Beyond St-Pierre vs. Nate Diaz, the UFC 227 fight board is stacked for Staples Center
Although it is far from final, the UFC’s planned UFC 227 Aug. 4 card at Staples Center is emerging as easily the richest of the year.
In addition to the signed and confirmed bantamweight title rematch between Southland-based champion T.J. Dillashaw and his bitter rival Cody Garbrandt of Sacramento, the UFC is pursuing a co-main lightweight event between former longtime welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre and popular Nate Diaz.
And former middleweight champion Luke Rockhold is in line to fight former light-heavyweight title challenger Alexander Gustafsson, as UFC President Dana White revealed in his company’s UFC Unfiltered podcast Monday.
Beyond that, White told the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday that he has struck a deal for a meeting of two top-15 featherweights between Mexico’s Yair Rodriguez (11-2) and Russia’s Zabit Magomedsharipov (15-1).
Rodriguez is fighting for the first time since a 2017 loss to Frankie Edgar, and Magomedsharipov is 3-0 in the UFC with either a performance-of-the-night or fight-of-the-night bonus gained in each bout.
The UFC has a board posted inside its offices with the projected deep card and also is nearing finalizing a featherweight bout between Palm Springs’ Cub Swanson (25-8) and No. 9-rated Renato Moicano (12-1) of Brazil that would be on the pay-per-view portion of the card.
Moicano and Swanson were defeated by Los Angeles’ July 7 title challenger Brian Ortega last year, but their grit makes for a fan-friendly showdown.
On that proposed UFC 227 fight board, preliminary fights include: No. 7 middleweight Derek Brunson vs. No. 13 Antonio Carlos Jr.; No. 10 bantamweight Pedro Munhoz vs. Alejandro Perez; woman’s flyweight Polyana Viana vs. JJ Aldrich, Oroville, Calif.; bantamweight Benito Lopez (9-0) vs. Ricky Simon; bantamweight Ricardo Ramos vs. South Korea’s Kyung Ho Kang; Van Nuys’ straw-weight Danielle Taylor vs. China’s Weili Zhang; and Zhang’s countryman Wuliji Buren vs. featherweight Bharat Khandare of India.
Lightweight Beneil Dariush is also slated to be on the card, but he doesn’t have an opponent yet.
Follow Lance Pugmire on Twitter @latimespugmire
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