The Ultimate Fighting Championship returned to Nashville, featuring two showdowns between contenders. In the main event, elite bantamweight Cory Sandhagen clashed with superb striker Rob Font in a 140-pound catchweight affair. Sandhagen's only three losses in the UFC have occurred against world champions in Aljamain Sterling, Petr Yan and T.J. Dillashaw, the last a controversial split decision. Against everyone else, he has looked phenomenal. He rode a two-fight winning streak coming into Nashville, having brutally dispatched Yadong Song in a fourth-round stoppage and then dominated Marlon Vera with striking and grappling alike for 25 minutes, one insane scorecard for his opponent notwithstanding.
Sandhagen wasn't taking any chances, repeatedly taking down Font and keeping him there, inflicting effective ground-and-pound. It was the same strategy he had used against Vera, but this time, he was able to do so for all five rounds instead of two. The crowd didn't like it, but it was another dominant performance, with Sandhagen taking the unanimous decision with 50-45 on all three cards.
In the co-main event, Tatiana Suarez returned against former women's strawweight champion Jessica Andrade in a flyweight battle. Suarez looked like a can't miss future queen at 115 pounds in the late 2010s herself, attaining a perfect record of 8-0, including a devastating ground-and-pound stoppage of former and then future strawweight champion Carla Esparza, and an easy first-round submission of current flyweight queen Alexa Grasso, both in 2018. Unfortunately, Suarez had been plagued by injuries, which resulted in her being gone from the cage for almost 4 years. She returned in February of this year with a triumphant guillotine choke of Montana De La Rosa, putting the division on notice. However, Suarez faced a big step up in Andrade, who had also challenged for the flyweight crown as recently as 2021 against Valentina Shevchenko. Andrade had alternated fights between strawweight and flyweight but was riding a two-fight losing streak, having been tapped in the second stanza by sensational prospect Erin Blanchfield in February of this year and then shockingly knocked out by Xiaonan Yan in just over 2 minutes at strawweight in May.
Suarez passed the test with flying colors. She spent some time striking with Andrade, showing improvement thanks to an effective kicking game. It wasn't long, however, before she changed levels and easily took the Brazilian down. In the second stanza, she used a beautiful transition to finish with a guillotine 1:31 into the round, her second such finish in a row.
Here are several interesting fights that now suggest themselves.