The Ultimate Fighting Championship loves
heavyweight headliners, and fans will be getting one in
mid-March.
Per the organization
on Friday, Tai Tuivasa
(14-6) will throw bombs for five rounds or less against Marcin
Tybura (24-8) on March 16. The heavyweights will now headline
the currently unnumbered Fight Night event on that date, likely to
be coined
UFC Fight Night 239 should the main card air on ESPN+. The two
big men were booked against one another at UFC 298, but the
promotion elected to slide them back a month to put on the marquee
of this UFC Apex show.
Tuivasa will be looking to get out of a slump, as he has suffered
three straight stoppage losses since September 2022. Those defeats
came against the upper echelon of the division, as Ciryl Gane,
Sergei
Pavlovich and Alexander
Volkov all dispatched him in a little over one year’s time.
Before then, the boisterous Aussie slugged his way through the
opposition, racking up five straight knockouts from 2020 to early
2022, blasting the likes of Derrick
Lewis and Stefan
Struve on his way up the ladder.
Polish contender Tybura will be hoping to right the ship after a
deflating 73-second loss to future interim champ Tom
Aspinall in July 2023. That loss put an end to a two-fight win
streak, where he took home decisions over Blagoy
Ivanov and Alexander
Romanov. “Tybur” also strung together a five-fight win streak
in the Octagon at one point, with a trio of decisions along with
knockouts of Greg Hardy
and Walt
Harris. Tybura is currently in second place with the most
decision wins in heavyweight history (seven), trailing only the
mighty Andrei
Arlovski’s 12.
The UFC Fight Night card on March 16 will take place in the UFC
Apex in Las Vegas, with Tuivasa-Tybura on tap as the headliner.
Bouts likely serving on the main card include a lightweight banger
between Thiago
Moises and Brad
Riddell, and a welterweight clash between Bryan
Battle and Ange Loosa.