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Merab Dvalishvili (left) reacts after the fight against Cory Sandhagen (blue gloves) during UFC 320 at T-Mobile Arena on\u00a0Oct 4, 2025. \u2014 Reuters\u00a0<\/p>\n
LAS VEGAS: The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) has officially announced that UFC 23 will take place on December 6 in Las Vegas, featuring 14 total fights, including two title bouts and the much-anticipated comeback of a retired veteran. <\/p>\n
The event will serve as the final pay-per-view of 2025, the promotion confirmed on Monday.<\/p>\n
In the main event, Merab Dvalishvili will defend his bantamweight title in a rematch against Petr Yan. <\/p>\n
Dvalishvili dominated Yan in their previous encounter, and another victory would make him the first fighter in UFC history to defend a championship four times in a single year.<\/p>\n
Currently ranked No. 3 on the MMA Fighting pound-for-pound list, Dvalishvili enters the bout riding a 14-fight winning streak, having rebounded from an 0-2 start to his UFC career. <\/p>\n
His most recent victory came in October against Cory Sandhagen, marking his third successful title defense of 2025 after wins over Sean O\u2019Malley and Umar Nurmagomedov earlier in the year.<\/p>\n
The co-main event will feature flyweight champion Alexandre Pantoja (30-5) defending his title against rising contender Joshua Van (15-2). The fight marks Pantoja\u2019s fifth consecutive defense of his 125-pound crown. <\/p>\n
The matchup was first hinted at by Van\u2019s teammate Michael Aswell, who mentioned it during a post-fight interview at UFC Rio following his first-round finish of Lucas Almeida.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, lightweight veteran Jalin Turner will make his return to the Octagon after announcing his retirement earlier this year. <\/p>\n
Turner, who stepped away from MMA in March following a submission loss to Ignacio Bahamondes, his second straight defeat during a 1-4 stretch, will face Edson Barboza in what promises to be an explosive lightweight clash.<\/p>\n
Also returning to action is flyweight contender Maycee Barber, who will step back into the cage after more than a year on the sidelines due to multiple medical emergencies.<\/p>\n
Barber was hospitalised twice in 2024\u2014first ahead of her scheduled bout with Rose Namajunas, and again in May before her planned fight with Erin Blanchfield.<\/p>\n
Now fully recovered, Barber is set to take on Karine Silva in December as she looks to reclaim her momentum and re-enter the title picture, having previously notched six straight victories before her hiatus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Merab Dvalishvili (left) reacts after the fight against Cory Sandhagen (blue gloves) during UFC 320 at T-Mobile Arena…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,21676,786,2623,25363,785,20875,85,787],"class_list":["post-234751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-dvalishvili","tag-fighting","tag-las-vegas","tag-merab-dvalishvili","tag-mma","tag-petr-yan","tag-sports","tag-ufc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}