Jared Cannonier and Gregory Rodrigues will do their part to flesh out the pecking order in the Ultimate Fighting Championship middleweight division when they confront one another in the UFC Fight Night 251 headliner on Saturday at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas. Neither man can afford to cede ground at 185 pounds—a weight class currently ruled by Dricus Du Plessis.
A staple of the UFC for more than a decade, Cannonier enters the cage on the heels of back-to-back losses for the first time since 2018. The MMA Lab export last strapped on the gloves at UFC on ESPN 62, where he wound up on the wrong side of a unanimous decision against Caio Borralho on Aug.