The UFC is back after a week off and will be heading to Jacksonville, FL for UFC 273, headlined by Alexander Volkanovski vs. Chan Sung Jung (AKA The Korean Zombie) for the featherweight belt. After Max Holloway was forced out of this match due to injury, Jung got the call to challenge Volkanovski for the title.
This card also has another championship fight as Petr Yan and Aljamain Sterling will unify the bantamweight championship in a rematch on Saturday night.
Along with the two championship fights, we have the return of Khamzat Chimaev as he faces his biggest test yet and will be taking on the No. 2 ranked contender in the welterweight division, Gilbert Burns.
This card has a lot of high-level fighters and intriguing prospects to watch but the fighter to have eyes on resides in the prelims.
Ian Garry is the fighter to watch as he takes on Darian Weeks in the featured prelim.
Ian Garry is on track to be the next star out of Ireland
Garry has high expectations of himself and rightfully so. The talented 24-year-old out of Dublin, Ireland is 8-0 in his professional career and is coming off his stunning UFC debut at UFC 268. Garry knocked Jordan Williams out cold at the end of the first round with a beautiful counter right.
Even though Garry had a successful debut, it didn’t start great. Williams was able to land clean shots on Garry at the beginning of the round. When Williams would start his combinations, he would extend them with one or two extra strikes. The reason for this is that Garry moves back with his hands down and looks for that counter shot on his opponent. Having your hands down while evading strikes is dangerous, but it becomes very lethal when you land the counter shot and that is what Garry does best.
He slipped off to his right and landed the counter right on Williams to put him out cold right before the first round ended.
Garry has only been a professional since 2019 but he has already had some impressive accomplishments into his young career. He was the Cage Warriors world champion before heading to the UFC and held multiple youth boxing titles.
Six of his eight wins have been by finish; five by KO/TKO and one by submission. Garry always looks for the spectacular finish but he has shown that he can go the distance if needed too.
Garry has mentioned that he hopes to follow in the footsteps of Conor McGregor and put Ireland back on the map. After his win at UFC 268, he said in his Octagon interview, “A wise Irishman once said before me, we are not here to take part, we are here to take over and this is the takeover part two.”
At UFC 273 he will look to top his debut and deliver another spectacular performance but that will be no easy task as he takes on Weeks. Even though he is coming off a decision loss, Weeks is 5-1 and has a 100 percent finish rate.
If Garry can make it nine consecutive wins after Saturday, the UFC might have found the next star out of Dublin, Ireland.
