Saturday night, UFC star Daniel Cormier will finish off his career with one final fight. He is facing reigning heavyweight champion Stipe Miocic in UFC 252, the third fight of their longrunning trilogy. Here’s when the battle for the title takes place.
UFC 252 is an exclusive event on ESPN’s streaming platform ESPN+, which costs $4.99 per month. The four preliminaries are free for subscribers and begin at 8 p.m. ET. The main event starts at 10 p.m. ET and is only available to those that purchase the pay per view for $64.99. The streaming service is available on Roku, Apple TV, Chromecast, PlayStation, Xbox One, Amazon Fire TV and Tablet, iPhone and iPad, Oculus Go and across Android phones and tablets.
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Legacies are on the line ๐ The final chapter closes tonight!
LIVE on PPV โก๏ธ https://t.co/F5vdwUMCa9 #UFC252 pic.twitter.com/krcEHK09Fv
โ UFC (@ufc) August 15, 2020
In addition to the highly-anticipated fight between Cormier and Miocic, UFC 252 also features two other heavyweight stars in a non-title fight. Junior “Cigano” Dos Santos will take on Jarzinho Rozenstruik. Additionally, Sean O’Malley will fight Marlon Vera during a bantamweight bout. Jon Dodson versus Merab Dvalishvili and Herbert Burns vs. Daniel Pineda round out the main card.
While there are several big names in action on Saturday, the main event between Cormier and Miocic is drawing the most attention. The reason is that the two heavyweight fighters have faced off twice in their careers, splitting the previous matchups. Cormier took the first fight with a first-round knockout, but Miocic took the rematch with a fourth-round TKO.
Back in September 2019, Cormier teased a potential matchup with the reigning heavyweight champion while announcing that he was going to retire from the UFC. He said that he had one fight left in him and only wanted to face one person. He wanted a third fight against Miocic to complete their trilogy.
“They just told me they’re gonna go talk to Stipe,” Cormier told ESPN in 2019 while aiming for UFC 245 as the event. “That’s it. I’m just worried about what I can control. I’m not in a place right now where I’m chasing, I’m waiting, I’m begging. I’m not gonna do any of that stuff โ I don’t need to. … I hope he fights me, run it back like I ran it back for him. I didn’t necessarily have to. I could have took that win last July and said that was beautiful and fought somebody else.”
While he had to wait even longer to face off with Miocic, Cormier will finally finish off the trilogy. He will head to the octagon for the final time, hoping to secure the heavyweight title once again. Whether or not this occurs is unknown, but UFC fans can tune in for the main card at 10 p.m. ET.