Make International Fight Week great again (MIFWGA)!
That should be the mentality of Dana White and the UFC brass as they plan this year’s annual festivities, which culminate June 28 with UFC 317 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
The International Fight Week event used to always feel special, always feel like something to look forward to, always feel like the Super Bowl of mixed martial arts, and that’s because the headliner set it apart from other pay-per-views throughout the year. When was the last time we truly felt that? You’d have to go back to 2021 and UFC 264, which had the highly anticipated trilogy between Conor McGregor and Dustin Poirier in the main event.
Since then, we’ve ended up with Israel Adesanya vs. Jared Cannonier at UFC 276 in 2022, Alexander Volkanovski vs. Yair Rodriguez at UFC 290 in 2023, and Alex Pereira vs. Jiri Prochazka 2 – which was booked haphazardly on just a few weeks’ notice – at UFC 303 in 2024. All of those were fine and worthy regular pay-per-view headliners, but they didn’t feel massive in the way an International Fight Week main event should feel.
It’s time for the UFC to change that, and there is no shortage of realistic options to choose from this year. Below are the top five.
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Jon Jones vs. Tom Aspinall
Did you hear the crowd go wild at the UFC 309 pre-event press conference last November when White said Tom Aspinall should fight the winner of Jon Jones vs. Stipe Miocic? That was the moment Jones’ mind…
