{"id":785714,"date":"2026-07-07T22:57:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T22:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/785714\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T22:57:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T22:57:08","slug":"waldo-cortes-acosta-vs-curtis-blaydes-in-the-works-for-noche-ufc-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/785714\/","title":{"rendered":"Waldo Cortes-Acosta vs. Curtis Blaydes in the works for Noche UFC 4"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Heavyweight contenders Waldo Cortes-Acosta and Curtis Blaydes are expected to face off soon.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">MMA Fighting\u2019s Mike Heck and Damon Martin confirmed with sources with knowledge of the matchup that Cortes-Acosta (17-3) vs. Blaydes (19-6, 1 NC) is in the works for Noche UFC 4 on Sept. 19, with a location still to be determined. The bout was first reported by <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/dannyseguratv\/status\/2074597739980103817\" rel=\"nofollow\">MMA Junkie.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmafighting.com\/rankings\/495469\/mma-divisional-rankings-justin-gaethje-finally-reigns-as-lightweight-king\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The No. 7-ranked Cortes-Acosta<\/a> had a memorable 2025 campaign, winning his first two fights before losing a decision to Sergei Pavlovich in May of last year. He bounced back quickly with three consecutive wins, including a pair of victories in November over Ante Delija and Shamil Gaziev, and capped off his campaign with a second-round knockout over Derrick Lewis.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Unfortunately for Cortes-Acosta, he was unable to continue his success in his first fight of 2026, losing a decision to Alexander Volkov at UFC 328.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Blaydes (No. 8) has been unable to string together wins in recent years having lost three of his past five fights. In his most recent outing at UFC 327, Blaydes lost a decision to Josh Hokit in a thrilling three-round brawl that earned both men a $100,000 bonus for winning the Fight of the Night award.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Heavyweight contenders Waldo Cortes-Acosta and Curtis Blaydes are expected to face off soon. MMA Fighting\u2019s Mike Heck and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":785715,"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-785714","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\/785714","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=785714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/785715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}