Brazil’s ‘Cowboy’ Alex Oliveira will head to Vegas to take on Max ‘Pain’ Griffin at UFC 248.
An absolute banger is lined up for March’s UFC 248. Welterweights Max Griffin and Alex Oliveira are set to face-off at the PPV event, per an initial report by MMA Junkie. Cageside Press verified the booking Tuesday with a source close to the situation.
The promotion’s third PPV of the year is set to take place March 7, 2020 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Griffin (15-7), with the UFC since 2016, has been in some wildly entertaining scraps over the years. Those include a Fight of the Night against Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos, a dismantling of Mike Perry, and a closely contested fight against Thiago Alves at UFC Fortaleza last year. Heading into the bout against another Brazilian in ‘Cowboy’ Oliveira, Griffin is 1-1 in his past two, with a win over Zelim Imadaev and most recently a loss to Alex Morono at UFC Tampa.
Oliveira (19–8–1, 2NC) had been expected to face Mickey Gall at UFC Norfolk. However, shortly after that fight was announced, social media posts referring to it were pulled by the UFC — and the fight itself was pulled from the card altogether. Now, Oliveira heads to Vegas against Griffin in the hopes of snapping a three-fight losing streak. In his last three trips to the octagon, Oliveira has suffered defeats to Gunnar Nelson, Mike Perry, and Nicolas Darby. Prior to that, however, he’d won four out of five.
UFC 248 does not currently have a main event announced, but Joanna Jedrzejczyk vs. Weili Zhang for the women’s strawweight title is scheduled for the card.
With the addition of Griffin vs. Oliveira the event now breaks down as follows:
Zhang Weili vs. Joanna Jedrzejczyk – for the UFC women’s strawweight title
Robert Whittaker vs. Jared Cannonier
Calvin Kattar vs. Jeremy Stephens
Danaa Batgerel vs. Guido Cannetti
Polyana Viana vs. Emily Whitmire
Li Jingliang vs. Neil Magny
Beneil Dariush vs. Drakkar Klose
Sean O’Malley vs. Jose Quinonez
Max Griffin vs. Alex Oliveira
