The Ultimate Fighting Championship brass should be
ready to hand out a post-fight bonus check after this upcoming
scrap.
On Sunday, management team Iridium
Sports Agency announced that Mario
Bautista (13-2) and Ricky Simon
(20-4) will meet in the first UFC card of 2024 on Jan. 13. The
bantamweights will square off at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas. The
bout has subsequently confirmed by Bautista, who posted about the
matchup on his Instagram, while
opponent Simon remarked that he had signed a multi-fight deal with
the promotion on his own Instagram page.
MMA Lab product Bautista is riding a five fight win streak that
includes three submissions over Brian
Kelleher, Benito
Lopez and Guido
Cannetti. Of note, his reverse triangle armbar of Lopez in 2022
served as just the second of its type in company history. Most
recently, the 30-year-old Arizonan picked up a hard-fought decision
win over Da’Mon Blackshear at UFC 292 in August.
Simon will be hunting for his first win since July 2022 when he
battles Bautista. The Washington native succumbed to strikes
against Yadong Song
in his first UFC headliner in August. Before that fifth-round
defeat, Simon had chained together five straight victories with
names including Raphael
Assuncao, Jack Shore
and the aforementioned Kelleher.
The unnamed UFC
Fight Night event on Jan. 13 will go down inside of the UFC
Apex in Las Vegas, and no headliner has yet been announced. Other
bouts on the billing thus far include a bantamweight contest
pitting Norma
Dumont against Yana Santos,
a heavyweight clash of Andrei
Arlovski vs. Waldo
Cortes-Acosta and 135-pound battle between Marcus
McGhee and Gaston
Bolanos.