2025 Suman Mokhtarian Australian MMA Coach of the Year - Luke Pezzutti

This award could have gone a few different ways.

You could give it to Steve Compton for the consistent success Team Compton keeps producing. You could give it to Ben Vickers for a masterclass year guiding Jack Della Maddalena all the way to UFC gold. Joe Lopez has a strong case too, keeping Kasib Murdoch’s rise on track while also pushing along names like Trent Girdham and Colby Thicknesse, and even helping Alex Volkanovski reclaim his throne.

But the case I want to focus on is Luke Pezzutti.

Yes, he’s done tremendous work across the board at Lions Den. The amateur system delivered, with Chris Morris and Tyson Martin going 5–1 combined. He’s helped spark the rebirth of Joe Davis. And he prepared Kris Ustijanovski to look genuinely dangerous in a title bout against Kasib Murdoch, to the point where Kris’ performance almost caused people to unfairly critique Kasib. That’s how good the coaching and preparation clearly were.

But the headline is this:

Luke Pezzutti managed the rise of two of the most hyped Australian fighters in years, in the same gym, in the same weight class.

That’s not just coaching. That’s leadership.

The two-man band that defined the year

The work Luke has done with George Mangos and Marwan Rahiki is what makes him the 2025 Coach of the Year.
Marwan’s 2025 reads like a highlight reel. Multiple finishes. Multiple regional titles. Then the exclamation mark, one of the most remarkable moments you’ll see on Dana White’s Contender Series, securing a contract and levelling up from “prospect” to “the real thing” in a single night. He’s now being managed at the highest level, and you don’t get that kind of rise without a room that builds killers properly.

But the truly special coaching job was George Mangos. Because managing wins is easy. Managing adversity is the real test.

For the last two years, Mangos and Rahiki have felt like a duo, Batman and Robin, Jordan and Pippen, and from the outside Mangos always felt slightly in front. Then Mangos got his Contender Series shot first and fell short. After that, Rahiki surged and “surpassed” him in the public narrative. Maybe that dynamic was easy because they genuinely love each other. Maybe it was hard. Either way, it takes a rare coach to keep a team stable when the spotlight shifts and comparisons start.
And Luke did exactly that.

He kept Mangos on track, got him to face the music, and guided him through the tricky politics of returning to Eternal MMA after the team’s messy exit around the HEX title run and the Eternal Grand Prix situation. That kind of thing can derail fighters. It didn’t.

Instead, Mangos came back and produced one of the most important performances of his career, starching Justin Van Heerden in the first round. This is a guy who had previously taken Mangos deep, all the way into round three. To turn that matchup from a war into a statement win, and to do it after the DWCS setback, is a massive coaching tick. It got his star back on track without missing a beat before the year was out.

Why Luke Pezzutti gets it
Luke’s background matters here. He’s not a hype coach. He’s an old-school martial artist and competitor, a long-time gym owner, and a proven developer of champions. He’s guided fighters at every level, across multiple rule sets, for decades. That history shows in how he builds people, not just fighters.

But 2025 was the year it all came together in the loudest way. He didn’t just coach athletes. He managed careers, minds, expectations, and the pressure that comes when two rockets launch from the same gym at the same time.
You might score this award differently. That’s fair.

But for me, what Luke Pezzutti did with Mangos and Rahiki, while still running a production line of amateurs and rebuilding other pros around them, is the rarest coaching job in Australian MMA right now.

That’s why he’s 2025 Coach of the Year.

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