← Duel: Arena 1 · MMA bout
Professional MMA · Featherweight 145 lb · Saturday, August 29 · Kia Center, Orlando
Duel: Arena 1 · 29 AugustFeatherweight · MMA rules, in a ring

Blake Anthony vs Nate Morrow at Duel: Arena 1

Strip away the comebacks and the influencer bouts and this is the one fight on the card where both men are in their prime and fighting regularly. Blake Anthony is 7-0, built on boxing, and won four weeks ago. Nate Morrow is 7-3 and has choked out five of the seven men he has beaten. A boxer against a strangler, in a ring rather than a cage — and that last detail is not decoration. For the rest of the card, start at our Duel: Arena 1 hub.

✅ FinalBlake Anthony beat Nate Morrow by unanimous decision after 3 rounds.
📌 Card is doneDuel: Arena 1 is over. The promotion has said from the start that it intends to run more — when Arena 2 is announced, we will cover it here.
⚖️ Weigh-in · Fri 28 AugBlake Anthony 145.8 lb (66.1 kg) · Nate Morrow 145.6 lb (66.0 kg). Two tenths of a pound apart — as evenly matched as this card gets.
Official Duel: Arena 1 poster for the featherweight MMA bout between Blake Anthony and Nate Morrow, Saturday August 29, Kia Center Orlando
Official bout poster — via @duelarena_
Date
Sat, Aug 29, 2026Doors 6:00 · first fight 7:00 PM ET
Rules
Pro MMAFeatherweight, 145 lb
Venue
Kia CenterOrlando, Florida
Card position
UndercardUnder Perry vs Jenkins

Tale of the tape

Blake Anthony7–0 · Mobile, Alabama
vs
Nate Morrow7–3 · Lincoln, Nebraska
28 born May 1998
Age
31 born Jan 1995
5ft 8in 173 cm
Height
5ft 8in 173 cm
7–0 undefeated as a pro
Pro MMA
7–3 four straight wins
3 KO/TKO · 1 sub · 3 dec 43% by knockout
How they win
5 subs · 2 KO/TKO 71% by submission
Boxing AMP MMA, Mobile AL
Base
Grappling Dynamic Edge, Lincoln NE
1 Aug 2026 decision win — four weeks ago
Last outing
15 May 2026 bare-knuckle boxing TKO
Never as a pro one amateur loss — armbar, 2019
Last defeat
Dec 2022 decision — since avenged by choke
#1 in Alabama #89 featherweight in North America
Regional rank
#2 in Nebraska #210 featherweight in North America

Green marks whoever is ahead on that line. The two that matter are in the middle: Anthony wins on activity and record, Morrow wins on the one column that decides fights like this — how he finishes people. Note also the height row. Identical at 5ft 8in, which is rare enough to be worth saying out loud: neither man gets to fight tall.

Result — August 29

Blake Anthony beat Nate Morrow by unanimous decision after 3 rounds.

Scored 30-27, 29-28, 30-27. The one crack in the 7-0 was a submission loss, and Morrow submits 71% of the men he beats — but he never got there. Anthony is 8-0.

Full results for the rest of the card are on the Duel: Arena 1 hub.

Watch the full fight

Official full fight, published by Duel: Arena on YouTube. The player loads only when you press play.

The one fight on this card that is about fighting

Duel: Arena 1 is built on names: a main event people are arguing about, a comeback from a seven-year retirement, a kickboxing bout that generated more comment than any other on the bill, and a couple of influencer fights. That is how a debut promotion sells tickets, and there is nothing wrong with it.

This is the other kind of booking. Two active regional professionals in the same weight class, both in their late twenties or early thirties, both fighting several times a year, neither of them famous. Blake Anthony is 7-0. Nate Morrow is 7-3 with four straight wins. Nobody here is coming out of retirement, and nobody is here because of a YouTube channel.

It is also the fight most likely to be genuinely competitive, because it is the only one where both men are the same size, the same age bracket, and currently fighting for a living.

