Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC
It’s a mantra for show business and, this weekend anyway, combat sports:
The (slightly adjusted) show must go on.
The UFC will go ahead with a 13-bout card Saturday night in suburban Los Angeles barely 24 hours after its planned-for main event was scuttled by a back injury to Arman Tsarukyan, the No. 1 challenger to lightweight champion Islam Makhachev.
Into the breach stepped 10th-ranked contender Renato Moicano, who’d been set to square off with Beneil Dariush elsewhere on the main card. The promotion filled that vacant slot with a heavyweight bout between top-10 contenders Jailton Almeida and Serghei Spivac.
Makhachev, 33, will aim for a fourth successful defense of a title he won with a submission of Charles Oliveira at UFC 280. It’s a first bite at the championship-level apple for Moicano, 35, who’s won four straight fights and is 12-5 since debuting in the octagon in late 2014.
The co-main is a title bout at bantamweight, where champion Merab Dvalishvili defends for the first time against second-ranked Umar Nurmagomedov. Dvalishvili won the belt from Sean O’Malley at UFC 306 last September and Nurmagomedov is 6-0 with the company and 18-0 as a professional since debuting in 2016.
The B/R combat team is in position for Saturday’s show at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood to deliver a real-time list of definitive winners and losers. Take a look at what we come up with and drop a thought or two of your own in the app comments.
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