A showdown between two former UFC light-heavyweight champions Jiri Prochazka and Jamahal Hill has been booked for UFC 311 in Inglewood, California on January 18th.
Both fighters will be keen to get back on track after each was felled by current 205lb champion Alex Pereira in their last Octagon outings, with Hill being first in an successful attempt to win back the belt at UFC 300 in April that he lost by KO in the first round.
Prochazka then followed on just two months later at UFC 303 and suffered a similar fate, being TKO’d by Pereira in the 2nd round.
In fact Pereira has proven to be Prochazka’s nemesis as the Brazilian also TKO’d the 32-year-old to win the belt in the first place in November of last year.
However, he remains the only fighter to have beaten him in the past eight years, with Prochazka having enjoyed a long winning streak in the Rizin promotion before joining the UFC in 2021, where he’s notched up four victories over the likes of Glover Teixeira, Aleksander Rakic, Dominick Reyes and Volkan Oezdemir – with each being finished inside the distance.
As for the 33-year-old Hill, he had beaten Glover Teixeira in early 2023 to become champion, the culmination of a four-fight winning streak that also included wins over Thiago Santos, Johnny Walker and Jimmy Crute.
In total that leaves Hill with a 6-2 (+1nc) record heading into this fight, putting him at No.3 in the 205lb rankings, once spot below the No.2 placed Prochazka.
Prochazka vs. Hill joins a UFC 311 card that will mark the promotion’s first pay-per-view event of 2025, which will be headlined by a lightweight title fight between current champion Islam Makhachev and Arman Tsarukyan.
