UFC 324 on January 24th in Las Vegas will mark the official start of the Paramount+ broadcasting deal with a stacked card that will feature an interim lightweight title fight between Justin Gaethje and Paddy Pimblett, along with the return from retirement of former two-division champion Amanda Nunes to fight bantamweight champ Kayla Harrison.

The Thanksgiving announcement means MMA fans will have to hold out for six weeks between the final UFC event of the ESPN era on December 14th and the first Paramount+ show, but it looks like it will be well worth the wait given the stacked nature of the card.

There had been talk that lightweight champion Ilia Topturia could front the event, but he has announced that he’s ruling himself out of fighting in the first quarter of 2026 due to what he describes as, “a difficult moment in my personal life,” which has led to an interim title bout between Gaethje and Pimblett being announced instead to front this marquee event.

So the 37-year-old Gaethje gets his wish to fight for the title next, though perhaps not under the circumstances he was expecting.

The No.4 ranked Gaethje previously won the interim belt back in 2020 by TKO’ing Tony Ferguson, and has also held the symbolic ‘BMF’ title in the past too, and is coming off a unanimous decision victory over Rafael Fiziev in his only fight this year.

Now he’ll be going up against the 30-year-old UK star Pimblett, who has compiled a seven-fight winning streak since joining the UFC in 2021.

That includes the No.5 ranked lightweight having ibeaten the likes of Tony Ferguson, King Green and most recently MIchael Chandler to put the former Cage Warriors champion in line for this interim title opportunity.

The event will be backed up by a huge fight for women’s MMA in the co-main event as current bantamweight champion Kayla Harrison welcomes the GOAT Amanda Nunes back to the Octagon.

The 35-year-old Harrison’s resume is undeniably impressive, having been a former two-time Oympic judo gold medalist who then turned her attention to MMA and became a two-time PFL tournament winner prior to joining the UFC.

And Harrison’s success has continued in the Octagon, beating Holly Holm and Ketlen Vieira to set up a 135lb title fight against Julianna Pena in June of this year, which she won by 2nd round submission to become champion.

Now she’ll fight the woman considered the best female fighter of all time in the sport in ‘The Lioness’ Amanda Nunes, whose reign of dominance as a two-division champion in the UFC Only came to an end when she decided to vacate her titles and retire back in 2023.

However, the 37-year-old star has rediscovered her desire to compete and so two-and-a-half years later she will return to action to try to claim another major scalp, having already defeated the likes of Ronda Rousey, Valentina Shevchenko (x2), Cris Cyborg, Miesha Tate, Holly Holm and many more during her stellar career.

The big fights don’t end there though, as former men’s bantamweight champ Sean O’Malley also fights Song Yadong on the main card, while fresh off his 2nd KO victory in the space of a month, Waldo Cortes-Acosta will now fight Derrick Lewis.

If that’s not enough there’s also a clash of former champions between Alexa Grasso and Rose Namajunas, while Umar Nurmagomedov fights Deiveson Figueiredo.

One final bit of news about the UFC’s big debut on Paramount+ is that the main card will go live at an all new start time of 9pm ET (2am UK), an hour earlier than has been the tradition during the now defunct pay-per-view era.