The card for UFC Abu Dhabi is out now. And as expected, it’s a banger. Dana White recently took to social media to announce the fights scheduled for the Fight Night. The main event will have Robert Whittaker competing against Reinier De Ridder in a 5-round middleweight bout. And in the co-main event, we’ll get to witness a war between Movsar Evloev and Aaron Pico. This too will be a 5-round bout. And the excitement has already caught up with the fighting community. 

Of course, the fans wanted Evloev to go up against Alexander Volkanovski for a title fight. With a 19-0 record, he should have gotten it already. But White promised, “If Movsar can get the victory, he will likely be the next contender for the title against Alexander Volkanovski. Expect this fight [Evloev vs. Pico] to be an absolute war.”

With Petr Yan, Sharaputdin Magomedov, and Said Nurmagomedov on the list, things seem to get a lot more interesting. Even Ariel Helwani seemed to believe so. Taking to X, the famed MMA reporter shared the bout list for UFC Abu Dhabi. In the caption, he wrote, “This is low key a banger fight night card.” 

Initially, the matchmaking received quite a bit of backlash just for this reason. But the fans were quick to understand how stacked the Fight Night card looked. Soon after Helwani shared his opinion on the social media platform, fight fans took to the comments section to express themselves. Suffice to say, they wasted no time in comparing the Abu Dhabi card with that of UFC PPVs.

Fight fans put Dana White under fire despite getting a loaded Fight Night card

Most of the fans had just one question on their mind: how could a Fight Night card be better than a pay-per-view card? And they didn’t back down from asking the same in the comments section. One fan weighed in on this and asked, “HOW TF IS THIS A BETTER MAIN CARD THAN UFC 317, UFC 318 AND UFC 319?? F— the modern ufc.” Another fan added to the notion and wrote, “Yes, much better than 318 and 319 combined.” Even with Dustin Poirier’s retirement fight, UFC 318 failed to have a similar response. One fan commented, “This fight night card is better than that Poirier’s retirement PPV.”

On top of that, UFC 317, with Ilia Topuria fighting Charles Oliveira for the soon-to-be vacant lightweight belt, failed to excite the fans when compared to UFC Fight Night: Whittaker vs de Ridder. A fan reflected on this and commented, “I have more excitement for this card than the international fight week card.” To make things more exciting, a few fans even suggested putting a title fight in the headliner event. A comment read, “If you put a title fight at the top it’d be the best PPV card this year.”

Nevertheless, the MMA world knew pretty well that Abu Dhabi wouldn’t really have any bad cards. One of the fans pointed out, “It’s Abu Dhabi, they don’t do weak cards.” Another fan substantiated the stance by writing, “Low key? Ariel… Abu Dhabi cards are always high key.” Well, we did have fights like Islam Makhachev vs. Alexander Volkanovski and Ilia Topuria vs. Max Holloway in Abu Dhabi. We can only expect Dana White’s team to entertain fans beyond limits with the Abu Dhabi cards. But what’s YOUR opinion on the card for 26 July?