The first UFC pay-per-view of July was a top-to-bottom classic — an action-packed collection of critical and compelling fights to close out the return of International Fight Week being a summer celebration in Las Vegas.
Saturday’s event to close out the month at American Airlines Arena in Dallas features fewer familiar names on the prelims, but a main card that is arguably more compelling and carries more immediate divisional significance than its predecessor.
Two championship fights and three bouts with “top of the food chain” ramifications make up the UFC 277 and we’re here to get you primed for tomorrow’s festivities.
FIGHTER TO WATCH: MAGOMED ANKALAEV
You should pay attention to anyone that amasses eight consecutive victories in the UFC because winning is hard, winning consistently is even more difficult, and putting together a run like this is incredibly challenging, especially when working your way up the divisional ladder.
Ankalaev lost his UFC debut at literally the last second and has won eight straight since. Over his last three fights, he’s methodically dispatched Nikita Krylov, Volkan Oezdemir, and Thiago Santos — a tetra-pack of Top 15 talents, with the final two having each challenged for championship gold in the past.
Saturday’s pairing with Anthony Smith is another incremental step forward for the 30-year-old Russian, who is as well-rounded as they come in the light heavyweight division. Smith — another former title challenger — is the most aggressive yet skilled fighter Ankalaev has faced during this run and enters with three straight first-round stoppage wins.
This is no easy task and a victory doesn’t assure Ankalaevof a championship opportunity next time out (which is madness), but it would illustrate that he’s continuing to improve and inch closer to reaching the heights many forecasted for him upon arriving in the UFC.
FIGHTER TO WATCH: ALEXANDRE PANTOJA
It has to make Pantoja a little sick to his stomach to be fighting a couple bouts ahead of an interim title fight in his division because less than a year ago, the Brazilian veteran punched his ticket to a championship opportunity, only to have it snatched away by an injury.
In August, the returning 32-year-old submitted Brandon Royval in the second round of their competitive, entertaining matchup. Following the victory, he politely asked Brandon Moreno, then the flyweight champion, who was calling the bout for the UFC’s Spanish broadcast, if he would like to fight again.
Pantoja defeated Moreno when both were contestants on Season 24 of The Ultimate Fighter and bested him again when they met inside the Octagon less than two years later, and he knew Moreno wanted to get those losses back. The champion agreed to the fight on the spot, but a month later, the Brazilian had surgery to repair a knee injury, losing his place in line.
Moreno faced former champ Deiveson Figueiredo for the third straight time, lost the belt, and now Pantoja is finally back, paired off with Alex Perez in a clash of Top 10 talents that obviously carries championship significance.
Like Ankalaev, Pantoja isn’t guaranteed a title fight with a win, especially not with an interim title being introduced. But this is a grand opportunity for him to re-affirm his place as a top contender and remain near the top of the list of future challengers in the flyweight division.
And depending on how things go in the co-main event — and with Figueiredo hinting at abandoning the division — the third fight with Moreno just might come together with gold hanging in the balance after all.
FIGHTER TO WATCH: SERGEI PAVLOVICH
Things in the heavyweight division are complicated at the moment, and can become more muddled if Pavlovich successfully establishes himself as a legitimate contender on Saturday.
The hulking Russian fighter is paired off with knockout king Derrick Lewis in what is clearly a “measuring stick” assignment for Pavlovich. He’s earned three straight stoppage wins, is 15-1 overall, and looks the part of a menacing, marauding heavyweight contender, but needs the marquee win that makes that official.
Beating Lewis carries that kind of weight and gravity — he’s fought for gold twice, knocked out Curtis Blaydes 18 months ago, and has only lost to top-shelf competition over the last five years. He’s the intimidating figure guarding the entrance to the VIP and you’ve got to get passed him if you want to socialize with the division’s elite.
Saturday’s assignment is a major step up in competition for Pavlovich, who lost his UFC debut almost five years ago when he was thrown in against Alistair Overeem in his first fight in a year. He’s been perfect since then, looked stellar in his win over Shamil Abdurakhimov in London in March, and can add his name to the list of contenders in the heavyweight division with a similar effort this weekend in Dallas.
