Taking place in Phoenix, Arizona this weekend is the exciting heavyweight matchup between former champion Cain Velasquez and former title contender Francis Ngannou.\u00a0 This should prove to be an intriguing fight and one that the UFC will be keen to represent the organisation and the sport well.\u00a0 In the States, this will be the first UFC on ESPN event \u2013 a major step forward for the UFC as it establishes itself as a major sporting powerhouse, and where better to do it than with the worldwide leader in televised sport.\u00a0 Its been quite a while \u2013 July 2016 to be exact \u2013 since Velasquez has been inside the Octagon, where he had a first-round knockout victory over Travis Browne, there are many who would love him to get back to his best.\u00a0 A combination of injuries, badly timed events and the birth of a child have all conspired to keep Cain away from fighting until now.\u00a0\u00a0 The hard punching Ngannou meanwhile, is coming off an impressive 45 second knockout of Curtis Blaydes only last November.\u00a0 This should be the classic grappler versus striker contest \u2013 with the winner boosting the prospects of being top of the pile for a title challenge.<\/p>\n
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The co-main event of the evening features Paul Felder and James Vick in a lightweight contest, where they are both looking to come off defeats and get their respective title challenges back on track.\u00a0 Vick, who is the tallest UFC competitor at lightweight has 13 victories to his name, with 8 of them coming by stoppage, and will be keen to continue in the same vein.\u00a0 Felder meanwhile is returning to lightweight after one fight at welterweight, Felder\u2019s claim to fame is that he holds the most UFC victories (3) as a result of elbow strikes<\/p>\n
Cynthia Calvillo vs. Cortney Casey 115 lbs Strawweight
\nAlex Caceres vs. Kron Gracie 145 lbs Featherweight
\nBryan Barberena vs. Vicente Luque 170 lbs Welterweight
\nAndre Fili vs. Myles Jury 145 lbs Featherweight
\nJimmie Rivera vs. Aljamain Sterling 135 lbs Bantamweight
\nManny Bermudez vs. Benito Lopez 135 lbs Bantamweight
\nAshlee Evans-Smith vs. Andrea Lee 125 lbs Flyweight
\nScott Holtzman vs. Nik Lentz 155 lbs Lightweight
\nJodie Esquibel vs. Jessica Penne 115 lbs Strawweight
\nRenan Barao vs. Luke Sanders 135 lbs Bantamweight
\nAlexandra Albu vs. Emily Whitmire 115 lbs Strawweight<\/p>\n
Header Neil Lockhart\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Velasquez Vs Ngannou Taking place in Phoenix, Arizona this weekend is the exciting heavyweight matchup between former champion Cain Velasquez and former title contender Francis Ngannou.\u00a0 This should prove to be an intriguing fight and one that the UFC will be keen to represent the organisation and the sport well.\u00a0 In the States, this will…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[148],"tags":[63],"class_list":["post-730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ufc","tag-ufc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/boxingandufc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/boxingandufc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/boxingandufc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/boxingandufc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/boxingandufc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=730"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/boxingandufc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":736,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/boxingandufc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730\/revisions\/736"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/boxingandufc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/boxingandufc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/boxingandufc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/boxingandufc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}