Curtis
Blaydes (18-5) will welcome debutant Rizvan
Kuniev (12-2) to the Octagon at UFC
Seattle.
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Blaydes and Kuniev will meet in a heavyweight matchup at UFC Fight
Night 252 on Feb. 22 at the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle.
Multiple outlets have confirmed the pairing after the matchup was
first reported by Kuniev’s teammate Jairzinho
Rozenstruik in an interview with James Lynch.
Blaydes challenged Tom
Aspinall for the interim title in a rematch at UFC 304
this past July. “Honey Badger” knocked out Blaydes in just one
minute, also avenging his lone UFC loss, where he blew his knee in
the opening seconds back in 2022. Meanwhile, “Razor” has now
sandwiched a win over Jailton Almedia between losses against
Sergei
Pavlovich and Aspinall.
Kuniev earned his
UFC contract with a first round technical knockout win over
Hugo
-Cunha-52825″>Hugo
-Cunha-227763″>Hugo Cunha on
the
Dana White’s Contender Series this past August. While Kuniev
entered DWCS on the back of a win over former
PFL champ Renan
Ferreira, it was later overturned to a no contest when the
Dagestani failed a drug test. Kuniev was scheduled to make his
promotional debut at UFC 310 earlier this month, but scheduled
opponent Martin
Buday pulled out due to an injury.