Another fight weekend is here, baby, and we love to see it. This week, the UFC caps off its 2020 with its last fight card of the year, before the world’s biggest MMA organization goes into hibernation for about a month. We also have shows from ONE and KSW – this is one of your last chances to see a lot of high-level MMA before the New Year.

So jump on it. As usual, here are looks at the three fights I’ll be watching closest this weekend.

Stephen Thompson vs. Geoff Neal, UFC Vegas 17

Maybe, at the very end of 2020, the UFC has finally figured the whole “scheduling events during COVID” thing out. Absolutely overstuff the card with a billion fights, and when a bunch of people have to pull out – because they will – instead of having to panic-scramble at the last second just to have a show, you still have enough fights left over to have something good.

That’s exactly what’s happened with Saturday’s show, the final UFC card of 2020. As recently as earlier this week, there were *17* fights on the show, and at one point, it looked absolutely full to bursting with great fights. Stuff has changed since then – including the loss of the scheduled main event, a fascinating meeting of the Khamzat Chimaev hype train and top welterweight contender Leon Edwards – but what’s left over is still great for a weekly Fight Night card. And the UFC managed to replace its main event with one almost as interesting: rising 170-pound star Geoff Neal’s big chance to cement himself as a real title challenger.

The 30-year-old Neal ranks, so far, as perhaps the brightest jewel to have been unearthed by Dana White’s Contender Series. Neal was one of the first fighters to ever earn a contract through the Contender Series, and has since won all five of his UFC outings, four by finish. His only loss in the last seven years was to Kevin Holland, on a Texas regional event in Jan. 2017 – how would you like to go to some random show and end up seeing those two guys? It’s also almost a year to the day since we saw Neal last: he starched insane man Mike Perry in only a minute and a half last December.

Neal, a powerful and technical southpaw striker renowned for his sharp straight left, has razor-focused finishing instincts and has been immensely fun to watch over the past few years. But, at the same time, he’s coming off a health issue that could completely change the chemistry of the fight. The whole reason Neal hasn’t fought in a year is because he was forced to pull out of a scheduled August fight with Neil Magny due to *CONGESTIVE HEART FAILURE* (holy shit, that sounds bad, how is this guy even cleared to fight?????) and he’s admitted since that he’s been reticent to really push himself hard in training since suffering that complication.

Which sucks, because he’ll need to push himself hard to beat Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson, a mainstay at the top of the welterweight rankings for a number years. A two-time title challenger who, during the reign of Tyron Woodley, came about as close as a human being can come to winning a championship without actually winning it, Thompson is the celebrated karate man and kickboxing champ who once dominated Chuck Norris’ World Combat League, a master of movement and angles who presents a unique problem to every he faces.

While Neal is fighting to prove that he belongs at the top, Thompson is fighting to prove he deserves to stay there. Wonderboy is 37 years old, has lost a few fights – last March, Anthony Pettis bounced off the cage with a superman punch and became the first man ever to knock Thompson out – and could have his spot in jeopardy with another defeat.

Neal wants to strike, and he’ll have plenty of opportunities to do so with Thompson. But while Thompson has worked his magic against plenty of powerful pressure strikers like Neal, Neal hasn’t faced anyone with the skills Thompson has. Thompson is marvelous on the counter, and – according this great stat pulled by Bloody Elbow’s Zane Simon this week – he’s never been beaten by a fighter who lands at a higher rate than he does.

All of this amounts to a tremendous and very meaningful challenge for Neal, notwithstanding the potential health effects of being just a few months removed from HEART FAILURE. To echo Simon, the more Neal tries to implement his game, the more chances Thompson has to make him pay. All of this creates a situation that could go a hundred different ways on Saturday. I can’t wait to see what happens.

Jose Aldo vs. Marlon Vera, UFC Vegas 17

When people have the greatest of all time conversation in mixed martial arts, the same few names typically get brought up. Jon Jones. Anderson Silva. Fedor Emelianenko. Georges St-Pierre. More recently, Khabib Nurmagomedov has entered his name into that stratosphere. But we don’t talk enough about Jose Aldo.

Aldo’s cruel reign over the featherweight division lasted five years and 10 straight title wins, coming over as one of the flagship stars of the WEC’s merger with the UFC and ending up as one of the world’s pound-for-pound kings. In his prime, he proved a seemingly impossible problem to solve. He was one of the most torturous Muay Thai strikers in the history of the sport, possessing MMA’s all-time most horrifying leg kicks – I’m pretty sure Urijah Faber is still limping a decade later – and being in the cage with him was like having all of your limbs slowly being sawed off.

Standing with Aldo was an exercise in how much horrible pain you could endure before collapsing into the fetal position and weeping. Did I mention you couldn’t take him down? I mean, we’re talking historically great takedown defense? Like I said, an impossible problem to solve.

