A light-heavyweight title fight between current champion Glover Teixeira and Jiri Prochazka is in the works for UFC 274 on May 7th.
UFC veteran Teixeira was crowned the division’s champion just days after his 42nd birthday in October of last year after he seized on a second round rear-naked choke submission to beat Jan Blachowicz at UFC 267.
That was the culmination of an excellent late-career run of form that had seen Teixeira compile a six-fight winning streak over the likes of Karl Roberson, Ion Cutelaba, Nikita Krylov, Anthony Smith and Thiago Santos, with all but one of the wins coming inside the distance.
Now Teixeira goes up against one of the division’s most exciting rising stars in the 29-year-old Prochazka, who was already marked out as a human wrecking-ball in the Rizin promotion before joining the UFC as he had demolished nine of his last 10 opponents by either TKO or KO prior to joining the UFC, including finishes against the likes of Muhammad ‘King Mo’ Lawal, Fabio Maldonado and C.B. Dollaway.
That run continued inside the UFC’s Octagon as he ran through former title contenders Volkan Oezdemir and Thiago Santos by KO in the space of a year, which fast-tracked him to title contention.
Teixeira vs. Prochazka joins a UFC 274 card that’s still in it’s fledgling stages, with Macy Chiasson vs. Norma Dumont being the only other fight currently attached to the show.
