#NocheUFC from @SphereVegas
on September 14th!!!! Fight Club Pre sale Monday. pic.twitter.com/jABnXWAUPw— UFC (@ufc)
July 26, 2024
The 20 participants for the
Ultimate Fighting Championship’s extravaganza at The Sphere
have all been selected.
On Sept. 14, the promotion will stage
UFC 306, also known as “Noche UFC,” at The Sphere in Las Vegas.
This venue with a reported 18,600 seats will serve as the one-off
location for a pay-per-view card headlined by Sean
O’Malley vs. Merab
Dvalishvili for the bantamweight throne. On Friday, the
organization announced the
full, ordered lineup of all 10 matches, with remade pairing between
Brian
Ortega (16-3, 1 NC) and Diego Lopes
(25-6) in the “featured fight of the night” slot.
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Ortega and Lopes were originally slated to compete at UFC 303, but
a fight week snafu involving Ortega’s weight ballooned into an
issue with Ortega’s health. The bout, once set for featherweight
and then 155 pounds, fell apart on the night of the event. The
promotion slotted in Dan Ige on mere
hours’ notice to face Lopes, and the two engaged in a
back-and-forth 165-pound catchweight battle that Lopes ultimately
won. The UFC noted that it planned on putting the fight back
together again at a later date.
Before battling Ige, Lobo Gym MMA export Lopes had strung together
three first-round finishes in the Octagon. After losing his
short-notice debut to the unbeaten Movsar
Evloev, the Brazilian tapped Gavin
Tucker in 98 seconds, punched out Pat
Sabatini in 90 seconds and then drummed out Sodiq
Yusuff in 89 seconds, all within a calendar year. As a
professional, the 29-year-old from Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil, has
earned 88% of his wins via stoppage, with a nearly even
distribution of knockouts to submissions.
Although the fight ultimately fell through, Ortega struggled
mightily to reach his proper weight limit of 146 pounds ahead of
the June 29 show. While “T-City” took the bout on short notice—as
did Lopes—he had to ask for modification of the match’s status to
move it to lightweight. Ortega did hit the scale at 155 pounds, but
the subsequent illness scuttled his opportunity on the big show. A
victory for Ortega would put him on his first win streak since
2018, when six straight triumphs pushed him into an unsuccessful
title tilt against Max
Holloway.
In addition to Ortega vs. Lopes, the UFC finalized the bout order
of all 10 contests on the evening. With O’Malley-Dvalishvili and
Alexa
Grasso–Valentina
Shevchenko 3 on top, the main card will be rounded out by a
lightweight clash between Daniel
Zellhuber (15-1) and Esteban
Ribovics, while opening with a flyweight throwdown of Ronaldo
Rodriguez (16-2) vs. Ode
Osbourne (12-7, 1 NC). The previously announced 135-pound
affair between Raul Rosas
Jr. and Qileng Aori
will serve as the curtain-jerker.