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Philadelphia’s UFC Card is More Top Heavy Than Yo Mama
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The Phillies and the Blue Jays played three, uh, interesting games of baseball this weekend. The Phils bullpen was bad, the hitters were meh in big spots, and Don Mattingly was doing whatever he was doing as the Phillies avoided a sweep with an extra-innings win on Sunday.
Moving on then –
UFC 330 is this week in Philadelphia and here’s the card, which is top heavy:
Two title fights and nothing of much interest otherwise. I’ll give it a 5.7 out of 10.
You’ve got Islam Makhachev, who is the #1 fighter in the world at this point. Best grappler on Earth. He’s looking for his 17th win in a row and his first title defense at 170 pounds.
His opponent is Ian Machado Garry, who is 17-1 with his only loss coming to the undefeated Shavkat Rakhmonov. He’s an elite striker with great footwork and movement and IQ and is a Judo blackbelt.
Then there’s Mackenzie Dern defending her strawweight belt against Gillian Robertson in the co-main event, and while the bout doesn’t carry a lot of intrigue on paper, it’s a title fight, and sometimes these low-profile championship fights turn into bangers. Zhang Weili vs. Joanna Jedrzejczyk at UFC 248 ended up being maybe the best women’s MMA fight of all time. Some other good examples are Miesha Tate vs. Holly Holm at 196 and Julianna Pena vs. Amanda Nunes at 269.
This card had a scheduled bout between Erin Blanchfield and Jasmine Jasudavicius, which was rescheduled due to an injury. Caio Borralho revealed that he was supposed to fight Philly’s Joe Pyfer, but that fight was also moved due to injury.
If one or both of those fights remained on the card, it would be a very good card. I’d move it up to a 7.2 out of 10.
These other fights don’t offer much intrigue, but they’re being contested by some familiar veteran faces. Neil Magny, Vicente Luque, and Edson Barboza have been around the block, and they have the capability to put something on the highlight reel at a moment’s notice. They’ve been in some wars and fought plenty of entertaining fights.
Jeremiah Wells is, somehow, the only local product on the card, and he’s opening as a huge dog against Kyrgyzstan’s Myktybek Orolbai. Jalin Turner has shown flashes in the past, as has Joel Alvarez, who is 23-4 and 8-3 in the UFC. He’s stepping in on short notice to replace Geoff Neal.
It’s fascinating just how unbalanced this card is. The headlining fight between Islam and Garry is probably the best title fight you can make in 2026. It should be incredible. And there haven’t been a lot of co-main title fights recently, so we should consider ourselves lucky to get that in Philadelphia. The trade off is a bunch of “meh” otherwise, but sometimes these cards have a funny way of delivering when nobody expects.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com