We finally have the return of Jorge ‘Gamebred’ Masvidal on tap nearly 11 months out from his defeat to Colby Covington at UFC 272, as he’s expected to face fellow former title challenger Gilbert Burns at UFC 287.
UFC 287 is to go down on April 8, 2023, live from a to-be-determined venue in Miami, Florida.
Jorge Masvidal has dealt with a layoff as of late, most likely due to his arrest for attacking Covington in a public area about a week after their fight. That said, he wasn’t exactly doing the best prior to his absence, losing his last three-straight to former champion Kamaru Usman in back-to-back title fights, and then Covington.
Before that however, Masvidal was on perhaps the hottest three-fight win streak we’d ever seen out of any fighter.
It began with him returning from another long layoff, this one 16 months, when he faced Darren Till at UFC FN 147. Masvidal was a massive underdog on a two-fight losing skid going into this fight, but the result would shock everyone as he brutally KO’d Till in round two, in front of Till’s home crowd no less.
Masvidal followed this up by becoming the first man to ever defeat Ben Askren, a former multi-time Bellator & ONE welterweight champion, before stopping Nate Diaz in his third and final bout of 2019.
Till was 17-1-1 going into their fight, coming off his title shot to then champion Tyron Woodley; Askren was 19-0, and he became just the second man to ever finish Nate Diaz via some form of knockout, though of course it was a doctor stoppage.
That brings us to his three-fight skid, and to where he really needs a win at UFC 287 to stay relevant in his division.
Gilbert Burns on the other hand has gone 2-2 over his last four following victory over former champion Tyron Woodley himself. That streak begins with a defeat to Kamaru Usman in his title shot, before he’d defeat former title challenger in Stephen Thompson via unanimous decision.
Burns would then lose a unanimous decision to Khamzat Chimaev, a fight that could have went either way, becoming the first man to ever take the Chechen the distance, and he most recently submitted the winningest fighter in UFC welterweight history Neil Magny with an arm-triangle choke in round one this past weekend at UFC 283.
This is going to be a good one! A fight many of us have wanted for some time now.
Does Jorge Masvidal get back to his winning ways, or does Gilbert Burns keep his top five spot in the rankings?
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