Check out the one sheet art for the UFC’s debut on Paramount+, which features a pair of title fights in Las Vegas next month.
As longtime UFC play-by-play voice and top cheermeister Jon Anik would say: “35 more sleeps” until the promotion is back from its holiday break.
And when that happens, after what will be a six-week break, things will look a lot different on viewers’ screens. At UFC 324, the promotion will host its first live event in the Paramount+ broadcast era after seven years with ESPN.
UFC 324 takes place Jan. 24 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas and features a pair of title fights – though one certainly has more panache than the other.
In the headliner, Paddy Pimblett (23-3 MMA, 7-0 UFC) meets Justin Gaethje (26-5 MMA, 9-5 UFC) for the interim lightweight title. Champion Ilia Topuria is taking time off for personal reasons (very public personal reasons at this point), and former interim champ Gaethje threatened to retire if he wasn’t given a title shot next. By making an interim belt, the UFC technically satisfied the demands of the Ali Abdelaziz-managed fighter.
The fight that should be the main event is relegated to co-feature status based on the UFC’s weird rule that higher weight classes get the bigger push when multiple titles are on the line, even though in this case it’s an actual championship bout and not a made-up interim belt. But it’s hard to expect the UFC, at this point given its history, to elevate a women’s fight over a men’s.
Women’s bantamweight champion Kayla Harrison (19-1 MMA, 3-0 UFC) will welcome UFC Hall of Famer Amanda Nunes (23-5 MMA, 16-2 UFC) out of retirement after nearly three years. Nunes, a former two-division champ at 135 pounds and featherweight, is considered the greatest women’s fighter in MMA history, but two-time Olympic gold medalist and two-time PFL $1 million winner Harrison is a 2-1 betting favorite.
The poster, naturally, looks like a standard UFC one sheet – except for that new logo we haven’t seen in the past seven years. Check out the art for UFC 324 on Paramount+ below.
The UFC 324 lineup currently features:
MAIN CARD (Paramount+, 9 p.m. ET)
- Justin Gaethje vs. Paddy Pimblett – for interim lightweight title
- Champ Kayla Harrison vs. Amanda Nunes – for women’s bantamweight title
- Sean O’Malley vs. Song Yadong
- Waldo Cortes-Acosta vs. Derrick Lewis
- Arnold Allen vs. Jean Silva
PRELIMINARY CARD (Paramount+, 6 p.m. ET)
- Alexander Hernandez vs. Michael Johnson
- Modestas Bukauskas vs. Nikita Krylov
- Deiveson Figueiredo vs. Umar Nurmagomedov
- Ateba Gautier vs. Andrey Pulyaev
- Charles Johnson vs. Alex Perez
- Natalia Silva vs. Rose Namajunas
- Denzel Freeman vs. Josh Hokit
- Cameron Smotherman vs. Ricky Turcios
