The UFC\u2019s first event of the Paramount era continues to take shape.<\/p>\n
Multiple people with knowledge of the promotion\u2019s plans confirmed to MMA Fighting that a heavyweight matchup between recent Contender Series contract winner Josh Hokit and former LFA champ Denzel Freeman is set for UFC 324, which takes place Jan. 24 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. MMA Junkie <\/a>was first to report the booking.<\/p>\n Hokit enters the bout a winner of all seven of his pro MMA bouts, including three wins in LFA, and a pair of victories in Bellator. After earning a contract on DWCS this past season, Hokit made a statement with a 56 second knockout victory over Max Gimenis at UFC Vegas 111 in November.<\/p>\n Freeman also had a successful octagon debut as he picked up a unanimous decision win over Marek Bujlo at UFC Qatar in November, his third consecutive victory.<\/p>\n UFC 324 is headlined by an interim lightweight title fight between Justin Gaethje and Paddy Pimblett, with a women\u2019s bantamweight title bout between Kayla Harrison and the returning Amanda Nunes serving as the co-main event.<\/p>\n Damon Martin contributed to this report <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UFC\u2019s first event of the Paramount era continues to take shape. Multiple people with knowledge of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-328091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328091","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=328091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}