INTERIM FLYWEIGHT TITLE: BRANDON MORENO VS. KAI KARA-FRANCE
With champion Figueiredo nursing a finger injury (and talking about moving up a division), the UFC has opted to create an interim flyweight title, and Saturday night, former champ Brandon Moreno and surging contender Kai Kara-France will battle to see who claims the newly minted belt.
Moreno has spent his last three fights battling Figueiredo for the flyweight title. First, they fought to a draw. Then, Moreno scored a second-round submission win. Last time out, the Brazilian earned the unanimous decision victory to reclaim gold.
Following that loss, Moreno parted ways with his long-time team and shifted his training camp to Glory MMA & Fitness under the watchful eye of James Krause. It’ll be interesting to see what changes and adjustments if any, we see from Moreno in this first fight with his new camp.
Kara-France has been hanging around the fringes of contention since arriving in the UFC at the tail end of 2018. He jumped into the Top 5 with first-round knockout wins over Rogerio Bontorin and Cody Garbrandt last year and established himself as one of the top contenders in March by handing Askar Askarov the first loss of his professional career.
The New Zealander carries uncanny power for the 125-pound weight class, which makes him a perpetual threat no matter how the fight is playing out, and while this is his first five-round fight in the UFC, his team at City Kickboxing has been through these sorts of battles many times over with middleweight kingpin Israel Adesanya and lightweight standout Dan Hooker.
An interesting wrinkle to this clash is that Moreno and Kara-France have faced off before.
While they didn’t cross paths on Season 24 of The Ultimate Fighter (both were eliminated by Pantoja, actually), they did share the Octagon at UFC 245, with Moreno earning a unanimous decision win with scores of 29-28, 30-27, and 29-28. It was a fun, competitive scrap between two hungry emerging talents, and the sequel should be even better as they’ve each improved as fighters and have two more rounds to work, if needed.
BANTAMWEIGHT TITLE: JULIANNA PENA VS. AMANDA NUNES
Seven months after shocking the MMA world by making good on her promise to win the bantamweight title, Julianna Pena has to prove it wasn’t a one-time thing as she takes on the women she defeated, Amanda Nunes, in Saturday’s main event.
In the preamble to the fight, Pena told anyone that would listen (and several people that wouldn’t) that she was going to be the one to unseat the dominant Nunes from the bantamweight throne. She felt she had the approach to success where Ronda Rousey, Valentina Shevchenko, Holly Holm and others failed, and I’ll be damned if she didn’t follow through on that promise.
After navigating a tricky first round, the Spokane, Washington, native turned up the pressure and intensity, taking the fight to Nunes, who immediately started to waver. Pena never let off the gas, and started lighting up “The Lioness,” eventually getting her to the canvas and forcing her to tap to a rear-naked choke three-and-a-half minutes into Round 2.
It was a lesson in self-belief and sticking to the game plan, but now, she’s got to do it all over again if she hopes to maintain her place atop the division.
After briefly pondering retirement, Nunes set her focus on reclaiming the title she lost. She parted ways with her long-time gym, American Top Team, and built out her own facility, but more importantly, she enters this fight healthy and having completed a full training camp.
Last time out, the all-time great was dealing with the lingering effects of a summer COVID-19 diagnosis and a knee injury that was bad enough that she now says she should have pulled out of the fight. Now, what gets said after a poor outing always has to be taken with a grain of salt, but Nunes certainly didn’t look like her usually dominant self the first time around.
This is such a fascinating rematch because the only real shift between the first fight and this one is Nunes striking out on her own and her apparent return to full health.
Most expect that if she’s back to her old ways, she dominates and reclaims the bantamweight title, with Pena entering as a solid underdog despite being the champion. Nunes is the more skilled, more powerful fighter of the two, but Pena is tenacious and filled with confidence after toppling the Brazilian late last year.
Will the champion follow up on her brilliant effort in December or will Nunes return to the throne?
