Bo Nickal Drops First Wrestling Match Since 2020 to Max McEnelly at RAF 12

Bo Nickal doesn't lose on a wrestling mat. He'd gone six years without it. That streak ended in Cleveland at RAF 12, where 2026 NCAA champion Max McEnelly edged the Penn State legend 3-2 in a grappling match that Nickal spent the final minute chasing a takedown he never got.

It's a rare mark against a résumé built on dominance. Nickal, now 9-1 in the UFC and ranked #14 at middleweight, hadn't dropped a wrestling match since falling to David Taylor at the 2020 Olympic trials. McEnelly, a University of Minnesota standout giving up significant size, wrestled the whole thing like he'd studied every second of tape.

How It Unfolded

The scoring started with a passivity point in McEnelly's favor. Then came the sequence that decided it: a clean go-behind that put Nickal flat on his belly for a takedown, and suddenly the three-time NCAA champ was staring at a two-point hole.

McEnelly added another point when Nickal couldn't generate offense on the passivity shot clock. Nickal clawed one back the same way to make it 3-2, but the clock was working against him and he had no time to build anything real.

So he did what wrestlers do when the seconds are gone — he kept shooting, hoping to catch a leg. McEnelly's footwork was the story here. He danced away from attack after attack and even denied Nickal a push-out point at the boundary that could have flipped the match on criteria.

When the third period ran out, the score held. McEnelly took the decision and, with it, a big name for his ledger.

What McEnelly Said

McEnelly didn't hold back afterward. He declared himself a new star in the organization and said he's coming for the belt, while giving Nickal his due as a top-level competitor. It's the kind of victory speech you can actually back up when you've just beaten a guy who made three NCAA finals and won all of them.

For context on how dominant Nickal has been elsewhere: his four submission wins and four knockouts inside the Octagon tell you he's not exactly reliant on scoring criteria to win fights. His only pro MMA loss came recently, and he bounced back with a first-round KO of Kyle Daukaus. Losing a tight grappling bout to an active NCAA champion is a very different animal.

What Comes Next

Nickal hasn't booked his next UFC assignment yet, which leaves the door open for an immediate rematch. Asking RAF to run it back would make sense — this was close enough that a single push-out or reversal changes the result, and Nickal isn't a guy who tends to sit with a loss.

The bigger picture is that grappling super-events like RAF are increasingly where fighters test themselves between camps, and the roster keeps growing: Gilbert Burns is reportedly open to competing after retiring from MMA, and Michael Page is set for the mats against Alexander Shlemenko on Oct. 3 in Las Vegas.

For tonight, though, the headline belongs to McEnelly. He's the 2026 NCAA champ, he's got Bo Nickal's name in his win column, and he told everyone exactly where he thinks this is going.