On the night of Sunday, March 20, London (UK) will host the UFC Fight Night 204 tournament. This will be the promotion's first tournament outside the US this year, as well as the first in Europe since 2019. The correspondent of bbabo.net prepared the announcement of this event.
Since the beginning of the year, the UFC has already held eight tournaments, but all of them were held in the United States. Last year, the most famous MMA promotion in the world organized events in the USA and the UAE. The last European UFC tournament took place in 2019. Then the events were held in Prague, London, St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Moscow and Copenhagen.
The UFC Fight Night 204 tournament will consist of 12 fights, which are equally divided into preliminary and main card. The prelims start on Saturday, March 19, at 23:30 Nur-Sultan time. The main fights will begin at 02:00 am, March 20. Muhammad Mokaev (6-0-1, England) - Cody Durden (12-3-1, USA)
The card will open with a flyweight bout between UFC debutant undefeated England's Mokaev and American Durden. This confrontation will begin at 23:30 Nur-Sultan time.
21-year-old Mokaev set himself the goal of becoming the youngest champion in the history of the promotion. Muhammad is already confident in his superiority and wants to move up in the rankings as soon as possible.
His 30-year-old opponent has already competed in the UFC, but so far without much success - victory, draw and defeat. In this fight, Mokaev is considered a big favorite, even if he has not yet had experience in such a large arena.
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Jack Shore (15-0, Wales) - Timur Valiev (18-2-0-1, Russia) Approximately at 00:20, the third launch, the bantamweight fighters - undefeated Welsh Shore and experienced Russian Valiev will enter the cage. Shore, 27, is on a four-win streak in the UFC, but despite this, he is not in the promotion's ratings.
As for the 32-year-old Valiev from the Dagestan Fighter team, he has two wins in the UFC and no losses. The last time he lost was in February 2016, more than six years ago.
It will be very interesting to find out whose streak will be interrupted - whether it will be the first defeat in Shor's career or Timur's first failure in the last six years.
Jay Herbert (11-3, England) - Ilia Topuria (11-0, Spain) The main card of the event will start at 02:00, and lightweight fighters - Englishman Herbert and Spanish fighter of Georgian origin Topuria will perform in the first match. Jay is much older than his opponent - he is 33 years old, while Ilya is 25.
Herbert started the promotion with two early losses, but in the last fight he won by technical knockout in the first round. Topuria is completely undefeated, and in the UFC he has already had three successful fights, finishing the last two by knockout.
Relatively recently, Topuria became known for starting a conflict with his failed rival, the Russian fighter of the Kazakh team Arlan MMA Pro Team Movsar Evloev (15-0).
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Arnold Allen (17-1, England) - Dan Hooker (21-11, New Zealand) The co-main event of the evening will feature a featherweight bout between No. 7 Englishman Allen and No. 8 New Zealander Hooker. Dan returned to featherweight after several years of competing at lightweight.
Allen, 28, has lost only one fight in his career, and that was before entering the UFC. In the American promotion, he has eight wins in eight fights, but he retained the last four fights only due to the advantage on the judges' cards.
32-year-old Hooker has lost three of his last four fights, but failures have occurred in confrontations with Dustin Poirier, Michael Chandler and Islam Makhachev - real "sharks" in weight up to 70 kilograms. Now the New Zealander will try to rehabilitate himself in the category up to 66 kilograms.
This fight will start at approximately 04:00 Nur-Sultan time.
Alexander Volkov (34-9, Russia) - Tom Aspinall (11-2, England) In the main event of the evening, top heavyweights will meet - the sixth number of the rating from Russia Volkov and the 11th number from England Aspinall. 33-year-old Volkov won seven of the ten fights held under the auspices of the UFC. He is a former M-1 Global and Bellator Champion.
Aspinall, 28, has been fighting in the UFC since mid-2020. During this time, he got four victories in four fights, all of which were early. Now he will look to extend his streak in the biggest fight of his career.
The confrontation will begin at approximately 04:30 am.
Earlier we talked about the next fight of the Kazakh ex-champion.
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