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Nick Newell has a new contract and finally a fight to go with it.

The popular lightweight will take on Joe Condon at World Series of Fighting 20 on April 10 at Mohegan Sun in Ledyard, Conn., WSOF president Ray Sefo told MMAFighting.com’s Ariel Helwani on Thursday. The bout will be like a homecoming for Newell, who lives in nearby Milford, Conn.

Newell (11-1) has not fought since falling via second-round TKO to Justin Gaethje in a WSOF lightweight title bout last July. He had been asking for a fight since the fall, but had just one bout left on his WSOF contract. The two sides finally came to an agreement for an extension earlier this month.

Newell, 28, is a congenital amputee born without a left hand and has captured the imagination of the MMA fanbase as an inspirational figure. More importantly, the 155-pounder has also established himself as one of WSOF’s best fighters regardless of weight class.

Condon (12-7) got a new opponent on the eve of WSOF 17 last month and made good on the opportunity. After Brian Cobb was injured a day before the event, Condon stepped up to face Johnny Nunez in the co-main event and beat him with a guillotine choke in the third round. Condon was originally supposed to face Jimmy Spicuzza on the prelims of the card.

WSOF 20 is headlined by a light heavyweight tournament bout between Matt Hamill and Vinny Magalhaes. The winner of that fight takes on the winner of a bout between Thiago Silva and Ronny Markes for the inaugural WSOF 205-pound title. In the WSOF 20 co-main event, UFC veteran Melvin Guillard takes on Ozzy Dugulubgov.

GLENDALE, Calif. — Ronda Rousey is an Olympic medalist judoka who just began training in boxing a few years ago. Holly Holm is a former three-division boxing champion.

Yet, Edmond Tarverdyan, Rousey’s coach, believes Rousey could defeat Holm inside a ring with the big gloves.

“Ronda beats Holly in a boxing match,” Tarverdyan said Wednesday during a UFC 184 media day at Glendale Fighting Club. “I don’t believe it — I know so. And I believe in my fighter a lot.”

Holm holds an impressive 33-2-3 record in pro boxing. She competed professionally from 2002 to 2013, winning WBC, WBA and IBF titles, among others. She was The Ring magazine’s female fighter of the year in 2005 and 2006.

But Tarverdyan is so confident in Rousey’s developing striking ability that he would pick Rousey to win. The coach, a former boxer and Muay Thai fighter himself, bases his judgment on what Rousey does in training.

“We have her sparring with boxing world champions in the gym,” Tarverdyan said. “I’ve never seen Ronda lose a single round. You don’t see guy MMA fighters out there — name me one — that can get the best of boxing world champions. Within every round. Maybe one round they might. I’m not going to underestimate any of the fighters out there or talk negative about any of the MMA fighters out there. They’re great. There’s a few of them can really box and they do box with professional world champions. But not the way Ronda does.”

Rousey, the UFC women’s bantamweight champion, won all of her pro fights by armbar submission up until last year. She used a knee to the liver to dispatch Sara McMann at UFC 170 in February 2014 and then an overhand right, judo throw and repeated punches on the ground to finish Alexis Davis at UFC 175 in July.

In total, Rousey spent only 83 seconds in the Octagon all year.

Rousey defends her title against Cat Zingano in the main event UFC 184 on Feb. 28 in Los Angeles. Holm will co-headline the event against Raquel Pennington. The two will cross paths for the first time at Staples Center and Rousey said it was a “very reasonable possibility” that she would fight Holm sometime in the future in the UFC.

The idea of a judoka taking on a boxer is kind of a throwback to the old days of the UFC when fighters from different disciplines faced off. Rousey finds that idea kind of cool, much in the same way she enjoyed facing McMann, an Olympic silver medalist in wrestling.

“It’s interesting to see that part of MMA again,” Rousey said. “The guys are more like, OK, there’s that MMA style now. Whereas, the women are at that point where everyone is coming from a different discipline.”

Rousey (10-0) is beginning to transcend that right now, while Holm (7-0) is hard at work on her wrestling and ground game every day.

