The Double Champion's First Defense: Fleury and Muradov Meet at Štvanice
Will Fleury defends his light heavyweight title against a middleweight champion moving up in weight. August 1, Štvanice Island, Prague.
By Sport Event Planner Editorial | July 2026
A Title Fight That Needed a Replacement to Get Interesting
Daniel Škvor was supposed to be standing across the cage from Will Fleury on August 1. A rematch, the kind of fight a promotion books because the first one left something unfinished. Then Škvor tore something in training — a pectoral muscle attachment injury, the sort that ends a fight camp overnight — and OKTAGON needed a replacement for one of the biggest title fights on its calendar.
What they got instead might be the more interesting fight.
Makhmud Muradov did not need to take this. He is already a champion — OKTAGON's interim middleweight titleholder, a division below the one he is stepping into. He had nothing to prove at 84 kilograms and everything to risk at 93. He said yes anyway.
That is the fight OKTAGON 92 actually has: not a rematch, but a champion moving up in weight to challenge a bigger, longer-limbed double champion on short notice, in front of a crowd that will not be his.
Fleury Has Not Lost Since He Arrived
Will Fleury's record reads 17-3 with one no contest, which tells you he has taken losses somewhere along the way — a career, not a highlight reel. What it does not tell you is that every one of those losses happened before he found OKTAGON.
Since joining the promotion, the Irishman has not lost. He holds both the light heavyweight and heavyweight titles simultaneously, a distinction only a handful of fighters in the sport's history have managed at once, and he has been actively defending both rather than parking one belt in a drawer. His most recent heavyweight defense ended early — a knockout of Kasim Aras that needed less than a full fight to make its point.
A fighter who moved through Bellator and the PFL before finding his level in OKTAGON, Fleury now carries the kind of unbeaten stretch that starts to look less like a hot streak and more like a ceiling nobody has found yet. Muradov is the first person being asked to find it at 93 kilograms.
What Muradov Brings That Nobody Else on This Card Does
Muradov's resume has a different shape than most of the roster he shares a card with. Before OKTAGON, he spent years inside the UFC, sharing the Octagon with Caio Borralho, Bryan Barberena, and Scott Askham — the kind of opposition that does not appear on a record by accident. A 29-8 fighter with that background is not a stepping stone. He is someone who has already been tested at the sport's highest visible level and is still standing.
His OKTAGON tenure has been built at middleweight, capped by a decision win over Patrik Kincl that earned him the interim title. Moving up to challenge Fleury is not a step up in competition so much as a step up in size — a different kind of risk than the one he has been managing so far.
If he wins, OKTAGON has a new double champion. If he does not, he has still taken the toughest fight available to him on short notice, against a man who has not lost inside the promotion. Either outcome says something real about who Muradov is as a fighter.
The Rest of the Night Is Not an Afterthought
OKTAGON 92 carries its own name for a reason — the event is officially billed as Szabová vs. Pudilová, not Fleury vs. Muradov, because the women's bantamweight title fight between Lucia Szabová and Lucie Pudilová is being treated as a genuine co-main rather than filler. It has been described as one of the biggest Czech-Slovak women's fights the promotion has put together.
Elsewhere on the card, former OKTAGON welterweight champion David Kozma — a veteran of 33-15 — meets David Zawada, who has fought under both the UFC and PFL banners. Two title fights and a card of fighters who have already been tested elsewhere is not a typical Saturday night. It is the kind of lineup a promotion builds when it wants a specific date to matter. (For the wider argument on why Prague — and not Frankfurt or Cologne — is where this year's championship stakes are actually concentrated, see: Is Prague the Biggest OKTAGON Show of 2026? Not Quite. Here's What It Actually Is.)
Why Štvanice, Specifically
The fight takes place outdoors, at the Štvanice Tennis Stadium on Štvanice Island in central Prague — a venue OKTAGON has returned to more than once, and one it has sold out before. It is not the promotion's biggest stadium booking of the year; Frankfurt and Cologne carry that distinction on OKTAGON's 2026 calendar. What Štvanice offers instead is familiarity and a track record — a stop the promotion trusts, on an island in the middle of its own capital market, for a night built around two title fights instead of one.
Planning to be at Štvanice on August 1? Sport Event Planner covers hotels, transport, and restaurants around the venue, plus AI-powered trip planning for the full OKTAGON 92 weekend.