UFC President, Dana White, made the revelations on the company’s social media channels a few hours ago.
In the first announcement, Dana White revealed that the UFC will return to Nashville, Tennesse, for the first time since 2019 on Saturday, August 5. The card will be headlined by the number four ranked Cory Sandhagen as he takes on the undefeated Umar Nurmagomedov in the Bantamweight division.
Sandhagen is coming off a victory over Marlon ‘Chito Vera in March and has notable victories over Frankie Edgar and Marlon Moraes. ‘The Sandman’ has only tasted defeat in the UFC to the current Bantamweight Champion, Aljamain Sterling, and previous champions T.J. Dillashaw and Petr Yan.
Nurmagomedov is unbeaten in his mixed martial arts career. He holds an unblemished record of 16-0 and has won every round during his UFC tenure. It’s been difficult to find an opponent for Nurmagomedov, who last fought in January against Raoni Barcelos as Dana White said that nobody wanted to fight him – props to Sandhagen for accepting the challenge in what looks to be a mouth-watering match-up.
In his next announcement, White revealed that the UFC would return to Singapore on August 26, just over a year since their last visit to the country where Jiri Prochazka defeated MMA legend Glover Teixeira at UFC 275 to become the Light-Heavyweight Champion. This time, the number two ranked Max Holloway faces The Korean Zombie, ranked seven. Both men are looking to gain a crack at the Featherweight champion, Alexander Volkanovski. A win for Holloway could earn him a fourth fight against the champion. The following day, on Sunday, August 27, sees Singapore host the ‘Road to the UFC’ semi-finals, where some of Asia’s best talent compete for a UFC contract.
The UFC crosses borders again the following week to Paris, France, where hometown fighter Cyril Gane will go head-to-head with the Moldovan Sergey Spivak. Spivak has six wins from his last seven fights, his only defeat coming against the highly-rated Englishman Tom Aspinall. During his impressive run in the UFC, Spivak has submitted Derrick Lewis, knocked out Augusto Sakai, and defeated Tai Tuivasa.
Cyril Gane will be looking to get back on track following his disappointing performance last time out, losing in the first round via submission. To be fair to him, the loss came against arguably the greatest MMA fighter of all time, Jon Jones. Gane will be hoping that his fight against Spivak will yield a similar outcome to the last time he fought in Paris, where he knocked out Tai Tuivasa in September.
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