“She’s a world champion boxer that has come into MMA,” Rousey said. “The level of athletes that are coming into women’s MMA because we have so much fewer options when it comes to combat sports, I think presents a lot more interesting matchups than the men.”

Both are undefeated and bragging rights will get decided down the line if they stay that way — in the Octagon, not a judo mat or boxing ring.

Nik Lentz fell ill last week before UFC Fight Night 60 weigh-ins and had to pull out of his fight with Levan Makashvili in Broomfield, Colo.

Makashvili, a UFC newcomer, isn’t buying the story. He told MMAFighting.com that he believes Lentz is being dishonest, especially since Lentz posted pictures on social media all week and seemed to be fine.

“I think he’s lying,” Makashvili said through an interpreter, his coach Tengo Seppy. “I think he’s scared. I’m sure he did get sick, but there’s tons of people who get sick.”

The bout would have been Makashvili’s UFC debut and he was angry that he took the fight on short notice, cut the weight quickly and flew all the way to Colorado for nothing.

“If it was me, even if I was gonna die, I would have fought,” Makashvili said.

Makashvili (6-1) was a freestyle wrestling champion in his home country of Georgia before coming to the United States two years ago to train. “The Hornet” competes out of Mutant MMA in Long Island, N.Y., under Seppy, who also hails from Georgia. Makashvili, a highly regarded featherweight prospect, was the former Cage Fury Fighting Championship 145-pound titleholder and avenged his only career loss.

Lentz, ranked No. 8 among featherweights in the UFC’s official rankings, was a substantial favorite in the fight that never happened. Lentz’s nutritionist Mike Dolce told MMAFighting.com’s Ariel Helwani that Lentz had a 101-degree fever and the flu was running through his house previously. But Makashvili thinks he didn’t want anything to do with the bout.

“He kind of got scared,” Makashvili said. “They probably did some research on me and realized I wouldn’t be an easy fight for them. He kind of chickened out.”

The fight with Lentz is still the one Makashvili wants. Seppy has had a discussion with UFC matchmaker Sean Shelby about it, but it’s still up in the air.

“Get some tender loving care,” Makashvili said, as a message to Lentz. “Have your girlfriend hug you. Have your mom make some chicken soup for you and then come back and fight like you should have.”

As for how the fight will go, Makashvili is extremely confident.

“This fight will be finished quickly,” he said. “I’m speaking the truth here. I’m not like one of those trash talkers. Nik Lentz, he’s going to be finished quickly. People don’t know who I am yet.”

Makashvili said he wants the fight even more now that Lentz pulled out at the 11^th hour.

“I see it in my dreams, this fight,” Makashvili said. “Yes, I want it like crazy. Like a madman. I want this even more.”

The UFC 184 main event is a go.

Both Ronda Rousey and Cat Zingano passed random, out-of-competition drug tests and have been cleared to compete by the California State Athletic Commission, executive director Andy Foster told MMAFighting.com’s Ariel Helwani on Thursday.

Rousey and Zingano were both given urine tests last week ahead of their Feb. 28 bout in Los Angeles. The results came back Thursday and the two women did not test positive for any performance-enhancing drug. The two will be tested again after the fight at Staples Center.

Rousey (10-0) is defending her UFC women’s bantamweight title against Zingano (9-0). The original UFC 184 main event was supposed to be Chris Weidman versus Vitor Belfort for the UFC middleweight title before Weidman sustained a rib injury.

Drug-testing has been a hot topic in MMA. Anderson Silva, regarded as the best UFC champion of all time, popped for anabolic steroids in an out-of-competition test before UFC 183 last month.

Pushed in part by that negative test, the UFC announced sweeping changes to its drug policy Wednesday — every one of its nearly 600 fighters will be tested randomly year-round beginning July 1 by a third-party agency. The organization will also urge state athletic commissions to increase the suspensions for any fighter caught. The UFC is hoping for a ban of two to four years.

Rousey has long been an advocate of stricter drug testing. The former Olympic judo bronze medalist said Wednesday on a conference call that she was “extremely encouraged” by the announcement of the new system.

“The more testing there is, the better it is, because that means the safer that the fighters will be,” Rousey said.