Yair Rodriguez has a fight again, at least on paper.
“🚨 BREAKING: Yair Rodriguez will fight Steve Garvia at UFC 335 on December 12,” Championship Rounds wrote on X Tuesday, crediting @BigMarcel24 for the news. That’s Garcia, typo and all. Heavy.com also reported that Rodriguez’s return is set for UFC 335 in Las Vegas.
It took about six minutes for the doubt to arrive. Jed Meshew quoted the report and wrote on X, “Well sure, you SAY that. But will he, really?” Over on r/MMA, the thread on the matchup went up under the title “Who is yair paying to keep getting fights.” That’s a fan joke and nothing more. Nobody in the sources is claiming anything shady about how the bout came together.
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The skepticism has some history behind it. Rodriguez pulled out of a UFC 228 fight with Zabit Magomedsharipov in 2018, citing injury. Earlier that same year he was briefly released after allegedly turning down two fights, then patched things up with the promotion within three weeks. And his last fight came on April 12, 2025. If he walks out on December 12, that’s a layoff of 20 months.
When Rodriguez does compete, people tend to remember it. Eight years ago Tuesday, he was behind on the scorecards against The Korean Zombie and knocked him out at the Round 5 buzzer, a point Dovy Simuṃ revisited on X the same morning this booking dropped. Rodriguez is a former interim featherweight champion and sits at No. 6 in the Knockout Daily featherweight rankings with a 20-5 record. He fights out of Valle Flow Striking and has been with the UFC since winning The Ultimate Fighter: Latin America in 2014.
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For Garcia, the math is simple. A top-six former title holder coming off a long layoff is a good fight to get. Beating Rodriguez would be a big step up for him, and that kind of booking matters to anybody trying to climb at 145.
The matchup lands on what Bloody Elbow called a stacked UFC 335 card, headlined by Charles Oliveira. That’s a good slot for a guy who’s been gone this long, and the UFC clearly expects Rodriguez to show up and be worth watching.
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So Meshew’s question is the one that matters. The fight is reportedly booked for December 12 in Las Vegas, and Rodriguez answers it by making weight.
