A knockout in 2 minutes and 9 seconds, in the first round. That was all it took fighter Pavel Andrușca, at the UAE Warriors 72 gala on Thursday, 23 July, in Abu Dhabi, to record his eighth win in a row and stay undefeated. And his road to the octagon in the United Arab Emirates began at the Ungheni Sports School.
The Embassy of the Republic of Moldova to the United Arab Emirates publicly congratulated him on the performance, calling him the “Moldovan fighter Pavel Andrușca”. Beyond the congratulations, the story deserves to be told in full: who he is, what he actually did in Abu Dhabi, and why an 8-0 record matters for a 24-year-old athlete.
What happened in Abu Dhabi
At the UAE Warriors 72 — “Chopurov vs. McLaren” gala, held at the Space42 Arena in Abu Dhabi, Andrușca competed in the bantamweight division (about 61 kilograms). He faced China’s Ge Xipengchu — an experienced opponent — and beat him by KO with a right-hand strike, 2 minutes and 9 seconds into the first round, according to the sports databases Sherdog and Tapology and the promotion’s official profile. (The embassy wrote the opponent’s name as “Gexipengchu”, while Sherdog reverses it to “Pengchu Gexi” — these are different renderings of the same Chinese name.)
This was not his first appearance in the promotion. In November 2025, at UAE Warriors 65, Andrușca had also won by first-round knockout. So, in this Abu Dhabi promotion, his record is perfect: two matches, two wins, both before the limit.
From freestyle wrestling, in Ungheni, to MMA
Andrușca’s connection to Ungheni is not a label of convenience; it is tied to his athletic development, and this is recorded in a public document of the local authority. In July 2022, the Ungheni District Council officially honored “the athlete Pavel Andrușca, pupil, Sports School, Ungheni town”, a bronze medalist at the European Freestyle Wrestling Championship held in Italy, together with his coach, Ghenadie Flocea. The medal is also independently confirmed by the international wrestling federation (United World Wrestling), which lists him with the 2022 junior (U20) European bronze.
So his foundation is freestyle wrestling — a base that many MMA fighters turn into a style of control and pressure. Andrușca made his mixed martial arts debut in 2021 and, according to the databases, now trains out of Chișinău, where he fought his first bouts. He is an athlete trained in Ungheni, not necessarily born here — but his athletic roots, through the Sports School and the European medal awarded by the district, are real and documented.
What an 8-0 record actually means
A record of eight wins with no losses says something, but the way the wins came says even more. Of Andrușca’s eight matches, six ended by KO or TKO and one by submission — that is, seven of eight before the limit, a finishing rate of nearly 88%. For comparison, in the UFC — the top tier in the world — roughly half of all bouts go to the judges’ decision, and first-round finishes are under a third. Andrușca, then, is not a fighter who “grinds out” points decisions, but one who looks for an early finish.
On his own channels, the athlete also presents himself as the bantamweight world champion of the Vendetta Fight Nights promotion, where he gathered several of his earlier wins — a title that appears on his accounts and in the promotion of the galas, even though it is not listed in the international databases.
What UAE Warriors is and where Moldova stands
For the reader who does not follow combat sports: UAE Warriors is an MMA promotion founded in 2012, based in Abu Dhabi. It describes itself as the biggest mixed martial arts organization in the Middle East, and its galas are broadcast on UFC Fight Pass, the platform of the world’s biggest league. It is, in other words, a strong regional tier — a launchpad from which good fighters can reach the UFC or PFL.
Moldova is no stranger on this map. The country already has MMA athletes in the top world tier: Serghei Spivac, in the UFC at heavyweight and ranked in the world top 10, Alexandr Romanov, who reached the PFL, and Ion Cutelaba, with several good years in the UFC at light heavyweight. Andrușca is still at the regional level, but his trajectory — eight wins, most of them fast, and a double success in Abu Dhabi — is exactly the profile of an athlete on the rise.
For Ungheni, beyond the statistics, it is the story of a young man who started on the wrestling mat of the local Sports School and went on to win, by knockout, on a stage watched around the world.
This article is based on the public congratulations of the Embassy of the Republic of Moldova to the UAE, on the sports databases Sherdog and Tapology, on the official profile of the UAE Warriors promotion, on the 2022 Ungheni District Council document (recovered from the archive) and on the profile of the international wrestling federation. The result, the record and the European medal are confirmed by independent sources. We could not confirm on primary sources the MMA gym where he currently trains, the prize money he received for the bout or his exact place of birth; where the databases and the local documents diverge (training base in Chișinău vs. development in Ungheni), we have noted both.