A light-heavyweight title fight between Jon Jones and Glover Teixeira is now official for UFC 169 on February 1st (aka Superbowl weekend) next year in Newark, New Jersey.
Jones will be looking for his seventh successful title defense in a row at 205lbs afer his toughest fight to date against Alexander Gutafsson last month at UFC 165.
In Teixeira he faces a man who’s remained undefeated in his last 20 fights and racked up four stoppage victories in five Octagon outings to date, making him another formidable test for the champion.
Meanwhile, a previously announced heavyweight clash between Alistair Overeem and Frank Mir has been moved back from UFC 167 in November to UFC 169 instead.
This seems like a sensible decision as both Overeem and Mir after coming off recent KO and TKO losses respectively and so will surely benefit from having extra time to recover and prepare properly for their upcoming encounter.
It’s perhaps even more important that the two men are 100% fit and ready in this particular instance as this has been billed as a ‘loser leaves town’ bout due to the fact that both of these MMA veterans are coming off significant losing streaks in the UFC.
No other fights have so far been established for UFC 169 at this stage, but these two bouts alone will make this a must-see event.
It should be noted that this will be the first time that the UFC have shifted their traditional ‘Superbowl Weekend’ card away from Las Vegas. The reason being that FOX is hosting the Superbowl in New Jersey and so the UFC will join them to help with the promotional push and make it a monster weekend for the network.
Having said that, while nothing’s confirmed at this stage it’s likely that UFC 169 will still air on pay-per-view, with the prelims airing on FOX Sports 1.
