It’s fight week again in Las Vegas for UFC 285. Jon Jones is planning on making his return to the octagon as a heavyweight against the number one contender Ciryl Gane.
Three Years ago, Jon Jones had fought and beat Dominick Reyes by unanimous decision for the light heavyweight title. Since then, he’s been bodybuilding and training since the COVID-19 pandemic to get himself ready to become a heavyweight contender and hopefully champion.
Jones is considered one of the greatest fighters of all time due to his most title defenses in the UFC and his record standing out as 26-1 with 10 TKO and 6 submission finishes. He was also the youngest fighter in the UFC to win a Championship Title only at the age of 23. His only loss was considered to be a DQ (disqualification) due to throwing 12-6 elbows on the ground against Matt Hamill early in his career back in 2009 on “The Ultimate Fighter” season 10 finale.
But since that loss he has been on a 17 fight win streak fighting against Light Heavyweight legends in the sport of MMA like Mauricio “Shogun” Rua, Daniel Cormier, Rashad Evans, Glover Teixeira, Vitor Belfort, and many more. He was supposed to fight Francis Ngannou for the heavyweight title, but the former heavyweight champion decided to leave the UFC to focus on boxing and other combat sports.
With Ngannou leaving the heavyweight division, The UFC decided to bring in number one contender Ciryl Gane to face Jon Jones. Ciryl Gane is coming into this fight with a record standing at (11-1), with 5 TKO and 3 submission finishes. His only loss was by unanimous decision against former heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou at UFC 270, but has beaten top heavyweight contenders like Tai Tuivasa, Derrick Lewis, Alexander Volkov, Junior Dos Santos, and Jairzinho Rozenstruik.
Gane made his professional MMA debut in 2018, and is already fighting for a 3rd time for a UFC title. Now to the co-main bout, flyweight champion Valentina Shevchenko will be defending her title against the number six flyweight contender Alexa Grasso. Shevchenko is entering this fight with a record standing at (23-3) with eight title defenses in the UFC and is the second ranked women's pound-for-pound fighter in the world, right behind bantam and featherweight champion Amanda Nunes.
The UFC women’s flyweight division has only had two champions since its debut back in 2017, with the current champion Valentina Shevchenko and Joanna Jedrzejczyk in 2018. Shevchenko beat Jedrzejczyk by unanimous decision for the title, and has never looked back since. Her last title defense was against Talia Santos and by the looks of how the fight went, It was Shevchenko’s toughest opponent she’s faced in flyweight yet. This Saturday she’ll be defending her title for the ninth time against Alexa Grasso. Grasso enters this fight with a four-fight winning streak and a record of (15-3) with only two losses ending by decision and one submission loss, and only making her UFC debut back in 2020.
She has faced top women’s flyweight contenders like Joanne Wood, Carla Esparza, Maycee Barber, Tatiana Suarez, and Viviane Araujo. Bo Nickal is also making his anticipated UFC debut at middleweight against Jamie Pickett. Nickal was a three-time NCAA Division I National Champion and a three-time Big Ten Conference champion out of Pennsylvania State. He started MMA only last year and made his debut in Jorge Masvidal’s ikon Fighting, and finished his opponent in thirty seconds by KO/TKO in the first round.
After that he was invited to compete in the sixth season of the Dana White’s Contender Series. This time he finished his opponent by submission in the first round in over a minute, he didn’t get signed that night, but Dana wanted him to compete again in the season finale. When he returned for the finale, he had another first round submission and Dana had no choice other than to sign him to the UFC.
His opponent Jamie Pickett, is also a fighter who won a contract out of the fourth season of the Dana White’s Contender Series back in 2020. He has a standing record of (13-8) and is coming off of a loss from Dennis Tiuliullin at UFC 279. The main card also has two top ten lightweight and middleweight matchups.
With the seventh lightweight contender Mateusz Gamerot taking on number ten lightweight contender Jalin Turner, and the seventh middleweight contender Geoff Neal facing against the ten middleweight contender Shavkat Rakhmonov. Saturday cannot come any sooner, this event is gonna be fireworks and I can’t wait!
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