A pair of heavy-handed light heavyweights is headed Down Under.
Jimmy Crute is gearing up for his return to the Octagon.
The UFC announced that Crute and Alonzo Menifield have agreed to fight at UFC 284, the upcoming pay-per-view event scheduled for Feb. 12 at the RAC Arena in Perth, Australia.
Following two ‘Performance of the Night’ awarded finishes of Micha? Oleksiejczuk and Modestas Bukauskas, Crute suffered back-to-back losses to Anthony Smith and Jamahal Hill. The ‘Brute’ would spend 2022 on the sidelines as he underwent knee reconstruction surgery. According to Crute, the surgery was necessary to avoid a potentially ‘career-ending injury’ after years of accumulating damage throughout his career.
Now recovered, the No. 12 ranked light heavyweight has quite a test ahead of him in Menifield.
‘Atomic’ has won four of his past five fights. He rebounded from a unanimous decision loss to William Knight with two consecutive first-round (T)KOs of Askar Mozharov and Misha Cirkunov at UFC Vegas 56 and UFC Vegas 62, respectively.
UFC 284 is headlined by a lightweight championship fight between Islam Makhachev and Alexander Volkanovski.
The current line-up is as follows (in no particular order):
- Islam Makhachev vs. Alexander Volkanovski
- Yair Rodriguez vs. Josh Emmett
- Robert Whittaker vs. Paulo Costa
- Kai Kara-France vs. Alex Perez
- Tyson Pedro vs. Zhang Mingyang
- Jimmy Crute vs. Alonzo Menifield
- Justin Tafa vs. Parker Porter
- Joshua Culibao vs. Melski Baghdasaryan
- Shannon Ross vs. Kleydson Rodrigues
- Jack Jenkins vs. Don Shainis
Stay tuned to Bloody Elbow for more updates to event as they become available in the coming weeks.