MMA

9:28 AM ET A capacity crowd will be present at UFC 264 on July 10 in Las Vegas, UFC president Dana White announced on Wednesday. The pay-per-view card will be held at T-Mobile Arena and headlined by the trilogy fight between Conor McGregor and Dustin Poirier. “I signed bout agreement this morning,” McGregor told ESPN’s

10:43 AM ET UFC light heavyweight champion Jan Blachowicz will seek his second title defense against Glover Teixeira in September, UFC president Dana White told ESPN. The 205-pound title fight will take place on a UFC 266 pay-per-view event on Sept. 4. UFC has not announced an official venue for the event. Blachowicz (28-8) is

7:47 AM ET Jeff Wagenheim Seven championship bouts, with three of those fights for a belt occurring on the same night. Seven former champions trying to climb back toward the top. Old legends hanging on. New faces emerging. Between now and the end of June, there are a lot of must-see moments on the MMA

2:49 PM ET The UFC has added a lightweight matchup between Diego Ferreira and Gregor Gillespie to an event on May 8, according to multiple sources. The 155-pound bout will take place at UFC Fight Night, expected to take place in Las Vegas. The card is headlined by a bantamweight fight between T.J. Dillashaw and

8:12 AM ET UFC 261 on April 24 will be the first time Zhang Weili enters the Octagon since a capacity crowd at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas roared in appreciation of her first title defense on March 7, 2020. It will also mark the first time a packed house will be on hand

10:04 AM ET One Championship has lost a big American name off a card focused on the United States audience. Sage Northcutt is out of his scheduled bout with legend Shinya Aoki due to lingering effects from COVID-19, sources told ESPN on Monday. Northcutt, a popular former UFC fighter, was scheduled to fight Aoki at

12:06 PM ET Conor McGregor and Dustin Poirier built up a lot of good will prior to their non-title fight at UFC 257 in January, but that good will appears to be gone. The two lightweights lashed out at each other on social media on Sunday, less than three months ahead of their scheduled trilogy

7:32 AM ET Jorge Masvidal doesn’t view his UFC 261 main event as his last shot at UFC gold, but only because he won’t allow himself to accept the possibility he’ll lose to champion Kamaru Usman. “I feel like every fight, I have to win,” Masvidal told ESPN. “But, no, I don’t feel like [this

6:39 PM ET UFC middleweight Marvin Vettori was as dominant as ever with a unanimous decision victory over Kevin Holland in Saturday’s Fight Night main event in Las Vegas. The Italian middleweight had no problem taking Holland to the ground and maintaining control throughout the fight. Mackenzie Dern also had a standout performance on Saturday,

6:25 PM ET Fans tuning in Saturday to ABC were not watching a UFC replay, though they might as well have been. Kevin Holland fought for the second time in the last three weeks — and the result was almost exactly the same. Marvin Vettori took Holland down over and over en route to a

10:17 PM ET UFC bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling will undergo neck surgery on Thursday in Los Angeles to address a medical issue he has dealt with for nearly 10 years. Sterling (20-3) won the UFC’s 135-pound bantamweight championship on March 6, when former champion Petr Yan was disqualified in the fourth round of their title

2:29 PM ET Rory MacDonald had to wait a full year to make his PFL debut — and now he will do so against a late-notice opponent. MacDonald (21-6-1), who signed with PFL in late 2019 but didn’t compete in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, will face Curtis Millender (18-6) at PFL’s regular-season event

2:39 PM ET In a brief interview this week, former UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones expressed optimism he will challenge Francis Ngannou for the UFC’s heavyweight title at some point, although he doesn’t know exactly when. Jones (26-1), who is the No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter on the planet according to ESPN, vacated his 205-pound

10:16 AM ET Brett Okamoto Close ESPN Staff Writer MMA columnist for ESPN.com Analyst for “MMA Live” Covered MMA for Las Vegas Sun Marc Raimondi UFC middleweight Kevin Holland agrees — he blew it three weeks ago in Las Vegas. It was his first appearance in a UFC main event, and he lost nearly every

12:42 AM ET Jeff Wagenheim It took Ryan Bader nearly a decade to get payback, but when it finally came on Friday night, it came in a big, brutal way. Bader, the reigning Bellator heavyweight champion and former light heavyweight champ, put a ferocious beating on former UFC light heavyweight champ Lyoto Machida on his

7:54 AM ET LAS VEGAS — Travis Lutter used to hate it when UFC middleweight Kevin Holland talked during competition. Lutter, who’s based in Fort Worth, Texas, and has been Holland’s head MMA coach for more than a decade, never had a problem with anything Holland said specifically — he just doesn’t believe an athlete

8:30 AM ET For UFC middleweight Marvin Vettori, the past year has been equal parts rewarding and frustrating. Vettori (16-3-1) will face Kevin Holland (21-6) in the main event of UFC Fight Night on Saturday afternoon — just the second UFC event to air on ABC (3 p.m. ET, prelims at noon on ESPN, early

4:08 PM ET Jeff Wagenheim PFL welterweight David Michaud, a finalist in the 2019 season who was scheduled for the main event of the promotion’s season-opening event on April 23, announced his retirement from fighting in a social media post on Thursday, citing a heart condition. “So this is gonna be a tough post,” Michaud,