UFC 335 just got heavier under the headliner. Sports Illustrated reported Friday that the promotion has added another bout it’s selling as a Fight of the Night candidate to the Charles Oliveira vs. Diego Lopes pay-per-view.
The report as it reached us doesn’t name the pairing, and I’m not going to fill in the blank with a guess. When the matchup is confirmed with names attached, it goes up here. The headline calls this one another bonus candidate, and that word matters, because this card already has one fight built for a bonus check.
That fight is Alex Pereira vs. Sergei Pavlovich, which MMA Fighting has listed for UFC 335. Oliveira, who will be in the building for a bigger reason, has already made his pick, and he isn’t hedging.
View post on X
“Pavlovich is a big guy, a strong guy, but Poatan is Poatan,” Oliveira told MMA Fighting in a video interview.
He then laid out the game plan like a guy who has watched the tape. “Sergei Pavlovich doesn’t defend against kicks, and Poatan kicks a lot. Poatan moves well. In reality, if he manages to connect and gets his timing right first, it will definitely be another great knockout.”
View post on X
Pereira needs that kind of night. His last trip to the Octagon was a loss to Ciryl Gane at UFC White House, where Gane defended the interim heavyweight title (yes, an interim belt, the sport’s favorite participation trophy). Gane rocked Pereira with a clean shot, then landed a few illegal blows to the back of the head in the finishing flurry. Pereira has been loud about those shots changing the outcome, and he’s put the blame on referee Herb Dean for letting them slide without a penalty. Gane has since been promoted to undisputed champion with Tom Aspinall sidelined after multiple eye surgeries, which leaves Pereira looking for a clean result he can’t argue with.
Oliveira, meanwhile, heads into the main event with a win over Max Holloway that Holloway still refuses to accept, at least on cardboard. Holloway signed one of his Topps trading cards with the line “Fight didn’t count, still BMF,” a bit Championship Rounds passed around on X earlier this week. Oliveira’s answer to that is his name at the top of a pay-per-view poster.
Lopes doesn’t need any extra storyline. Sharing a cage with Oliveira is plenty.
View post on X
My take: this is the right way to build a card. You’ve got Oliveira in the main event, Pereira throwing kicks at a heavyweight who apparently doesn’t check them, and now a third fight the UFC is openly pitching as a bonus grab. Matchmakers who stack violence on top of violence get my vote every time. The only thing missing is the name of the new fight, and once the UFC makes it official, it’ll be worth knowing which two guys signed up to compete with Pereira and Pavlovich for that $50,000 check.
