It’s hard to remember a time where there was more movement, more upward mobility, and to some extent, more title turmoil in the UFC than there has been in the weeks and months ahead of UFC 317.
To recap, Ilia Topuria vacated his featherweight title to move to lightweight, where he’ll face Charles Oliveira for the 155lb belt vacated by Islam Makhachev. The Dagestani vacating was due to teammate Belal Muhammad losing his welterweight title to Jack Della Maddalena in May; Makhachev will now pursue a second title of his own later this year. Alexander Volkanovski reclaimed his featherweight title in April at UFC 314, after Topuria vacated, and just to add into the fun and chaos, Jon Jones retired, vacating his heavyweight title and allowing interim champ Tom Aspinall to become the undisputed UFC heavyweight champion.
That last bit has nothing to do with UFC 317, though the news has overshadowed the card somewhat, which caps off this year’s International Fight Week. All those other moves, however, have led to Saturday’s main event, where one of two outcomes are most likely: Ilia Topuria remains undefeated and becomes a two-division champion, or Charles Oliveira reclaims gold and becomes a multi-time lightweight champ.
The UFC’s submissions leader never technically lost his 155lb title, but was rather stripped of it in 2022 after missing weight for his fight with Justin Gaethje at UFC 274, due to a miscalibrated scale. After failing to reclaim the vacant belt against Makhachev that same year, Oliveira has fought sporadically, going 2-1 since.
That title fight overshadows a very competitive bout between flyweight champ Alexandre Pantoja and New Zealand’s Kai Kara-France, which serves as the night’s co-headliner. Kara-France, another City Kickboxing product, has been circling the title picture for a while now.
Our picks are in for UFC 317; see below for how we see the main card playing out.
| Writer / Fight | Talbott vs. Lima | Dariush vs. Moicano | Royval vs. Van | Pantoja vs. Kara-France | Topuria vs. Oliveira |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mathis Dejardins (66-38) |  |  |  |  |  |
| Eddie Law (69-41) | |  |  | | |
| Alex Behunin (69-41) | | | | | |
| Jay Anderson (66-44) |  | | | | |
| Brett Cagle (62-42) | | | | | |
| Chris Prawdzik (54-38) | | | | | |
| Patrick Danaa (6-6) | | | | | |
| Cade Morehouse (14-16) | | | |  |  |
First off, the obvious. No unanimous selections this week. Our crew wasn’t exactly divided, and there were some heavy favorites, but no landslides. Well, depending on your definition of a landslide. Only one writer responding sided with Charles Oliveira and Kai Kara-France, after all.
Brandon Royval was a relatively heavy favorite over the streaking Josh Van, while Dariush vs. Moicano and Talbott vs. Lima were a bit closer.
