UFC 300 is set to take place on April 13 featuring the defending lightweight champion Alex Periera and some other rousing fights, but the lineup does not live up to the standards suggested by Dana White.
The title fight is between current lightweight champion Alex “Poatan” Pereira and top-ranked Jamahal “Sweet Dreams” Hill. Both are outstanding fighters who never fail to deliver great fights. Pereira, who has only 11 official UFC fights, is also known for dethroning the reigning champion, Israel Adesanya. But Periera’s division, lightweight, is not a very strong weight class when it comes to fighters’ starpower and capabilities.
Hill has had a good record so far, but for him to headline one of the biggest, if not the biggest, UFC event of all time is not fitting. The owner and president of the UFC, Dana White, promised a fight night full of stars and one of the best main events ever, but this lineup does not deliver.
Other than the title fight, the main card also includes Charles Oliveira vs. Arman Tsarrukyan, Bo Nickal vs. Cody Brundage, and what looks to be the best fight of the night: Max Holloway vs. Justin Gaethje.
Having Nickal, who has only had two official MMA fights, included in the main card – while number two ranked light heavyweight Jiri Prochazka and number two ranked bantamweight Aljamain Sterling remain in the prelims – is very unusual.
While the card is not horrible and does include promising fights, it is disappointing given White’s advertisement and promotion of the event.
Gaethje, Holloway, and Oliveira are the kinds of fighters that every Ultimate Fighting Championship fan loves to watch. They are some of the best to ever enter the octagon, fighting with patience, intelligence, aggression, and passion.
That is what leads to the beautiful technical fights – not an amateur like Nickal fighting on the main card of the biggest UFC event of all time. Despite Nickal’s incredible wrestling career, MMA is a completely different art.
On the other hand, Holloway vs. Gaethje should be the most exciting fight of the night. Both are veterans who have had some of the best MMA runs of all time, beating the best fighters in the world.
Holloway, who is the former featherweight champion, is regarded as one of the best strikers of all time, with some of the nastiest finishes the UFC has ever seen. Gaethje, despite being one of the greatest lightweights of all time, is yet to win a championship. This adds up to what should be a great fight: Each fighter has a great style, which should lead to an absolute dogfight.
But it will not impact the division much, nor either of the fighters’ careers.
UFC 299 was one of the highest grossing MMA events ever and had an electrifying main event that featured young fighter Sean O’Malley. It seems as if the quality of 299 has hurt the buildup to UFC 300. If Dana White wouldn’t have made such big promises and instead had chosen better fights, 300 could have been a major stepping stone in UFC going even more mainstream.
