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Brett Okamoto, ESPN Staff Writer
The UFC’s event in Abu Dhabi on Saturday on ABC has been a bit overshadowed by last weekend’s festivities in Manchester, which featured two title fights at UFC 304.
It’s time to give it the focus it deserves, as its five-round bantamweight main event between Cory Sandhagen and Umar Nurmagomedov is legitimately one of the best matchups on the calendar right now.
On this edition of Five Rounds, let’s explore some of the most prominent topics on the card and a couple of other items in the MMA world.
1. A No. 1 contender fight you can believe in
It’s nice to have a bonafide No. 1 contender matchup. Ideally, these would be the norm. Take a division’s top two non-champs, have them fight, and the winner gets to challenge for the belt. Of course, in practice, it doesn’t always work out like that. Timing is crucial, and sometimes, name value and momentum are crucial. It’s hard to guarantee a title shot in a constantly, chaotically moving sport.
This one is the real deal, though. UFC CEO Dana White has made the rare move of calling it that, and Nurmagomedov revealed he’s been explicitly told a win gets him a title shot. The UFC would have had this as a No. 1 contender fight a year ago when it was supposed to happen in Nashville before Nurmagomedov was injured.
The UFC has had trouble booking Nurmagomedov opponents during his three-year run. It reached a point where the UFC simply elevated him to Sandhagen, a former interim title challenger and five-time headliner, who told him the only thing he wanted was whatever fight earned him the next title shot. The winner of this will fight the winner of Sean O’Malley vs. Merab Dvalishvili in September, and that’s refreshing to know.
2. Win or lose, you will probably see Tony Ferguson again
Going into Saturday, Ferguson has answered as many questions about retirement as the fight itself. Not surprisingly, he is adamant this will not be his final fight, even though White has said he hopes it will be.
Ferguson has admitted he needs to do some “extraordinary s—” to keep his roster spot. He’s lost seven in a row. Would the UFC cut him if he drops another one on Saturday? Unless it’s a devastating loss, I don’t think so. White will encourage a fighter to retire, but he’s not eager to cut them if they don’t. It does raise a big question, though, of how many times can we do this going into a Ferguson fight. It’s been the main topic of his fights since May 2021.
Going into every fight, Ferguson has had an explanation for what’s going to be different. It’s taken on themes of returning to his routines or learning to be coached again. It’s even taken on the form of having retired Navy SEAL and endurance athlete David Goggins in his corner. This time, things will be different because he’s sparred 120 rounds before an upcoming fight for the first time in years.
Ferguson will never run out of these balls of hope that the next one will be different. So even though I don’t think this is the one the UFC will have to decide on him beyond this fight, that day will come.
3. But you probably won’t see Nick Diaz
2:28
Why Chael doesn’t think the Diaz brothers are done in the UFC
Chael Sonnen and Daniel Cormier discuss whether Nate and Nick Diaz are done in the UFC after Nick’s fight got cancelled.
It was shocking when the UFC announced earlier this year that the 40-year-old Diaz would be fighting Vicente Luque in his first appearance in three years. It was less shocking when the UFC later announced the bout was off, allegedly due to travel difficulties on Diaz’s side.
Diaz’s last Instagram post was on May 29, when the fight was announced. He has not been publicly heard from since. Luque said he hoped the fight would be rebooked, but White admitted last weekend that he was not confident Diaz would fight in 2024.
Nothing substantial has been reported on Diaz’s situation. At this point, any “true” Diaz fan should be hoping for his physical, mental and emotional health — rather than a comeback. The last time he fought was in 2021, and in a candid pre-fight interview with ESPN, he basically said he was dreading it.
“Do I feel confident? I never do,” said Diaz during the sitdown. “I never have. I always feel like I’m going to get trashed out there. Every fight I’ve ever done.”
He was supposed to start preparations in Texas and then move camp to California, but it doesn’t sound like they ever reached the level required at the top of the sport.
I don’t believe we’ll ever get another Nick Diaz in a UFC fight announcement, and that’s not necessarily bad. There have been some unfortunate chapters in the later parts of his career. We don’t need to add to that by sending him into a fight against a ranked opponent when he’s an essentially retired fighter.
4. Muhammad Mokaev’s next options
The UFC’s decision not to re-sign Mokaev, who has won seven in a row in the Octagon, was some of the biggest news to come out of UFC 305.
There have been instances in which White has changed his mind after publicly writing off an athlete. This doesn’t feel like one of those times. You can even sense that reality from Mokaev’s social media timeline. He went from offering apologies to joking about the situation to a post on Thursday about moving on.
Mokaev suggested the split was due to his wrestling-heavy style, but White said it was “much more than that.” White said the PFL would get an undefeated flyweight, but he might be wrong about that. The PFL isn’t in a position to have much natural interest in a 125-pound fighter, when its lowest male weight class is 145. Mokaev will eventually find something, but I think it will be something other than the UFC or PFL.
5. Who will headline UFC 307 in Salt Lake City?
The UFC’s fall schedule is falling together mostly as expected. After Max Holloway‘s unbelievable BMF win over Justin Gaethje at UFC 300, the UFC had multiple discussions about when and where to do his title fight against Ilia Topuria. UFC 306 at the Sphere and UFC 307 in Salt Lake City were each more or less penciled in at one point, but now that fight is likely headed to UFC 308 in Abu Dhabi, after lightweight champion Islam Makhachev threw the first curveball with a lingering hand injury.
With O’Malley and Dvalishvili main eventing UFC 306, the delay of Topuria vs. Holloway to UFC 308 on Oct. 26 leaves a lot of real estate on the UFC 307 card. A women’s bantamweight title fight between Raquel Pennington and Julianna Peña will likely land on that card, but the UFC will need to surround that title fight with more name value.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the UFC goes into a “creative mode” for that event. They added a BMF fight to beef up the Salt Lake City card in 2023. Would they consider an interim title fight, with no real recovery timeline for Makhachev? Will they find an opponent for a name we haven’t seen in a while, such as Kamaru Usman or Michael Chandler? It’s shaping up to be one of those cards that does not have an obvious main event, which leads to curiosity on how they’ll put together.