The UFC just announced its full line-up for UFC 325 in Sydney, Australia on January 31st, and it features quite the interesting co-main event.
The card, headlined by a rematch between featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski and Diego Lopes, will now also feature a fun lightweight scrap between the always game New Zealand fighter Dan Hooker and France’s Benoit Saint Denis. Both men just fought in the past few weeks, with Hooker losing his fight to Arman Tsarukyan in Qatar via second round submission. Benoit Saint Denis won his UFC 322 fight against Beneil Dariush via KO in just 16 seconds.
The fight is a bit of a surprise given the speed of the turnarounds: both men are just two months removed from those bouts, and while BSD is certainly fresh enough after one of the fastest finishes in lightweight history, Hooker took a fair amount of damage en route to his loss. But “The Hangman” has never been known to say no to a tough challenge, so Australian fans will have this fight to look forward to.
Another interesting lightweight bout revealed for the card is Rafael Fiziev vs. Mauricio Ruffy. Both men are coming off losses — Ruffy to Benoit Saint Denis in September and Fiziev to Charles Oliveira in October. Ruffy is always exciting and Fiziev is tough as nails, so this should be a good one.
The rest of the card was unveiled during UFC 323 on Saturday night. Take a look:
Alexander Volkanovski vs. Diego Lopes (for featherweight title)
Dan Hooker vs. Benoit Saint Denis
Rafael Fiziev vs. Mauricio Ruffy
Jimmy Crute vs. Dustin Jacoby
Tallison Teixeira vs. Tai Tuivasa
Quillan Salkilld vs. Rong Zhu
Ante Delija vs. Serghei Spivac
Oban Elliott vs. Jonathan Micallef
Kaan Ofli vs. Yi Zha
Billy Elekana vs. Junior Tafa
Cody Brundage vs. Cam Rowston
Torrez Finney vs. Jacob Malkoun
The card will also feature four ‘finals’ fights from the fourth season of Road To UFC, a tournament for (mostly) Asian prospects held in Shanghai, China over Summer 2025. While the bouts weren’t explicitly shared on the UFC 325 lineup provided by UFC, those fights are:
Dom Mar Fan vs. Kim Sang-wook
Keiichiro Nakamura vs. Sebastian Szalay
Sulang Rangbo vs. Lawrence Lui
Namsrai Batbayar vs. Aaron Tau
No word on whether the fights will be held at Australian local time or for audiences back in North America as per usual. Last year’s UFC 312 in Sydney kicked off its prelims at 10 a.m. local time, but with the new earlier start time for numbered events, that could be moved to 9 a.m. or earlier based on the 16-fight card.
UFC 325 goes down from the Qudos Bank Arena and is a solid return to form for the UFC following a lackluster September Fight Night in Perth. Tickets go on sale next week.