HUGE ANNOUNCEMENTS JUST DROPPED! 🚨@DanaWhite
just confirmed SIX big fights going down this summer and more 👀
pic.twitter.com/2trJujb3kB— UFC (@ufc)
April 21, 2023
The Ultimate Fighting Championship decided that it
would rather feature featherweights in its June return to the ABC
airwaves.
The UFC
announced in a series of headliners that
UFC on ABC 5, the fight card that will be posting up inside of
the Vystar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Florida, will
gain a marquee fight previously scheduled elsewhere. The promotion
had initially placed Josh Emmett
(18-3) vs. Ilia
Topuria (13-0) in the main attraction of the UFC show on June
17, one that will play out at the UFC Apex. Instead, the
featherweights will battle it out on a major broadcast network on
June 24. The only other fights set on the lineup thus far include a
flyweight tilt between Amanda
Ribas and Maycee
Barber and another at 125 pounds between Tatsuro
Taira and Kleydson
Rodrigues.
Emmett saw his championship aspirations and five-fight win streak
go up in smoke when he encountered Yair
Rodriguez for the featherweight throne in February. With champ
Alexander
Volkanovski moving up to lightweight to challenge Islam
Makhachev, the organization decided to crown a no. 1 contender
between Rodriguez and Emmett. For just the first time in his
career, the power-punching Team Alpha Male rep tapped out to a
submission, with Rodriguez outworking him until landing the
triangle choke. Before then, Emmett had strung together an
impressive stretch of victories that included Shane
Burgos, Dan Ige and
Calvin
Kattar in 2020, 2021 and 2022, respectively.
While Emmett last lost in his last time out, that is a sensation
Topuria has not felt as a professional thus far. The Spanish
fighter born in Germany to Georgian parents made his mark in the
UFC by debuting in 2020, where he outworked Youssef
Zalal over the course of three rounds to claim his lone career
decision to date. Since then, Topuria has impressed the masses as
he crushed his way up the featherweight ranks, with three finishes
at 145 pounds over Damon
Jackson, Ryan Hall,
and most recently, Bryce
Mitchell. Along the way, “El Matador” tested the waters at 155
pounds and smoked Jai Herbert
in March 2022.