Blake Anthony — 7-0, and a boxer underneath

Anthony fights out of AMP Mixed Martial Arts in Mobile, Alabama under head coach Billy Ray Gates, with former UFC fighter Brok Weaver among the coaches. He is 28, and he has been busy: seven professional wins since February 2024, and a run of nine straight victories counting his last amateur bouts.

His listed foundation style is boxing, and the record backs it. Three of his seven wins are knockouts or TKOs — Joseph Pernal by punches, Angel Martinez by ground and pound, Jay Haas stopped in round two — and in May 2026 he took a professional boxing match on the side and beat Travon Millage, stopped in round two. When he doesn't finish, he wins clear decisions: David Zelner, Braxton King, and most recently Marlon Gonzales, a 15-8-2 veteran, by unanimous decision on 1 August 2026. That was four weeks ago.

He is ranked the number one pound-for-pound fighter in Alabama and number 89 among North American featherweights. Those are regional numbers, and worth reading as what they are — a good prospect who has beaten the opposition put in front of him, not a graded contender.

Nate Morrow — seven wins, five of them chokes

Morrow is 31, fights out of Dynamic Edge in Lincoln, Nebraska, and is the more experienced man here in the sense that matters: he has lost, and come back. His three defeats are a heel hook at LFA in 2020, a leg-kick TKO in 2021, and a decision to Ashton Caniglia in 2022 — a loss he avenged in November 2025 by choking Caniglia out in round three.

Five of his seven wins are submissions, and the pattern within them is unmistakable: three guillotines, a rear-naked choke and an armbar. He catches necks. He caught Brett Minner in 39 seconds and Caniglia in round three, and going back into his amateur record the picture is the same — guillotines, over and over.

The rest of his schedule is unusual and worth noting, because it says something about how he'll fight. Between MMA bouts Morrow boxes, mostly bare-knuckle: he stopped Josh Krejci at a BKFC Fight Night in 2024, Mike Eddlemon in February 2026, and Ira Lukowsky in round five in May 2026. A grappler who volunteers to get punched in the face without gloves is not a man who will panic on the feet.

Who wins — and the one crack in 7-0

The stylistic shape is old as the sport: the boxer wants distance and a clean exchange, the grappler wants a body lock, a scramble and a neck. Both are good enough at their own thing to make it interesting.

What tilts it is a detail buried in the amateur record. Blake Anthony has been beaten exactly once in his life, and it was a submission — an armbar in round three, back in September 2019. Everything he has done since has been a win, so there is no other evidence to weigh. The single time someone has solved him, they did it by grappling, and Morrow submits 71% of the men he beats.

One man has never been submitted as a professional. The other has never won any other way. Somebody's pattern breaks on August 29.

Against that sits the venue detail that runs through this entire card: the MMA fights happen in a ring, not a cage. That is not cosmetic. In a cage the fence is a grappler's best tool — you pin a man against it, you use it to hold position, and it cuts the available floor in half. A ring gives you none of that, plus ropes fighters spill through and referees who reset the action far more often. Every one of those changes is a tax on Morrow and a gift to Anthony.

Honest read: if this stays standing, Anthony's boxing wins it, and his knockout rate says it may not need all three rounds. If Morrow gets a body lock in the first two minutes, or Anthony ducks into a shot from range — which is precisely how guillotines happen — the 7-0 goes. Given the ring, the identical height, and Anthony's recent activity, the boxer is the pick. But the crack in the record is real and it is exactly Morrow-shaped.

How you called it

The poll is closed — this is how it stood when the bell rang.
Only 3 votes were cast before the bell, too few to read anything into.
You called it. Blake Anthony won by unanimous decision.
Duel: Arena is run by Duel — the casino and sportsbook are the same operator.
More at Duel →

Where this sits on the card

Both men are stepping up in stage rather than in level — the opposition here is comparable to what each has been facing, but the room is not. Anthony's fights have been at Island Fights and regional shows around the Gulf Coast; Morrow's are mostly Dynamic Combat Sports events in Nebraska. Duel: Arena 1 is a 15,000-seat NBA arena on a pay-per-view with Mike Perry at the top of it.

