2018-02-19
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The most exciting upcoming UFC bouts

Editorial by Mike Tycoon

UFC is going through a period where there are some absolutely stellar fights on almost every weekend. There are so many great fighters that are willing to take on each other, that the sport is experiencing amazing growth and getting new fans by the day. It is a sport which is very exciting, very easy to watch and also has names that are getting bigger and bigger. It also was not hurt by the fact that Conor McGregor managed to hold his own against Floyd Mayweather in a boxing match. The hype around that brought more people to UFC.

 

One of the main things that it has going for it, is that fighters don’t duck each other anywhere near as much as in boxing. One of the great criticisms levelled at Floyd Mayweather was that he was always willing to take on other boxers who were at the top of their games.

 

He always seemed to avoid them. That is why the boxing press goes into overdrive when two top level fighters take them on. You only have to consider Gennady Golovkin’s match against Saul Alvarez or Anthony Joshua’s bout with Joseph Parker to see just how much the press feeds on these huge bouts. There have been hundreds of great Joshua Parker predictions written because boxing writers cannot wait to actually get to write about a fight of importance rather than two unmatched fighters taking each other on.

 

This is not such an issue in UFC, and MMA in general, as top fighters take on one another all the time. There are very few examples of fighters actively avoiding one another. When the time comes, they are ready to go, they are happy to prove themselves against the other great warriors and therefore they put on great shows for the crowds.

 

This means that there are a lot of great fights lined up for 2018. There are almost too many in some sense. With boxing it is easy to pick out a couple of great fights to watch but UFC has so many that it can be hard to keep up. So, to make it easier for you, we thought we would preview some of the best upcoming bouts. Ones that you should be circling in you calendars, ones which need to watched and ones that will live long in the memory.

 Cris Cyborg vs. Yana Kunitskaya

It is all too rare to see a women’s fight being the main event in many sports. It is very rare in boxing, it happens all too infrequently in wrestling and in more mainstream sports it is almost never the case that women are given the same stage as men. UFC has helped to pioneer women’s sport and the fight between Cyborg and Kunitskaya is a great example of how much stock UFC put in women’s title fights. They will be battling it out at UFC 222 for the women’s featherweight title and it will be very exciting. Kunitskaya is a bit of an unknown quantity, she doesn’t even have a picture on the UFC website, yet has won 10 of her 13 fights. Cyborg though has only lost 1 in 20 fights and will be confident or retaining her title.

 Frankie Edgar vs Brian Ortega

Another fight at UFC 222, this is not for a title but will likely give the winner a shot at one sooner rather than later. It is a great matchup between two fighters who are battling to reach the top of the featherweight division. Ortega has so far gone unbeaten in his 13 fights and will be hoping to beat Edgar, which would be the 6th defeat of a wildly inconsistent career. It will be a high quality boutz and one that Ortega will be favourite to edge.

 Tony Ferguson vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov

This is perhaps the most exciting of the upcoming fights in UFC with Nurmagomedov hoping to finally prove that he is one of the best fighters in the game. He is powerful, he is fast and he is the favourite for this fight with current interim lightweight champion Tony Ferguson hoping to keep the title he has been awarded. With the shadow of Conor McGregor looming large over this one, both fighters have the chance to step out of the Irishman's shadow and prove themselves to be the best in this division.

 

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