Felipe Pena and Luke Griffith will finally be having their long-awaited Who’s Number One heavyweight title-fight at WNO 31 on December 5th, 2025. The title has been vacant for a few months now, as Gordon Ryan went on hiatus from competition and decided not to defend the belt any further. He gave up the title in order for his teammate Griffith to face Pena for it at WNO 28 earlier in the year, but that match fell apart just a matter of days before the event was due to take place. It was Pena who suffered an injury in training and withdrew from the match, but a new opponent could not be found on such short notice and the title simply remained vacant instead.
WNO just announced that the match was back on during the live broadcast of WNO 30 but unfortunately for the promotion, it’s lost some of the hype that it originally had. That’s because Pena and Griffith had only had one match together when they were first supposed to compete for the title. That was in the final of the over 99kg division at ADCC 2024, where Griffith actually had Pena in trouble early on but Pena launched an amazing comeback and ended up submitting him with a rear-naked choke. That almost naturally led into a rematch thanks to the fact that both men found success at different points, as the outcome could very nearly have been different.
Unfortunately for the matchmakers at WNO, fans have already got to see the rematch in the months since then. Griffith and Pena both competed at CJI 2 and as they were on opposing teams, they ended up meeting in the semi-final. That ended up being a very convincing win for Pena and he found the finish once again, this time submitting Griffith with an armbar. Griffith had already had one match against Diego ‘Pato’ Oliveira immediately beforehand so there was some mitigating circumstances, but Pena is still 2-0 against him with a pair of submission wins regardless.
The full Who’s Number One (WNO) 31 live event, including Felipe Pena vs Luke Griffith for the heavyweight title, will be available to watch on December 5th, 2025 on FloGrappling, click here to subscribe and watch.
