General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

RAF 04

RAF 04: Hendrickson vs. Parris was a professional freestyle wrestling event held on December 20, 2025, at the Fishers Event Center in Fishers, Indiana. It was the fourth flagship event produced by Real American Freestyle (RAF), a professional freestyle wrestling league founded in April 2025 by Chad Bronstein, the late Hulk Hogan, and Eric Bischoff, and it streamed live on Fox Nation.¹^•² The nine-bout card closed the promotion's first year and featured five championship matches, three of which ended in 10-0 or better technical falls.²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Event	RAF 04: Hendrickson vs. Parris, fourth flagship Real American Freestyle card¹
Date and venue	December 20, 2025, 7 p.m. EST, Fishers Event Center, Fishers, Indiana¹
Broadcast	Exclusively on Fox Nation; replay available there afterward²
Main event	Wyatt Hendrickson retained the RAF Heavyweight Championship, beating Mason Parris by 13-2 technical fall in the second period²
Co-main event	Yoel Romero, 48, beat Pat Downey 10-0 by technical fall for the interim light heavyweight title after Bo Nickal withdrew²
Title change	Dean Hamiti pinned Evan Wick to become the new RAF Middleweight Champion, the only pinfall of the night⁴
Upset	Parker Keckeisen, a +441 underdog, defeated 2025 World champion Zahid Valencia 10-2⁴
Card size	Nine bouts, including five championship matches²^•³

Background

Real American Freestyle was created to give elite amateur wrestlers a professional platform with prize money and national exposure, and it runs unscripted competition under freestyle rules rather than scripted sports entertainment.¹ RAF 04 was the league's first event in Indiana and its final show of 2025.¹

The main event matched two of the most accomplished American heavyweights. Wyatt Hendrickson won the 2025 NCAA championship at 285 pounds for Oklahoma State, defeating Olympic champion Gable Steveson 5-4 on a late takedown, and captured the RAF Heavyweight Championship at the league's inaugural event by beating 2024 Olympian Mostafa Elders.¹ Mason Parris, a Lawrenceburg, Indiana native, won the 2023 NCAA title at 285 pounds for Michigan and the Dan Hodge Trophy, then represented Team USA at the 2024 Paris Olympics.¹ Parris led their head-to-head series 3-0, with two freestyle wins at the 2023 US Open and US Senior World Team Trials, and the RAF matchup was set in motion when Parris issued a direct challenge to Hendrickson during the RAF 01 broadcast.¹

Rules context

RAF bouts use modified freestyle wrestling: three two-minute periods with 30-second breaks, no overtime, and a technical fall, which ends the bout immediately, once a wrestler leads by 10 or more points. Takedowns score 2 points, standing exposure 4 or 5, ground exposure 2, and step-outs and reversals 1; a tied match is decided by criteria, awarded to the wrestler who scored the last point.⁵

Results

Main event: heavyweight championship. Hendrickson scored a four-point knee pick from the over-under position early, an advantage that never changed hands, and finished with a 13-2 technical fall in the second period to retain the title.² Parris retained the lead in their lifetime series, but the promotion's own recap described the performance as one of the most dominant heavyweight title matches in RAF history.⁴

Co-main event: interim light heavyweight title. Bo Nickal, the RAF Light Heavyweight Champion, withdrew from his scheduled title defense against Yoel Romero for undisclosed reasons, and Pat Downey stepped in on short notice for an interim title match.² Romero, a 48-year-old Olympic silver medalist who had been away from freestyle wrestling for years, led 8-0 after two periods and ended the match with a double-leg eight seconds into the third period for a 10-0 technical fall.⁴ The Nickal-Romero bout was rescheduled for a later card.²

Middleweight championship. Dean Hamiti, the 2025 NCAA champion at 174 pounds, pinned reigning champion Evan Wick in the third period to take the belt. Starting the period down 4-3, Hamiti scored exposure and roll points before finishing the cradle, the only pinfall of the night.⁴

Cruiserweight upset. Parker Keckeisen entered as a +441 underdog against Zahid Valencia, who had won 2025 World championship gold without surrendering a point months earlier. Keckeisen took a 2-1 lead with a takedown, closed the first period 4-1 with leg laces from a defensive position, and pressed the attack until Valencia left the mat to vomit; the final score was 10-2.⁴ Keckeisen then called out Kyle Dake.⁴

Retained titles. David Carr, a 2025 U.S. World Team member, retained the welterweight championship with a 10-0 technical fall over former UFC welterweight champion Belal Muhammad, finishing 30 seconds into the second period.²^•⁴ Kennedy Blades retained the women's middleweight championship by shutting out Alara Boyd 10-0 in less than one period.⁴

Other bouts. The remaining results, as compiled by InterMat:³

Light heavyweight (215 lb): Trent Hidlay over Jacob Cardenas, 5-3
Cruiserweight (190 lb): Magomedkhabib Kadimagomedov over Dustin Plott, 11-7
Middleweight (175 lb): Jason Nolf over Andy Varela, 10-0

Kadimagomedov, an Olympic silver medalist, trailed 6-5 heading into the final period before a scramble takedown put the match out of reach.⁴ Nolf, a three-time NCAA champion, tech-falled Varela in just over one period despite Varela having learned the full ruleset only days earlier, then called out UFC lightweight contender Arman Tsarukyan.⁴

Aftermath

RAF 04 was followed less than a month later by RAF 05 on January 10, 2026, at Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise, Florida, headlined by Colby Covington versus Luke Rockhold, with the rescheduled Nickal-Romero match and a bantamweight title bout between Nathan Tomasello and Austin DeSanto on the card.²^•⁶ The promotion's recap framed the night as a changing of the guard, with Blades separating herself from the women's field, Keckeisen establishing himself as a top contender without a belt, and Romero re-entering the light heavyweight title picture.⁴ InterMat ranked three RAF 04 bouts, the Hendrickson-Parris main event, the Keckeisen-Valencia upset, and the Hamiti-Wick title change, among the top ten RAF matches of 2025.⁷

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Web-native and streaming-original series › Comedy, drama, and general-genre web series

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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