Credit:Getty/UFC
Credit: Getty/UFC
Credit: Getty/UFC
A place in the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s top 15 at
flyweight looms for the victor.
On Thursday, Ag.
Fight first broke the news that Casey
O’Neill (9-1) will be stepping into the Octagon against
Ariane
Lipski (16-8) on Dec. 16. The two flyweights will tangle likely
on the preliminary portion of
UFC 296, which will be held at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
This 125-pound affair has been
confirmed by both women via their
Instagram Stories pages.
Born in Scotland and trained in Australia, O’Neill suffered her
first career defeat in March. Her nine-fight win streak, which
included four triumphs inside the Octagon, fell by the wayside
courtesy of Jennifer
Maia. On her way up the 125-pound ladder, O’Neill rapidly
ascended when she dispatched Shana
Dobson, Lara
Procopio and Antonina
Shevchenko in the span of less than eight months. A lone 2022
effort against Roxanne
Modafferi also went her way by split decision, and a torn ACL a
few months later kept her out of action for the remainder of the
year. “King” was booked against Viviane
Araujo in September, but an undisclosed injury requiring
surgery again delayed her return to the cage after the Maia
loss.
Sporting an even .500 record in the UFC thus far, Lipski has had
her ups and downs since joining the roster in 2019. The Brazilian
suffered a pair of losses against Joanne Wood
and Molly
McCann to introduce herself to international audiences, which
shattered much of the goodwill she had gained prevailing under the
KSW banner. Since then, she has bounced back
and forth in the win/loss columns, and her two-fight win streak
this year matches her UFC best. In March, Lipski topped J.J. Aldrich
on the scorecards, and she follows that with a split decision
victory against Melissa
Gatto in July.
The UFC’s year-end pay-per-view event of UFC 296 will go down at
the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on Dec. 16. Topping the two-title
bout card will be a welterweight championship grudge match between
Leon
Edwards and Colby
Covington. The co-headliner will see Alexandre
Pantoja defend his flyweight strap in a rematch with Brandon
Royval. Other main card matchups include a welterweight clash
between Shavkat
Rakhmonov and Stephen
Thompson, a lightweight tilt pitting Tony
Ferguson against Paddy
Pimblett and an all-action 170-pound scrap of Ian Garry vs.
Vicente
Luque.