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Brett Okamoto, ESPN Staff Writer
Saturday’s UFC in Abu Dhabi event on ABC has been somewhat 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, because the five-round bantamweight main event between Cory Sandhagen and Umar Nurmagomedov is legitimately one of the best matchups on the current calendar.
In this edition of Five Rounds, let’s explore some of the most important topics on the card and some other items in the world of MMA.
1. A No. 1 fighting contender you can believe
It’s nice to have a bonafide No. 1 contender matchup. Ideally, this will become the norm. Take the top two non-champs of his division, have them fight, and the champion gets a challenge for the belt. Of course, in practice, it doesn’t always work that way. Time is of the essence, and sometimes, name value and momentum matter. It’s hard to guarantee a title shot in a continuous, chaotically moving sport.
This one is the real deal, though. UFC CEO Dana White has made a rare move to call it, and Nurmagomedov is revealed to have insisted on winning to get him the title shot. The UFC will have this as a No. 1 contender fight.
The UFC has had trouble booking Nurmagomedov’s opponents for three years. It got to the point where the UFC just elevated him to Sandhagen, a former interim title challenger and five-time headliner, who told him the only thing he wanted was any fight that got him the next title shot. The winner of this will face the winner of Sean O’Malley vs Merab Dvalishvili in September, and that’s refreshing to know.
2. Win or lose, you will see Tony Ferguson again
On Saturday, Ferguson has answered questions about retirement like the fight. Unsurprisingly, he believes this won’t be his last fight, although White has said he hopes so.
Ferguson admitted he had to do some incredible “s—” to keep his roster spot. He lost seven in a row. Will the UFC cut him if he drops another one on Saturday? Other than that it’s a huge loss, I don’t think so. White will encourage fighters to retire, but he doesn’t want to rule them out if they don’t. But it raises the big question, how can we do this in the Ferguson war. This has been the main topic of the fight since May 2021.
In every fight, Ferguson has an explanation for what will be different. This is captured in the theme of returning to routine or learning to retrain. It is even taken in the form of retired Navy SEAL and endurance athlete David Goggins in the corner. This time, things will be different because he has sparred 120 rounds before the upcoming fight for the first time in a year.
Ferguson will not run out of balls of hope that the next one will be different. So while I don’t think this is what the UFC should decide about him beyond this fight, that day will come.
3. But you probably won’t see Nick Diaz
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Doesn’t Chael 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 was canceled.
It came as a surprise when the UFC announced earlier this year that the 40-year-old Diaz would fight Vicente Luque in his first appearance in three years. It was no surprise when the UFC later announced the bout was off the table, citing travel issues on Diaz’s part.
Diaz’s last Instagram post was on May 29, when the fight was announced. He has not heard from the public since. Luque said he hoped the fight would be rescheduled, but White admitted last weekend that he wasn’t sure Diaz would fight in 2024.
No word has been released on Diaz’s condition. At this point, any “true” Diaz fan should hope 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 said he was scared.
“Do I feel confident? I never did,” Diaz said as he sat down. “I never did. I always felt like I was going to get trashed out there. Every fight I’ve ever had was over.”
He should start his preparations in Texas and then go to camp for California, but it doesn’t sound like they 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 a bad thing. There were some unfortunate things in the latter part of his career. We don’t need to add to that by sending him into battle against a ranked opponent when he’s a retired fighter.
4. The next choice is Muhammad Mokaev
The UFC’s decision not to re-sign Mokaev, who has won his seventh straight in the Octagon, was some of the biggest news coming out of UFC 305.
There was an incident where Putih changed his mind after publicly writing about the death of an athlete. This is not like one of those times. You may recognize this fact from Mokaev’s social media timeline. He went from apologizing to joking about the situation to a post on Thursday about moving on.
Mokaev suggested the split was due to his heavy wrestling style, but White said it was “more than that.” White said the PFL would get an undefeated flyweight, but he could be wrong. The PFL is not in a position to have much natural interest in a 125-pound fighter, while the male weight class is at least 145. Mokaev will eventually find something, but I think it will be something other than the UFC or the PFL.
5. Who will headline UFC 307 in Salt Lake City?
The UFC’s fall schedule is pretty much the same as expected. After Max Holloway’s unbelievable BMF win over Justin Gaethje at UFC 300, the UFC had a lot of discussions about when and where to fight Ilia Topuria. UFC 306 in Sphere and UFC 307 in Salt Lake City were more or less penciled in at one point, but now that fight is likely to go to UFC 308 in Abu Dhabi, after lightweight champion Islam Makhachev threw the first curveball with a lingering injured hand.
With O’Malley and Dvalishvili main eventing UFC 306, the delay of Topuria vs. Holloway’s departure to UFC 308 on October 26 leaves a lot of real estate on the UFC 307 card. The women’s bantamweight title fight between Raquel Pennington and Julianna Peña will likely make it onto the card, but the UFC needs to surround the title with more name value.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the UFC went into “creative mode” for the event. He added the BMF fight to add to the Salt Lake City card in 2023. Will he consider an interim title fight, with no real recovery time for Makhachev? Will they find an opponent for names that have not been seen for a long time, such as Kamaru Usman or Michael Chandler? It’s one of those cards that doesn’t have a clear main event, which leads to a lot of curiosity about how to put it together.