Aldo defeated and demoralized an entire generation of 145-pound stars before finally losing to Conor McGregor in 2015. Very few fighters ever have had a run like Aldo did over the preceding seven years. But time catches up to everyone. Aldo is 34 – surprisingly young considering how long he’s been fighting at the top level – and has 35 pro fights. He’s still a very good technical striker who’s extremely hard to take down, but the effortless speed and explosion of his youth has started to diminish.

Last year, Aldo left the division that he dominated for so long to try a new adventure at 135. He’s since gone 0-2, losing a split decision to Marlon Moraes that was tight enough that it apparently justified the bigger-name Aldo jumping the line and getting a bantamweight title shot in July, where he was beaten up by the much younger Petr Yan. Theoretically, at 34 years old, Aldo should be on the downswing from his prime but still with some good years left, and he’s still generally looked competitive against the very best over the past few years. He has to prove that’s still the case on Saturday.

Because there’s always someone younger and hungrier who wants to take your spot. Marlon Vera is a 28-year-old bomb-thrower from Ecuador who’s gone undefeated at 135 in coming on three years – his only loss in that span was to Song Yadong in May at featherweight – and he appears to be on the cusp of breaking out. In August, “Chito” played spoiler to the runaway Sean O’Malley hype train, ruthlessly taking advantage of O’Malley’s injured leg and knocking out the rising star in the first round.

Vera has finished his last six opponents at bantamweight, but even an older Aldo is a big step-up in competition. Vera has powerful striking, a strong chin, fights at a good pace and has an underrate submission game, but Aldo may be on another level technically. And the former champ’s back is against the wall – I don’t think his career can survive another loss. Expect Aldo to come out motivated on Saturday.

Michel Pereira vs. Khaos Williams, UFC Vegas 17

At the end of the day, sports are supposed to be fun. We like to ascribe seriousness to the meaning of athletic pursuit, of striving to be the best in the world, but sports are, at their core, entertainment – both for yourself and for the people watching. And there are few fights that, at least on paper, portend more pure entertainment than this meeting of rising welterweights on Saturday.

I’m very much on record as a charter member of the Khaos Williams hype machine. The 26-year-old from Michigan has fought twice in the UFC and still hasn’t passed a minute of total Octagon time. We haven’t yet seen anyone take a Khaos Williams power shot and live to tell the tale. It was just a month ago that Williams nuked Abdul Razak Alhassan, who had never been knocked out in his pro career, with a single monstrous straight right hand. One more quick KO and he could be getting the Chimaev treatment.

Also, his name is KHAOS WILLIAMS. What’s not to love?

Williams’ insane power will be contested by probably the single most entertaining opponent the UFC matchmakers could have selected. Really, Sean Shelby and Mick Maynard earned their paycheck with this one. Michel Pereira is a 27-year-old Brazilian with elite athleticism, elite size, elite talent, and a brain that compels him to do batshit stuff at all times.

Pereira is a riddle wrapped inside an enigma. He’s a showman, first and foremost, and he seemingly fights to amuse himself more than anything else. Pereira dominated Zelim Imadaev in a standout performance in September that was praised as his single most focused effort to date in the UFC – he still did two Showtime kicks, a somersault kick, stopped fighting multiple times to dance, and then pimp-slapped Imadaev in the third round just for the hell of it.

He finally finished the fight late in the third by German suplexing Imadaev into a rear-naked choke. Pereira is so goddamn talented that he can literally just fuck around for an entire fight and still dominate a fighter at the highest level of the sport. He’s a chaos agent – the tools to become a truly great fighter are obvious, but he seems more concerned with doing fun shit than anything else. And just to add to the excitement level, Pereira hinted this week that he’s been working on no less than *43* “weird moves” that have never been seen before, including things called the “neck slap,” the “fatality,” the “brutality,” and the “mule kick.” This dude just keeps getting cooler!

Both fighters have rapidly earned their way onto my list of favorite fighters to watch, and I have NO IDEA how their particular strengths will interact. We’ve barely seen any of Williams because his opponents haven’t lasted long enough to test him in any way. We have no idea what Pereira will do at any given moment – I don’t think he even knows what he’s going to do until he does it.

You couldn’t pay me enough money to miss this fight. It could be absolutely batshit.

Honorable mentions: Marlon Moraes vs. Rob Font, Marcin Tybura vs. Greg Hardy, Anthony Pettis vs. Alex Morono, UFC Vegas 17; Marat Gafurov vs. Lowen Tynanes, ONE: Eye of the Storm; Phil de Fries vs. Michal Kita, Marian Ziolkowski vs. Roman Szymanski, Abusupiyan Magomedov vs. Cezary Kisik, KSW 57