UFC 281 Main Event Preview
UFC 281 is set to take place on the 12th of November at Madison Square Garden in New York, and looms as one not to miss. The Main Card has 13 fights lined up, with a middleweight clash between Israel Adesanya and Alex Pereira set to headline the event. With just a little over a month to go until the event, anticipation for the card and in particular the headline fight is already high, and bookmaker odds are expecting that fight to be a close one – take a look at this TexBet review for one example of a betting site offering MMA odds. Without further ado, let’s take a look at what you can expect from UFC 281, and hone in particularly on the headline fight.
Who is going to fight at UFC 281?
As mentioned, there are 13 events scheduled on the Main Card for UFC 281. Each of those fights is listed below.
- Israel Adesanya vs Alex Pereira (Middleweight)
- Carla Esparza vs Zhang Weili (Women’s Strawweight)
- Dustin Poirier vs Michael Chandler (Lightweight)
- Dan Hooker vs Claudio Puelles (Lightweight)
- Brad Riddell vs Renato Moicano (Lightweight)
- Andre Petroski vs Wellington Turman (Middleweight)
- Molly McCann vs Erin Blanchfield (Women’s Flyweight)
- Frankie Edgar vs Chris Gutiérrez (Bantamweight)
- Dominick Reyes vs Ryan Spann (Light Heavyweight)
- Karolina Kowalkiewicz vs Silvana Gómez Juárez (Women’s Strawweight)
- Michael Trizano vs Choi Seung-woo (Featherweight)
- Matt Frevola vs Ottman Azaitar (Lightweight)
- Carlos Ulberg vs Nicolae Negumereanu (Light Heavyweight)
UFC 281 Preview
The biggest fight of UFC 281 will, of course, be the battle between middleweight champion Israel Adesanya and his challenger Alex Pereira. Adesanya, a Nigerian-New Zealander standing at 193cm and weighing in at 84kg, will be hoping to earn his seventh successful title defence, but while the opening betting odds suggested he was very likely to do just that, the closer the fight has got the more support has come for his challenger.
And that’s no great surprise given how good the form that challenger displayed to get into this fight was. Pereira, a 35-year-old hailing from Brazil, had a fantastic result in July, a stunning knockout victory over Sean Strickland at UFC 276, which came after he had previously beaten Bruno Silva and Andreas Michailidis.
Interestingly, these two have met on both occasions, and each time it was this fight’s challenger who got the chocolates. In 2016, Pereira won a close fight on a decision, but their rematch the following year was a lot more clear cut, with the Brazilian knocking out Adesanya for his second win in as many fights against him.
Adesanya, however, is a more accomplished fighter five years later and deserves to be seen as the likely winner of this fight, even in spite of the groundswell of support appearing behind his opponent. The middleweight champ is doing plenty to increase the anticipation for the fight, too, having recently released his own trailer for the event – as if MMA fans needed any more reason to tune in.
What else can I expect from UFC 281?
Of course, Adesanya vs Pereira will be the fight that most want to tune into, but there is plenty of other action to get excited about too. Dustin Poirier’s matchup with Michael Chandler, for example, will no doubt generate plenty of interest in the MMA community, with the 36-year-old Chandler looking to take down the former interim lightweight champion.
Elsewhere, on the women’s side of things, Carla Esparza’s matchup with Zhang Weili will also be an intriguing battle. Esparza, of course, is the current Women’s Strawweight Champion, which she has been on two occasions, but she’s not the only one in this fight to have held that title. Weili became the Strawweight Champion for the first and, to date, only time in August of 2019 when she defeated Jéssica Andrade, so this is a matchup between two of the biggest names in this weight division in the world and should attract a lot of interest as a result.
UFC 281 will kick off at Madison Square Garden on the 12th of November at 7.00pm ET, which correlates to 2.00pm the next day on the east coast of Australia. And with Israel Adesanya and Alex Pereira set to go head to head for the title of middleweight champion, this is one not to be missed.
