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Check out the current fight card for the June 26th Fight Night event headlined by heavyweights Ciryl Gane and Alexander Volkov.

Almost exactly one month from now on June 26th is a Fight Night event that will serve as the last UFC show before the trilogy between Dustin Poirier and Conor McGregor. In the main event of this card is what should be an intriguing heavyweight bout between strikers Ciryl Gane and Alexander Volkov. We have every reason to believe that fight will be better than Gane vs. Jairzinho Rozenstruik was.

There’s no co-main event announced as of yet. The next most notable fight is light heavyweights Ovince Saint Preux and Maxim Grishin. We do get to see Anthony Hernandez back in action after his shock win over Rodolfo Vieira, as he faces Punahele Soriano. Renato Moicano also returns to the cage versus Jai Herbert.

The main card will be at 4 PM ET/1 PM PT while the prelims are at 1 PM ET/10 AM PT, so you get some Saturday morning/afternoon Octagon action to look forward to.

Here is what is on tap, knowing we’ll have a couple more fights added to the lineup:

Ciryl Gane vs. Alexander Volkov

Ovince Saint Preux vs. Maxim Grishin

Anthony Hernandez vs. Punahele Soriano

Danilo Marques vs. Ed Herman

Renato Moicano vs. Jai Herbert

Ike Villanueva vs. Marcin Prachnio

Tim Elliott vs. Su Madaerji

Michel Prazeres vs. Shavkat Rakhmonov

Justin Jaynes vs. Charles Rosa

Timur Valiev vs. Raoni Barcelos

Warlley Alves vs. Ramazan Emeev

It’s been a pretty sharp fall from grace for Tyron Woodley, who went from being the UFC welterweight champion for two years to immediately hitting a four fight, 16 round losing streak. The last loss, a first round submission loss to Vicente Luque in March 2021, marked the last fight on Woodley’s UFC contract. And with that the former champ is no longer with the UFC.

On the plus side, this gives him more time to devote himself to his music career, which he clearly still enjoys. More than cagefighting after a 10+ year career? Hey, there’s nothing wrong with following new passions. Woodley has been putting out new raps and collabs and music videos alongside friends and partners for a couple of years now.

In May of 2020 he released a UFC comeback track called ‘Revenge,’ which he said was ‘a reflection of struggle. The highs and lows. Tragedy and Triumph!’ Now he’s done talking about fighting and just playing eye candy for a new video from St. Louis-based pop/R&B singer Mai Lee. Woodley is heavily featured in her video ‘Redd (Swim)’ and gets to be the lucky man Lee crawls all over for three and a half minutes.

I’m sure we can expect more music from Woodley now that he’s no longer stuck trying to regain the glory he held at welterweight during his career peak. But can we expect more fighting? Woodley is clearly willing to compete again for the right kind of paycheck, and set himself up as a viable contender in the Jake Paul freakshow fight sweepstakes when he instigated a confrontation with one of Paul’s boxing coaches, J’Leon Love, on the night of the Ben Askren bout.

We doubt Paul is willing to step in there with Woodley, who still has that piston of a right and is about a million times more dangerous than Ben Askren. But a match between Woodely and Love? Now that’s the kind of undercard bout that could draw in a couple extra eyes and integrate another of Paul’s crew into the money making process.

Really, we’re just hoping Woodley gets himself a couple more juicy paydays out of his combat sports career. The more money, the more baller music videos and slick studio productions we can expect! Win, win, right guys?

The UFC women’s strawweight division is stacked with contenders, and Mackenzie Dern is lined up to face the woman ranked one spot below her.

It looks like a major strawweight matchup between two rising stars is coming up soon.

Dana White told TMZ Sports that BJJ sensation Mackenzie Dern will be fighting dangerous striker Marina Rodriguez next. He didn’t specify the date or venue but that this fight has been made.

“She does have a fight coming up,” White said. “I was just talking about her this morning. We haven’t announced it, I’m sure, but I’ll give it to you, anyway. Hopefully, it’s done. My people hate when I do this. She’s taking on Marina Rodriguez next, which is a great fight.”

Dern (11-1) is on a four-fight winning streak, most recently submitting Nina Nunes with relative ease last month in Las Vegas. The decorated submission specialist has also tapped out Randa Markos and Hannah Cifers during her current winning run, while going the distance with Virna Jandiroba. Only Amanda Ribas has bested Dern in her MMA career, and she’s looked considerably better since then.

Rodriguez (14-1-2) dispatched Michelle Waterson in a five-round main event earlier this month, having accepted the bout on short notice and at flyweight. It may sound lame to say that this was a strawweight fight minus the weight cut but it might as well have been just that. Her only loss came against presumptive next title challenger Carla Esparza, and her 2021 got off to a brilliant start with a knockout of Amanda Ribas.

The current UFC rankings have Dern at #5 and Rodriguez at #6 so this seems like logical matchmaking. Perhaps the key question will be whether or not it’ll be three rounds or five.