UFC 312 will feature two championship bouts as top bouts.
Doricas du Plessis will defend his middleweight title in a rematch with Sean Strickland in the night’s main event, while Weili Zhang will take on Tatiana Suarez in a strawweight title bout in the co-headliner. The pairing was announced during Saturday night’s UFC 310 broadcast.
UFC 312 will take place on February 8th at Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney, Australia. The main card will be broadcast on pay-per-view via ESPN+.
Du Plessis won the 185-pound gold medal with a split decision victory over Strickland in their first fight at UFC 297. ‘Stillknox’ defended his strap in August of this year by submitting Israel Adesanya in the fourth round of the main event of UFC 307. The 30-year-old South African has an 8-0 record during his time with the Las Vegas-based promotion.
After losing to du Plessis, Strickland returned to the win column with a split decision over Paulo Costa at UFC 302 in June of this year. The 33-year-old Extreme Couture fighter has won four of his past five fights, including an upset of Adesanaya at UFC 293 to capture the middleweight title.
Chan is currently in her second reign as UFC strawweight queen. After offering to regain the belt from Carla Esparza at UFC 281, “Magnum” defended it with back-to-back decision wins over Amanda Lemos and Xiaonan Yan. Her record also includes wins over Joanna Jedrzejczyk (twice), Jessica Andrade and Tesia Pennington.
Suarez, who was scheduled to face Vilna Jandirova at UFC 310, will instead bypass that bout and go directly for the title. The 33-year-old Californian’s promising career was derailed by injuries, but she still owns a 10-0 career mark, including seven wins in the UFC. Most recently, he scored a second-round submission victory over Andrade in August 2023.
