Nashville, TN — 2021 PFL featherweight champ Movlid Khaybulaev punched his ticket to this year’s World Tournament final at PFL Nashville, earning a unanimous decision over South Korea’s Tae-Kyun Kim.
Khaybulaev (23-0-1, 1NC) remains a very interesting piece of the PFL’s featherweight puzzle. He’s undefeated, decorated, holds wins over a couple of the promotion’s big names from years past, but has struggled to fight consistently at times. With the PFL since 2019, he missed all of 2022 and 2024, not to mention the 2020 season that was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Now 2-0 in 2025, Khaybulaev told media outlets including Cageside Press following PFL Nashville that “My main goal was to get this first fight going that I had two months ago, because I had a little break. It was a tough two-year hiatus, and I was a little rusty, but now I’ve got two fights in. And actually for me the first one was more difficult than this one, because I was still coming into myself. Now I feel much better, and going in to the final I’m going to feel even better, I’m going to be in even better shape.”
Kim at times threw some very creative, perhaps surprising attacks at Khaybulaev, including a spinning back kick and elbow in the third round. The Dagestani just used those as motivation however.
“I wouldn’t say that was a surprise. If anything that was actually helping me to wake up a little bit,” Khaybulaev stated. “So whatever he was throwing at me, that was just making me see red, you know, get twice harder back at him.”
Next up is the champ versus champ final with Jesus Pinedo. That’s a position he’s been in before, Movlid Khaybulaev reminded reporters.
“Remember, I already won [against] two former champions. Lance Palmer, I [beat] him before, and Brendan Loughnane. He became champion after me, but I beat him.”
Watch the full PFL Nashville post-fight media appearance by Movlid Khaybulaev above.
