The Ultimate Fighting Championship is not quite
done building its stacked April pay-per-view.
Per Michael
Chiesa (16-6) on ESPN’s “UFC Fight Night Pre-Show” on Friday,
he will be competing on April 8. This will be his first in-cage
outing since 2021, and he will be taking on Jingliang
Li (19-8) with potential top-10 stakes in the welterweight
division. The event,
UFC 287, still does not currently have a location on the books,
although locales of Brooklyn, New York, and Miami are reportedly
the frontrunners.
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This will be Chiesa’s first fight in over 16 months, and he will be
attempting to dispel a two-fight losing streak when he sets foot in
the Octagon again. “Maverick” first succumbed to a brabo choke from
Vicente
Luque in August 2021, and came back three-plus months later to
drop a decision to then-undefeated Sean Brady.
Before then, Chiesa had rattled off four straight victories in his
return to welterweight. All four wins came over noteworthy foes at
170 pounds, as he dispatched Carlos
Condit, Diego
Sanchez, Rafael dos
Anjos and Neil Magny
from 2018 to 2021.
Li has alternated wins and losses in his last six, with knockouts
of Elizeu
Zaleski dos Santos, Santiago
Ponzinibbio and Muslim
Salikhov interspersed between defeats to Magny, Khamzat
Chimaev and Daniel
Rodriguez. The latter came at an unexpected 180-pound
catchweight due to late-notice fight-card rejiggering, and Li
weighed a full 10 pounds lighter than Rodriguez and still
arguably won the decision.
UFC 287 will be held at a currently undisclosed venue on April 8,
with a middleweight championship rematch on tap for the main event
of the evening. The co-headliner slot comes at welterweight in an
all-action contest between former title challengers Gilbert
Burns and Jorge
Masvidal. To complete the main card lineup – barring a
re-ordering with this new fight – Kevin
Holland faces Santiago
Ponzinibbio at 170 pounds, Raul Rosas
Jr. will look to keep his young unbeaten record intact against
Christian
Rodriguez at bantamweight and Rob Font will
throw down with Adrian
Yanez also at 135 pounds.