Charles Oliveira and Diego Lopes will headline UFC 335 in Las Vegas, MMA Mania reported Sunday, with Alex Pereira and Sergei Pavlovich sitting right underneath them in a heavyweight co-main that carries real stakes.
The main event pairing first surfaced on r/MMA in the early hours of Sunday, and the co-main showed up four minutes later. Somebody in the matchmaking office had a productive Saturday night.
A Heavyweight Fight With a Title Shot Hanging Over It
MMA Sucka described Pereira vs. Pavlovich as a potential heavyweight title eliminator. Keep an eye on the word potential. None of the reporting I’ve seen says the UFC has promised the winner the next crack at the belt, so treat it as the expected path rather than a signed guarantee. Boxingnews.com also confirmed the fight in the co-main slot.
The odds came fast. A thread on r/MMA collected the opening lines early Sunday, and LowKickMMA reported that Pavlovich opened as the favorite over Pereira. The reports in front of me don’t include the actual numbers, so I won’t pretend to know whether this is a coin flip with a lean or a real gap. The direction is the story anyway. Oddsmakers looked at Alex Pereira, a guy who gets put in co-main events because people pay to watch him, and decided the other man is more likely to have his hand raised.
That’s a heavyweight fight I’d stay in my seat for. Nobody books these two expecting the judges to matter.
Strickland Answers the Imavov Question
The other name floating around this card belongs to someone who won’t be on it. Sean Strickland said the reason he isn’t fighting Imavov at UFC 335 is money, according to a post that made the rounds on r/MMA Sunday morning. No dollar figures were attached in the reporting, and there’s no word from the UFC side about what was offered.
Whatever you think of Strickland, he gave a straight answer to a straight question. Most fighters turn a pay dispute into a paragraph about “timing” and “the right opportunity.” He just said it was the money. That leaves Imavov without the Strickland fight at 335, and nothing in the reports says who, if anyone, gets the call in his place.
The Top of the Card
Oliveira vs. Lopes is the kind of main event that doesn’t need a promo package to sell it. The reporting so far covers the booking and the venue city and not much else, so expect the rest of the card and the fight week details to fill in over the coming days.
My take: the books can have Pavlovich. I’ll take the plus money on Pereira every time somebody dares me to, and the Strickland situation is a cleaner story than most pay disputes because he skipped the press-release language and told people what happened.
