UFC Fight Night 128 - Barboza vs. Lee --- UFC Fight Night 129 - Maia vs. Usman
UFC 224: Nunes vs. Pennington is an upcoming mixed martial arts event produced by the Ultimate Fighting Championship that will be held on May 12, 2018, at the Jeunesse Arena in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Fight card
Main Card
Women's Bantamweight Amanda Nunes (c) vs. Raquel Pennington For the UFC Women's Bantamweight Championship.
Middleweight Ronaldo Souza vs. Kelvin Gastelum
Women's Strawweight Mackenzie Dern vs. Amanda Cooper
Bantamweight John Lineker vs. Brian Kelleher
Middleweight Vitor Belfort vs. Lyoto Machida
Preliminary Card (FX)
Middleweight Cezar Ferreira vs. Karl Roberson
Heavyweight Oleksiy Oliynyk vs. Júnior Albini
Lightweight Davi Ramos vs. Nick Hein
Welterweight Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos vs. Sean Strickland
Preliminary Card (UFC Fight Pass)
Welterweight Warlley Alves vs. Sultan Aliev
Middleweight Thales Leites vs. Jack Hermansson
Welterweight Alberto Mina vs. Ramazan Emeev
Middleweight Markus Perez vs. James Bochnovic
Background
The UFC was initially targeting a UFC Women's Featherweight Championship bout between the current champion Cris Cyborg and the current UFC Women's Bantamweight Champion Amanda Nunes to take place at this event and potentially serve as the headliner. However, Cyborg was instead scheduled for a title defense at UFC 222 in March and the plans were scrapped. In turn, it was announced on February 23 that Raquel Pennington would instead face Nunes for the bantamweight title.
A light heavyweight bout between former UFC Light Heavyweight Championship title challengers Volkan Oezdemir and Glover Teixeira was briefly linked to take place the event. However, Oezdemir was pulled from that pairing in favor of a matchup with former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Maurício Rua the following week at UFC Fight Night: Maia vs. Usman.