Dana White is ready to try UFC 249 again. The first iteration of UFC’s return was shot down by some very powerful people that sign a lot of big checks for the UFC. May 9 is the new date inside of an empty Jacksonville, FL arena with two title fights and a strong card featuring 12 fights in total.
The night will be headlined by the original main event of Justin Gaethje and Tony Ferguson. Based on the odds from DraftKings Sportsbook, Ferguson is a -177 favorite to win the interim UFC Lightweight Championship, which is actually owned by Khabib Nurmagomedov. The fight everybody wanted to see was Khabib vs. Ferguson, but the coronavirus quarantine has kept a lot of fighters on the sidelines, including the champ.
This is a big fight for Gaethje. His two career losses have been to Eddie Alvarez and Dustin Poirier. He bounced back from that Poirier loss to beat James Vick, Edson Barboza, and Donald Cerrone, each in the first round, but he needs a signature win. Cerrone is just a fan favorite at this point. His best days are behind him.
Ferguson is very likely to win, as the odds suggest, setting up a late-summer fight to re-unify the Lightweight Championship yet again with Khabib a clear favorite in that scrap.
There are two title fights on the UFC 249 card. Henry Cejudo will attempt to defend his UFC Bantamweight Championship against Dominick Cruz. This is a really interesting fight. Cejudo, mostly known as a flyweight, has decided to focus on the bantamweight division moving forward. He won the vacant title over Marlon Moraes back in June.
Cruz hasn’t fought since 2016. The 35-year-old was a superstar for a long time and a longtime bantamweight champion, but a plethora of injuries stopped his career at UFC 207. He returns with an immediate shot at the strap, but he has a ton of cage rust to shake off.
How much cage rust? He’s +188 per the odds at DraftKings. Given that this is only the second bantamweight fight for Cejudo, his -225 price would seem a little bit high, but that speaks to the concerns about Cruz coming off of such a long layoff.
The title fights should be worth the price of admission from your couch during the pay-per-view, but we should also have some heavyweight fireworks. Francis Ngannou and Jairzinho Rozenstruik meet in a highly-anticipated brawl and we’ll also see another data point for Greg Hardy in his matchup against Yorgan de Castro.
Heavyweight fights can end with one big shot, so gravitating towards the underdog isn’t a bad idea. Rozenstruik is +225 and de Castro is +165. This is a seminal moment for Rozenstruik. He’s beaten over-40 heavyweights in Andrei Arlovski and Alistair Overeem, but now he gets a younger, athletic, power striker in Ngannou. A lot of the questions we have about Rozenstruik will be answered here.
An eventual title shot could be on the line here as well. Stipe Miocic has to finish out the trilogy with Daniel Cormier first, but a rematch with Ngannou or a new fight with Rozenstruik could be on the horizon. That is, of course, if Miocic doesn’t go up against Jon “Bones” Jones in a UFC superfight.
There is a reason that both Rozenstruik and de Castro are such big underdogs, but heavyweight fights can be over in the blink of an eye. Because Ngannou is a more polished product than Hardy, de Castro is probably the better bet of the two, but don’t be surprised if Rozenstruik’s stock rises dramatically after UFC 249.
In other action, aforementioned fan favorite Donald Cerrone will be back at it against Anthony Pettis. Cerrone is basically just carrying water for other fighters at this point. He’s being a company man while soaking up the love from the fans. To borrow a WWE concept, he put Justin Gaethje over in their fight back in September and he did the same for Conor McGregor in his return in January. That fight was over in 40 seconds.
Cerrone has nothing left to prove and will always have a special place in the hearts of fight fans. This is a win that Pettis desperately needs in order to maintain his relevance in the division and really in the sport as a whole. Pettis at -136 might be the best bet on the board.
UFC 249 will start on ESPN+, move to ESPN, and then move to pay-per-view on Saturday May 9.