A Look Ahead to Upcoming UFC Events

UFC Events Preview

Now that the dust has settled on UFC 272 and the first Fight Night event held in London, England for three years, we can now look ahead to all the MMA action that is coming up courtesy of UFC in the months ahead.

The UFC betting markets will be busy for the Fight Night headlined by the headline match up of Curtis Blades and Chris Daukas. But all eyes will be on UFC 273, scheduled to take place on April 9 at the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Florida. Read on to find out all about the upcoming UFC action.

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UFC 273 – Jacksonville, Florida

After the postponement of two title fights, UFC 272 was headlined by the welterweight bout between Colby Covington and Jorge Masvidal. Covington won, as expected, and now UFC is putting on a featherweight championship bout between Alexander Volkonovski and Chan Sung Jung as the main draw.

Volkonovski is currently rated the number three pound-for-pound fighter in UFC and has defended his featherweight title twice already. With just one defeat way back in 2013, the Australian will be favorite to make it a third. But the 'Korean Zombie’ will be looking to get his career back on track after a mixed fight record in the last few years.

Chan Sung Jung beat Dan Ige last time out but had previously lost to Brian Ortega and now has a record of 17 victories and six losses. He will do well to claim the featherweight title but it should be an engrossing affair.

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The other title fight on the card for the night is scheduled to be between Aljamain Sterling and Petr Yan. This is a long-awaited rematch after Sterling took the bantamweight title by means of disqualification – the first time that had ever happened in the history of UFC.

Yan beat Cory Sandhagen in October 2021 to win the interim bantamweight championship, making this fight a unification bout.

UFC 274 – Phoenix, Arizona

UFC Fight Nights take up the rest of April, as some of the fighters further down the rankings get their chance to shine on the live stage. But the big event returns on May 7 at the Footprint Center in Phoenix, Arizona – and what an evening of MMA action it promises to be.

The headline event is set to be a lightweight championship bout between current champion Charles Oliveira and the former interim champion Justin Gaethje. The American challenger missed out on the chance to claim the belt back in 2020 when he lost to Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC 254 in the United Arab Emirates.

Oliveira now has a record of 32-8, but has won his last ten fights and won the vacant title in 2020 when he beat Michael Chandler at UFC 262. He has only defended the title once but will be looking to dispatch Gaethje early on.

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The other title bout of the night at UFC 274 is scheduled to be the women’s strawweight championship fight between current two-time champion Rose Namajunas and former champion Carla Esparza. This is a second defense for Namajunas, who has now beaten Zhang Weili on two occasions to remain at the top of her game.

Esparza lost her strawweight title way back in 2015 after originally beating Namajunas the year before to win the inaugural belt. Since then there has been a mixture of wins and losses but she did claim the performance of the night the last time she was in action – beating Yan Xiaonan at a UFC Fight Night in Las Vegas, Nevada in May of last year.

UFC Action

Both upcoming UFC events promise to keep the fans happy with some world-class title bouts, as well as some other interesting match ups further down the card.