That is the actual pressure in this fight, and it is not on the tale of the tape. Neither man has walked out to anything like this before. It is also, from a purely selfish spectator's point of view, why cards like this are worth watching from the first bell — undercards are where the people who will matter in three years get their first look at a real crowd.

How the card was shown

Anthony vs Morrow was on the Duel: Arena 1 undercard. Duel: Arena 1 ran on Saturday, 29 August at the Kia Center in Orlando — doors at 6:00 PM ET, first fight at 7:00 PM ET.

The card was pay-per-view at $29.99, ordered through DuelArena.tv and streamed worldwide via PlayLive. Fight week was free — the Thursday press conference and both Friday weigh-ins went out on the promotion's own YouTube and Facebook channels. The promotion has not said whether a replay will be sold or made free.

Full card and every result on the Duel: Arena 1 hub. If you came at this from a betting angle instead, our Duel sportsbook page covers the combat-sports markets and the licensing picture.

The rest of the card

Duel: Arena 1 was headlined by Mike Perry vs Brandon Jenkins under MMA rules, with Gypsy Crusader vs Ben Azoulay in kickboxing, Phil Rowe vs Javanis Ross and Jimi Manuwa vs Chase Sherman in boxing, and Alex Nicholson vs Brad Taylor in MMA. Further down the bill sit two influencer bouts, Ryan Pownall vs Patrick Clark Jr and Jack Grady vs Wade Stokan.

The ring question raised above changed shape this week: the main event was Perry against a grappler, which the ropes quietly favoured Perry. Dillon Danis withdrew injured, and Brandon Jenkins — a striker with ten knockouts — took it on 48 hours' notice, so up there it is now two strikers with no fence to circle away from. We track every change on the Arena 1 hub and update as soon as something is confirmed rather than rumoured. The Manuwa bout is a case in point: his original opponent was replaced this week.

The bout was announced by @duelarena_; at the time of writing it had not yet appeared on the fight databases. Records, rankings and fight histories are from Tapology and Sherdog, not from promotional copy. Betting the card? Our sportsbook page covers the terms, then Duel.com.

Things people actually ask

Who is Blake Anthony?
Blake Anthony is a 28-year-old undefeated featherweight from Mobile, Alabama, fighting out of AMP Mixed Martial Arts under Billy Ray Gates. He is 7-0 as a professional with three knockouts, one submission and three decisions, and is ranked the number one pound-for-pound fighter in Alabama. His base is boxing, and he has a professional boxing win of his own from May 2026.
Who is Nate Morrow?
Nate Morrow is a 31-year-old featherweight from Lincoln, Nebraska, fighting out of Dynamic Edge. He is 7-3 as a professional and on a four-fight winning streak. Five of his seven wins are submissions — mostly guillotine chokes — and he also competes in bare-knuckle boxing, where he stopped Ira Lukowsky in May 2026.
Has Blake Anthony ever lost?
Not as a professional — he is 7-0. The only defeat anywhere on his record is from the amateur ranks: an armbar in round three against Dylan Berry in September 2019. It is the single relevant fact of this matchup, because submissions are exactly what Morrow does.
Is this fight in a cage or a ring?
A ring. Every bout on the Duel: Arena 1 card takes place in a ring, including the MMA fights. That matters here more than on most of the card: without a fence, a grappler cannot pin his opponent, cannot wall-walk back to his feet, and gets reset by the referee far more often.
Who has fought more recently?
Anthony. He beat Marlon Gonzales by unanimous decision at Island Fights 99 on 1 August 2026, four weeks before this card. Morrow's last MMA bout was in November 2025, though he did stop Ira Lukowsky in bare-knuckle boxing in May 2026.
When was Blake Anthony vs Nate Morrow?
Saturday, August 29, 2026 at the Kia Center in Orlando, on the Duel: Arena 1 card. Doors opened at 6:00 PM ET and the first fight was at 7:00 PM ET. The running order was never published.
How was the fight shown?
Duel: Arena 1 was pay-per-view at $29.99, ordered through DuelArena.tv and streamed worldwide via PlayLive.
Bet on fights at Duel Sportsbook →
🔞 18+ · Gambling can be addictive. Please play responsibly. Help: begambleaware.org, gamcare.org.uk.