After near endless speculation, the UFC 300 main event has been set.
For months, media speculation had linked some of the biggest name in the history of mixed martial arts to the event — Conor McGregor, Brock Lesnar, Ronda Rousey and Georges St-Pierre included. But on Saturday night, UFC boss Dana White revealed that the headliner for the April 13 card will be a light heavyweight title bout between current champion Alex Pereira, and one of the men he succeeded at the top of the division, Jamahal Hill.
BREAKING!!!
The #UFC300 main event will be Pereira vs Hill April 13th from Las Vegas pic.twitter.com/YrfTxLWsZ2
— danawhite (@danawhite) February 18, 2024
“These two guys are it,” White told the media, including The Mac Life, in Anaheim on Saturday night. “I’m sure you saw the [announcement] video, I walked through who they both are, what they’ve both done. Both guys are hungry. They both want it. No way that fight sucks.”
“[Alex Pereira]… how fast he did it, in such a short amount of time, two different weight classes,” White said. “A guy coming from basically one style and being able to accomplish what he’s accomplished here, obviously it was impressive when [Izzy] did it and now this guy did it even faster and in two different weight classes.”
The headline slot adds to Pereira’s remarkable run in his brief UFC career. Since entering the UFC in November 2021, Pereira has won world titles in two separate weight divisions and in his past five bouts he has faced current or former world champions in Jiri Prochazka, Jan Blachowicz, Israel Adesanya and Sean Strickland.
As for Hill, he will fight for the first time since a dominant title win against then-champ Glover Teixeira — a key figure in Pereira’s camp — after which he sustained a serious achilles injury, forcing an extended spell on the sidelines.
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