Song Yadong becomes third UFC champion finished by Team Alpha Male guillotine

Song Yadong extended one of MMA's most distinctive team legacies on May 30, 2026, submitting Deiveson Figueiredo with a guillotine choke to become the third UFC champion finished by that technique in Team Alpha Male's hands.

The submission continues a thread that traces back to Urijah Faber, the 47-year-old Team Alpha Male founder and Sacramento native who carries a professional record of 35 wins and 11 losses. Faber, who stood five-foot-six with a 67-inch reach, previously used the guillotine to finish both Jens Pulver and Dominick Cruz during his championship run. He averaged 0.8 submission attempts per 15 minutes across his career, a figure that reflects the camp's consistent emphasis on the choke as a primary finishing tool.

Pulver, the 51-year-old southpaw known as Little Evil, holds a career record of 27-19-1. He stood five-foot-seven with a 70-inch reach and was one of the earliest stars of the UFC's lighter weight classes before falling to Faber's guillotine.

Cruz, nicknamed The Dominator, is now 41 years old and fighting out of Alliance MMA with a record of 24-4. The five-foot-eight orthodox fighter carries a 68-inch reach and built his reputation on elite footwork and a striking volume of 3.91 significant strikes landed per minute, yet he too was stopped by the same submission that has now become synonymous with the Team Alpha Male program.

Why it matters

• Team Alpha Male has now accumulated more than 10 guillotine finishes across top promotions, establishing it as one of the most identifiable stylistic signatures of any MMA camp.
• The finish adds a UFC champion to the list of high-profile opponents stopped by the technique, raising the submission's profile at the sport's highest level.
• Song Yadong's result links the current generation of the team directly to Faber's foundational victories, reinforcing the camp's identity as a guillotine-first finishing system.