Seeking to close out the ESPN era and the luminary pay-per-view model on a monumentally high note, UFC 323 sees the cream of the crop from both the flyweight and bantamweight classes clash. In the UFC 323 main event, 135-lb king Merab Dvalishvili endeavors to notch the fourth defense of his strap when he faces familiar foe in Russia’s Petr Yan. Before that, however, reigning 125-lb incumbent Alexandre Pantoja meets swiftly surging young contender Joshua Van.
UFC 323 Main Event
Gaining the belt last year at UFC 306, Dvalishvili has embarked on a warpath of domination up the promotion’s pound-for-pound rankings. Making his debut as champion at UFC 311 back in January, “The Machine” has collected stellar wins over top bantamweight names like Umar Nurmagomedov, Sean O’Malley and Cory Sandhagen ahead of UFC 323.
At UFC on ESPN+ 79 in 2023, Yan suffered one of the most disappointing defeats of his career when he lost a convincing match against Dvalishvili. After a one-sided five round dismantling, he fell to the Georgian on the scorecards after absorbing over 200 strikes and getting taken down 11 times. In the time since their first encounter, though, “No Mercy” has seemingly reinvented himself, securing three victories in a row over Song Yadong, Deiveson Figueiredo and Marcus McGhee.
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UFC 323 Co-Main Event
Holding claim to four consecutive belt retentions, Pantoja has risen to become the most dominant flyweight title-holder in recent memory. Appearing to level up more and more each time he steps into the Octagon, “The Cannibal” has bested immaculate challengers in the forms of Brandon Royval, Steve Erceg, Kai Asakura and, most recently, Kai Kara-France.
With his endless gas tank and overwhelming volume striking, Van stands as a truly entertaining fan-favorite competitor who has taken his weight class by storm over the past year. Coming off a career-defining triumph over the aforementioned Royval, “The Fearless” takes aim at the grandest prize in all of mixed martial arts in the UFC 323 co-main event: a UFC championship.
Here’s how to watch UFC 323
Online Streaming: You can catch the entire card on ESPN+, but you will need to subscribe in order to do so. Right now, the company is offering a monthly or yearly subscription of $11.99 and $119.99 respectively. For those who want to get more bang out of their buck, there is also the monthly Disney Bundle Deal, which offers ESPN+, Hulu, and Disney+ for $16.99 with included commercials, or $26.99 for no commercials at all.
Start Time and Date: The early preliminaries will begin at 6pm ET, followed by the preliminaries at 8pm ET, followed by the main card at 10pm ET on December 6th.
Bout Order for UFC 323
Main Card:
(Bantamweight) Merab Dvalishvili vs. Petr Yan
(Flyweight) Alexandre Pantoja (c) vs. Joshua Van
(Flyweight) Brandon Moreno vs. Tatsuro Taira
(Bantamweight) Henry Cejudo vs. Payton Talbott
(Light Heavyweight) Jan Blachowicz vs. Bogdan Guskov
Preliminaries:
(Lightweight) Grant Dawson vs. Manuel Torres
(Lightweight) Terrance McKinney vs. Chris Duncan
(Women’s Flyweight) Maycee Barber vs. Karine Silva
(Lightweight) Nazim Sadykhov vs. Farès Ziam
Early Preliminaries:
(Middleweight) Marvin Vettori vs. Brunno Ferreira
(Lightweight) Edson Barboza vs. Jalin Turner
(Light Heavyweight) Iwo Baraniewski vs. İbo Aslan
(Middleweight) Mansur Abdul-Malik vs. Antonio Trócoli
(Featherweight) Muhammad Naimov vs. Mairon Santos
