The UFC is back, and not only is it the start of 2026, it\u2019s also the start of a new era.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, UFC 324 goes down at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, headlined by an interim lightweight title fight between Justin Gaethje and Paddy Pimblett. The card marks the beginning of the UFC\u2019s broadcast deal with Paramount, including a new, earlier start time. Will Gaethje and Pimblett put the UFC\u2019s best foot forward for their new deal? And what about the rest of the card?<\/p>\n
Ahead of Saturday\u2019s big event, MMA Fighting\u2019s Jed Meshew and Alexander K. Lee preview UFC 324 and the interim title fight between Gaethje and Pimblett, and what it means for the lightweight division as a whole. Additionally, Meshew and Lee discuss the co-main event bout between Sean O\u2019Malley and Song Yadong and whether O\u2019Malley is fighting for a title shot, the stakes in the feature bout between Waldo Cortes-Acosta and Derrick Lewis, the title eliminator bout between Natalia Silva and Rose Namajunas, answer fan questions, and more.<\/p>\n
Catch the UFC 324 preview show video above. An audio-only version of the show can be found below and on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Google Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a>, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UFC is back, and not only is it the start of 2026, it\u2019s also the start of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429396,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,37036,329,82,640,702,3194],"class_list":["post-429395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-mmaf-podcast-network","tag-podcasts","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news","tag-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}