The welterweight bout between Joaquin Buckley and Nursulton Ruziboev has been made official as the co-main event at UFC Fight Night: Lewis vs Nascimento. The fight card airs live from Enterprise Center in St. Louis, MO on Saturday, May 11.
No. 11 Buckley (18-6), who crashed the UFC 300 pre-fight press conference asking for a fight in front of his hometown crowd, is riding a three-fight winning streak. The 29-year-old St. Louis native stopped Vicente Luque in the second round last time out in March.
Nursulton Ruziboev (34-8-2, 2 NC) won 10 fights in a row. Uzbekistan’s 30-year-old stopped Sedriques Dumas in the first round also in March.
UFC CEO Dana White announced Buckley vs Ruziboev clash in a video posted on X.
The main event is a five-round heavyweight bout between former heavyweight title challenger and No. 12-ranked contender Derrick Lewis (27-12, 1 NC) of New Orleans, Louisiana and No. 15 Rodrigo Nascimento (11-1, 1 NC) of Brazil. The current UFC St. Louis lineup looks as the following:
Main card
- Derrick Lewis vs. Rodrigo Nascimento, heavyweight
- Joaquin Buckley vs. Nursulton Ruziboev, welterweight
- Alonzo Menifield vs. Carlos Ulberg, light heavyweight
- Terrance McKinney vs. Esteban Ribovics, lightweight
- Tabatha Ricci vs. Tecia Pennington, women’s strawweight
- Alex Caceres vs. Sean Woodson, featherweight
Preliminary card
- Chase Hooper vs. Viacheslav Borshchev, lightweight
- Waldo Cortes-Acosta vs. Robelis Despaigne, heavyweight
- Billy Goff vs. Trey Waters, welterweight
- Charles Johnson vs. Jake Hadley, flyweight
- Jared Gooden vs. Kevin Jousset, welterweight
- JJ Aldrich vs. Veronica Hardy, flyweight
- Carlos Diego Ferreira vs. Mateusz Rebecki, lightweight