A pair of top-five UFC heavyweights will fight in June in a potential number one contender fight.
Brett Okamoto of ESPN was the first to report the news that No. 4 ranked heavyweight Ciryl Gane with fight No. 5 Alexander Volkov. According to the report, both fighters have agreed to the fight, but contracts have not yet been signed.
While 2020 didn’t start great for Volkov (33-8), he is now on a two-fight win streak. “Drago” fought in his third main event against Curtis Blaydes last June. He would lose a unanimous decision that night. The Russian would bounce back four months later by defeating Walt Harris via TKO on ‘Fight Island.’ Earlier this year, in February, he would defeat Alistair Overeem in his fourth main event via TKO, giving “The Reem” his walking papers in the process.
Gane (8-0) is coming off his first main event against Jairzinho Rozenstruik, in which he defeated “Bigi Boy” via unanimous decision. In his only appearance of 2020, he defeated former heavyweight champion Junior Dos Santos at UFC 256, handing him his walking papers as well.
A win for either fighter this June will be huge. For Volkov, it would potentially set him up for a rematch with Derrick Lewis. For Gane, it could set him up with a fight against Lewis as well or even a fight against Blaydes. And that’s if Lewis doesn’t end up fighting Francis Ngannou, which would leave either Gane or Volkov circling a title shot.
With the latest addition, the UFC’s June 26 fight card now looks like this:
- Ciryl Gane vs. Alexander Volkov
- Maxim Grishin vs. Ovince Saint Preux
- Anthony Hernandez vs. Punahele Soriano
- Tim Elliott vs. Su Mudaerji
- Michel Prazeres vs. Shavkat Rakhmonov
- Justin Jaynes vs. Charles Rosa
