UFC 267 now has a date, location and a pair of championship headliners. The Oct. 30 event will take place in Abu Dhabi with Jan Blachowicz defending the light heavyweight championship against Glover Teixeira and a bantamweight title rematch between champion Aljamain Sterling and former titleholder Petr Yan.
After Sterling announced some of the details in a video tweet, more details were reported by Ariel Helwani.
October 30th in Abu Dhabi, all the talking ends! Sleepyhagen or Needleshaw, winner gets the next whooping after I put away Yan in 3!
— Aljamain Sterling (@funkmasterMMA) July 24, 2021
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Only thing that matters in this sport is blue-collared hard-work! No Dana White Privileges ever given to me 💯#AndStill! #Georgia 🇬🇪 pic.twitter.com/BvkEaKfEgs
Sterling won the bantamweight title from Yan in their first fight. Their March bout ended when Yan landed a blatantly illegal knee to force the disqualification and award Sterling the title in a fight in which Yan had been firmly in control. The unfortunate situation has led to increased bad blood and a necessary rematch, with the winner almost guaranteed to face the winner of the July 24 bout between TJ Dillashaw and Cory Sandhagen.
Helwani reported in a series of tweets that Blachowicz vs. Teixeira would be the other headliner. The veteran MMA reporter also stated that there is a possibility the event will be broadcast on ESPN or ESPN+ and not as a standard pay-per-view event, though that has not been confirmed by the UFC.
Blachowicz won the vacant light heavyweight title with a knockout of Dominick Reyes in September 2020. He successfully defended the title against middleweight champion Israel Adesanya in March, running his winning streak to five. Teixeira is on a surprising late career run, rattling off five straight wins to secure a second shot at UFC gold after coming up short in a 2014 bout with former champion Jon Jones.
