Shavkat Rakhmonov will not be fighting for gold at UFC 310. He will, however, still be fighting.
UFC CEO and President Dana White announced the updated one-two punch for the December Pay-Per-View on Friday, with Rakhmonov now paired up with Ian Machado Garry. The fight is being billed as a number one contender’s fight, with no interim title on the line. A setback for Rakhmonov, one of the 170lb division’s hottest stars at the moment.
Shavkat Rakhmonov was originally slated to face welterweight champ Belal Muhammad in the card’s main event. Muhammad, however, recently withdrew from the card due to surgery, and is expected back sometime next year.
Now headlining UFC 310, set for the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada on December 7, 2024 is the previously announced flyweight title fight between champ Alexandre Pantoja and promotional newcomer Kai Asakura. Japan’s Asakura, a RIZIN star who held bantamweight gold for that promotion, is one of the rare fighters to earn an immediate title shot in his promotional debut – something that has all but never happened in the modern era (Gilbert Melendez, who came in as part of the Strikeforce merger with the UFC, is one name that comes to mind).
Garry, who had been set to headline UFC Tampa a week later, is being replaced on that card by Colby Covington.
UFC 310 now features the following reported match-ups:
- Alexandre Pantoja (c) vs. Kai Asakura – for the UFC flyweight championship
- Shavkat Rakhmonov vs. Ian Machado Garry – welterweight number one contender’s match
- Ciryl Gane vs. Alexander Volkov
- Vicente Luque vs. Nick Diaz
- Movsar Evloev vs. Aljamain Sterling
- Randy Brown vs. Bryan Battle
- Tallison Teixeira vs. Łukasz Brzeski
- Cody Durden vs. Joshua Van
- Clay Guida vs. Chase Hooper
- Michael Chiesa vs. Max Griffin
- Anthony Smith vs. Dominick Reyes
- Rizvan Kuniev vs. Martin Buday
- Nate Landwehr vs. Choi Doo-ho
