UFC CEO Dana White made a massive announcement Wednesday night, sharing the news that UFC 311 had secured a championship doubleheader that would serve as the main and co-main bouts just over a month away of the event. In the main event, UFC lightweight champion Islam Makhachev will defend his title against top contender Arman Tsarukyan while Merab Dvalishvili will defend his bantamweight championship against Umar Nurmagomedov in the co-main event.
Makhachev holds the top spot in the UFC pound-for-pound rankings. The fight with Tsarukyan marks the fourth defense of the title he won by submitting Charles Oliveira in October 2022. After that victory, he posted back-to-back victories against then-featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski, first taking a close decision before to score a violent first-round knockout in the rematch. In his most recent fight, Makhachev submitted Dustin Poirier in the fifth round of an entertaining brawl. The Poirier fight was Makhachev’s only trip to the Octagon in 2024.
Tsarukyan enters his first title shot on a four-fight winning streak. Since a decision loss to Mateusz Gamrot in June 2022, he has decision wins over Damir Ismagulov, knockouts of Joaquim Silva and Beneil Dariush, and most recently, edged out a split decision win over Oliveira in a title eliminator.
This fight will be a rematch from an April 2019 meeting that Makhachev won by unanimous decision and won fight of the night.
Dvalishvili, meanwhile, won the bantamweight title in September, taking a lopsided decision over Sean O’Malley. The win took Dvalishvili’s win streak to 11, dating back to when he suffered back-to-back losses in his first two UFC fights.
Nurmagomedov has been considered one of the sport’s top up-and-coming fighters for years. Now sporting an 18-0 record, Nurmagomedov has won six fights inside the UFC octagon, most recently defeating Cory Sandhagen in August.
UFC 311 is scheduled to take place on January 18 at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California.
