The second weekend in May typically isn’t one of the marquee annual events for the UFC. Then why is UFC 211, which takes place Saturday at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, so stacked?
“It just worked out that way,” UFC president Dana White told reporters at a boxing event in Las Vegas over the weekend. “We had a tremendous [2016] and coming into this year we had injuries, guys had just fought. Now, this is the first big card of the year for us.”
The fight card features two championship bouts, three former champions, a pair of former title challengers, a few potential future champs, plus a handful of rising stars.
Heavyweight kingpin Stipe Miocic aims to defend his belt for the second time, as he faces Junior dos Santos, the last man to defeat him. Miocic was edged in a five-round unanimous decision by dos Santos in an absolute dogfight back in December 2014. Since that bout, Miocic (16-2) TKO’d Mark Hunt and Andrei Arlovski, knocked out Fabricio Werdum at UFC 198 to win the title then defended his belt at UFC 203 this past September by knocking out Alistair Overeem. Meanwhile, dos Santos (18–4) has alternated wins and losses dating back to 2012 but looked in vintage form in his most recent outing, a unanimous decision victory over Ben Rothwell 13 months ago.
If you enjoy aggressive striking of the fast and powerful variety, you’ll dig the co-main event between strawweights Joanna Jedrzejczyk and Jessica Andrade. Jedrzejczyk is unbeaten in MMA, while Andrade is a dominant 3-0 since dropping down to the 115-pound division midway through 2016.
This fight comes at a fascinating time for female fighters in the UFC with the promotion recently announcing it will introduce a 125-pound strawweight division later this year. Both Jedrzejczyk and Andrade happen to be prime candidates to thrive in that division. Andrade had success in the 135-pound division at the start of her career and cuts a lot of weight to make the 115-pound strawweight limit.
“I’m going to be the first [two-weight champion] in the female division,” Jedrzejczyk told Sportsnet prior to her UFC 205 fight against Karolina Kowalkiewicz. “We need this [125-pound] division. There are so many fighters from 115 who are having very big problems with the weight cuts…It’s my dream to have two fights at 115 [in 2017] and at the end of the year fight for the second title.”
The night opens with four fights featuring relatively unknown fighters but every tilt that follows features either an established veteran and/or rising talent. Demian Maia vs. Jorge Masvidal could (and probably should) produce the next title challenger at welterweight, Yair Rodriguez continue to establish himself one of the top young stars in the UFC as he takes on future Hall of Famer Frankie Edgar, and Eddie Alvarez vs. Dustin Poirier is guaranteed fireworks in the featured preliminary bout.
Here’s an updated look at the UFC 211 lineup after Henry Cejudo vs. Sergio Pettis was removed due to a hand injury suffered by Cejudo:
MAIN CARD
— Stipe Miocic vs. Junior dos Santos
— Joanna Jedrzejczyk vs. Jessica Andrade
— Demian Maia vs. Jorge Masvidal
— Frankie Edgar vs. Yair Rodriguez
— Krzysztof Jotko vs. Dave Branch
PRELIMINARY CARD
— Eddie Alvarez vs. Dustin Poirier
— Chas Skelly vs. Jason Knight
— Marco Polo Reyes vs. James Vick
— Jessica Aguilar vs. Cortney Casey
— Jared Gordon vs. Michel Quinones
— Chase Sherman vs. Rashad Coulter
— Gabriel Benítez vs. Enrique Barzola
— Joachim Christensen vs. Gadzhimurad Antigulov
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