’d be checking the chin. It was relentless, unforgiving. And when he really put his foot down, the referee was forced to interject.
After two fairly one-sided showcases, it was against Jack Eglin that many of us truly fell in love with being a Luke Riley fan. His willingness to take risks, to get caught up in the moment and walk through the fire in pursuit of that one big shot. The brief moments of vulnerability, and how he dealt with them.
The Eglin fight was our first indication that Riley could take it as well as dish it out. The second was his epic late notice affair against Kallum Parker. The sight of Riley getting sat down in the open exchanges took the air out of the room, but true to form he hung tough and put his own stamp on the bout to win a decision.
Then there was the Alexander Lööf fight. It’s been talked and written about ad nauseum, which is fine but for the fact that words alone will never do it due justice. Telling someone ‘You had to be there…’ is usually the kind of elitist, gatekeeping snobbery reserved for the most pretentious among us, but there really was something special in the air that night which made the experience unique for the few thousand in attendance.
The greatest fight in Cage Warriors history? Arguably. The night Luke Riley cemented himself as Cage Warriors biggest attraction? Undoubtedly.
If the world wasn’t talking about him as a sure-fire future UFC star before the 2023 Fight of the Year then they certainly were after the fact. In the post-Lööf era, the buzz generated by a Luke Riley fight announcement became undeniable. Main event or not, he was the man of the hour and when fans queueing up to enter the BEC Arena were asked who they were there to see, there was usually just one answer.
Another award-worthy performance against top contender John De Jesus saw him put more invaluable rounds in the bank and more importantly, triggered that inevitable phone call from above. Riley was tabbed to Kevin Vallejos on Dana White’s Contender Series in September 2024, before the dreaded visa issues nixed the contest, causing all that momentum – and Riley’s hopes and dreams – to come skidding to a sudden halt.
It’s tough to gauge how someone would react in such circumstances. It’d be easy to give up, or sit rotting on the couch, hoping things would work themselves out behind the scenes. Not Riley though; the news had barely broken when it was followed by the announcement of another fight in the Famous Yellow Gloves.
If there was ever a time to pull a career-best KO out of the hat then this was it, and that’s exactly what Riley did with his bone-jarring knockout of Brazil’s Alexandre Junior; the kind of highlight reel finish that lives on forever in infamy. He followed it up with a plea to White, Mick Maynard and Sean Shelby to pull whatever strings they could to get him where he deserved to be.
While administrative issues worked themselves out, Riley found himself preparing to get back in the cage to fight out his Cage Warriors contract, all while telling the world that he was about to become the hottest free agent in the sport. And while the interest in his signature was certainly robust, he only ever had one destination in mind.
Tariel Abbasov was an entirely different kind of opponent to anyone Riley had faced up to that point though, an elite level wrestler with the ability to alter and control the pace and position of any fight on a whim. On paper he was Riley’s Kryptonite; whichever way you cut it, the bout was a huge risk.
Fighters like Abasov have the skillset to make opponents look bad in victory as well as defeat, and for the first five minutes of a clash that saw him sticking to Riley like glue, that’s exactly what was playing out. In typical fashion though, whether a bad round or a big shot, there was no amount of adversity that was going to stand between the Widnes man and his goal.
From the second the first takedown was stuffed in the second round, it was clear that the momentum had shifted. What followed was a textbook, systematic breakdown of an opponent who could neither find an answer nor withstand the punishment. Riley had comprehensively demolished his opponent before the ten minute mark, and the sound from the crowd was deafening.
He’d become one of the few fighters in CW history to become so synonymous with a venue that he might as well have had his name over the door. McGregor in the Helix, Wood in the Indigo, Shore in the Ice Arena, Paddy in the Echo. Riley had made the BEC his fortress; to fight him there wasn’t a bout on neutral grounds – it was walking into a man’s backyard and fighting an army.
Post fight, Riley hopped the cage and relived me of my mic and headset, issuing an impassioned plea to the UFC to make his lifelong dream come true. As far as he saw it there was no other option; he’d set his sights on the pinnacle of the sport and wasn’t about to settle for less.
And with last week’s news, he doesn’t have to. He trusted the process, he put the work in and now, the world will get to see the fruits of his labour.
People often ask if it’s frustrating to see Cage Warriors’ biggest stars leave for the UFC. And on an individual level, it absolutely is. Who wouldn’t want to have a Luke Riley, an Ian Garry or a Tom Aspinall headlining every one of their shows? But at the end of the day, fighters passing through our doors and going on to become superstars in the UFC validates everything we do here.
For want of a better phrase: While we hate to see them leave, we love to watch them go.
That’s never been a truer sentiment – and I’m sure I speak for the entire Cage Warriors organisation in saying so – than with Luke. So when he makes that long awaited, richly deserved Octagon debut later this year while the world is watching, we will be too.
Who will be the next Cage Warriors superstar to follow in Luke Riley’s footsteps to the UFC? Check out our full schedule of upcoming events to see where you can be part of their journey!