The world’s largest MMA promotion heads to Atlanta this Saturday, July 30 for the UFC 201 card on pay-per-view.
In the main event, welterweight kingpin Robbie Lawler defends his belt for the third time against teammate Tyron Woodley in a crackerjack of a main event. Lawler’s rise from talented journeyman to three-time defending champion has been one of the best stories of the last several years in MMA, and a win here would go a long way toward cementing him as one of the all-time greats.
The co-main event was originally scheduled to be a flyweight title fight between dominant champion Demetrious Johnson and Wilson Reis, but an injury to Johnson several weeks ago scrapped that plan.
Instead, former strawweight title challenger Rose Namajunas will take on Poland’s Karolina Kowalkiewicz in what seems to be a top-contender matchup. This should be an absolute barnburner of a fight between two of the division’s rising talents.
Potentially fun but not terribly relevant bouts between Jake Ellenberger and Matt Brown and Francisco Rivera and Erik Perez make up the third and fourth fights on the main card, but the opener, a flyweight scrap between Ian McCall and Justin Scoggins, has the makings of a great matchup.
The rest of the card is, to put it mildly, thin. Jorge Masvidal and Ross Pearson meet in a welterweight bout on Fox Sports 2, and a good matchup of talented young fighters in Bojan Velickovic and Michael Graves headlines the Fight Pass portion, but that’s about it.
Let’s take a look at each individual matchup.