The UFC returns to Toronto with a fun lineup Saturday, December 10, with its UFC 206 pay-per-view card. Nobody will call this slate “stacked” in the sense that UFC 205 or UFC 200 were, but almost every fight should bring the entertainment, from the headliners down to the opening bout on Fight Pass.
In the main event, Max Holloway and Anthony Pettis will fight for the interim featherweight title following Conor McGregor’s “relinquishing” of the belt and Jose Aldo’s promotion from interim to full champion. This is a silly device to add a few thousand buys to a card that needed a main event after Daniel Cormier pulled out of his rematch with Anthony Johnson, but if it leads to Aldo’s fighting Pettis or Holloway, that’s a fine outcome.
The co-main event features a dream matchup of action fighters as Donald Cerrone takes on Matt Brown at welterweight. For Cerrone, a win would put him in the conversation at the top of his new division.
Big-time featherweight prospect Doo Ho Choi gets a huge increase in competition as he faces longtime contender Cub Swanson in what promises to be at the least an entertaining fight and at best a slugfest of epic proportions. Middleweight contender Tim Kennedy returns after a two-year layoff to take on Kelvin Gastelum, who moves up from 170 pounds after yet another botched weight cut at UFC 205.
Even the preliminary card features fun matchups. The Fox Sports 1 main event pits light heavyweight prospects Misha Cirkunov and Nikita Krylov against each other in an outstanding meeting of rising 205-pounders, while the Fight Pass headliner features hot commodity Lando Vannata in a crackling scrap with John Makdessi.
Let’s take a look at each matchup.