I’ve been waiting to type this for a while: another fight weekend is here, baby, and we love to see it. After a few weeks off, the UFC returns on Saturday for its inaugural ABC card, starting a run of three events in eight days from Fight Island. It’ll be the kickoff of the 2021 MMA season, and I’ve been waiting with bated breath.

I’ve been waiting for a couple fights specifically. As usual, here’s a look at the three fights from Saturday I’ll be watching closest:

Max Holloway vs. Calvin Kattar

The UFC’s first card of 2020 isn’t loaded, by any means. But you can’t complain that they haven’t given us a good main event. Heading up the UFC’s first-ever event on ABC is a battle between two of the best featherweights in the world, who have appealing compatible styles, with massive title implications.

For 32-year-old Calvin Kattar, this is quite simply the single biggest opportunity of his career. With a win over Holloway, the former champion and one of the greatest featherweights ever, he’ll establish himself as the clear No. 1 contender for the winner of the Alexander Volkanovski–Brian Ortega title fight that’s expected to happen at some point this year.

For Holloway, the situation is a little more complicated. Holloway lost his title to Volkanovski in Dec. 2019 – an underdog heading into the fight, Volkanovski executed a perfect gameplan, using a steady diet of low kicks to take Holloway out of his rhythm and ultimately win a unanimous decision. Holloway adjusted back beautifully in their rematch in June, fighting more off the counter and hurting Volkanovski several times over the course of 25 minutes. Although it appeared to most that Holloway had won three rounds, Volkanovski retained his title by a controversial split decision.

With two consecutive losses to the champion, Holloway may unfortunately be forced into a gatekeeper role until something changes at the top. It’s selling him tremendously short. I wrote earlier this week about my favorite performance of Holloway’s career, his relentless beating of Ortega in 2018. He’s still only 29 years old, and that special fighter is still there.

When Holloway is at his best, he’s an almost unstoppable force of pure cardio and volume, endlessly chasing his bedraggled opponents with a sea of combinations until they give in. He’s one of the highest-volume fighters in UFC history, regardless of era or weight class. Volkanovski showed that you can find ways to counter his entries and throw him off his game, but you will never break him.

For those reasons, Holloway fights are not only impressive, but entertaining. He doesn’t stop going. They’re even better when he has someone who can give it back to him, and that’s what Calvin Kattar promises to do. Over the last three years, Kattar has established himself as an upper-crust featherweight due to some of the best technical boxing in MMA.

If there’s any fighter who you feel like can weather Holloway’s storm without getting flustered, it’s Kattar. The Bostonian is remarkably cool and patient in the cage, and when he gets going, his combinations are some of the crispest you’ll ever see. He started this particular run in May, when he knocked hard-hitting veteran Jeremy Stephens unconscious with a simply disgusting step-in elbow.

Kattar followed that in July with a five-round win over another good volume striker, Dan Ige. His fight with Holloway on Saturday portends to be a pure stand-up battle between two different kinds of strikers – one who tends to win with pressure and volume, and one who wins with superior technique and accuracy.

It should be damn good. And while Kattar has looked great in his last two fights, some of the old knocks have been there – a vulnerability to leg kicks, for one – but it’s his tendency to start slow that has me worried. If you let him, Holloway can set a breakneck pace and put you in a hole that’s exceptionally difficult to climb out of. Kattar’s going to need to be ready to throw from the opening bell. If he comes out letting his hands go, he has a chance at the biggest win of his life.

Santiago Ponzinibbio vs. Li Jingliang

Saturday’s card has plenty of intrigue for me just for the main event alone, but I’m also fascinated to see the return of one of the forgotten men of the UFC welterweight division. 34-year-old Santiago Ponzinibbio is the greatest MMA fighter to ever come out of Argentina – not a ton of competition for that title, to be fair, but it’s true all the same – and at the end of 2018, his stock was surging to places it had never been before.

In November of that year, he knocked out perennially ranked fighter Neil Magny in front of a roaring Buenos Aires crowd for the biggest win of his career. It was his seventh UFC win in a row, a run where he pushed himself into the top 10 and became a popular dark-horse contender at 170. Then, he dropped off the face of the Earth: various health issues have kept Ponzinibbio out of the cage for over two full years since the Magny fight.

Ponzinibbio lost his spot in the rankings and lost his spot in the minds of most MMA fans. At last, he’s back in the cage, and we’re all better off for it. The fighter who showed up against Magny looked every bit a future title contender. A hard-nosed kickboxer with big power, Ponzinibbio absolutely beat Magny’s ass up and down the cage that night in his home country, rendering him almost completely immobile with leg kicks before turning his lights out with a right hand in the fourth.

I don’t know what to expect after such a long layoff, but I hope, at the very least, we can catch a glimpse of the fighter Ponzinibbio was in 2018. He’s not getting an easy return fight by any means. Li Jingliang isn’t well-loved by a lot of MMA fans because of his history of eye pokes – the shit he did to Jake Matthews in 2018 was stomach-curdling – but he makes up for it by being a hard-hitting, aggressive striker who’s rarely in boring fights and has a penchant for knockouts.

Incidentally, Li’s last fight was also against Magny, back in March. But while Ponzinibbio pieced Magny up with a diverse and powerful striking attack, Li was unable to do much against Magny’s crazy reach, choosing instead to grapple with a fighter who’s won fight after fight with his wrestling. Magny won a unanimous decision that was not close.

But if Ponzinibbio fights the same way he did before his vacation, this is a matchup that could provide some fireworks. And, if all goes well, it could mark the return to form of a fighter we’ve missed for a very long time.

Punahele Soriano vs. Dusko Todorovic

One of my favorite prospects in the UFC, Joaquin Buckley, will be occupying a spot on the main card Saturday – but fuck, I’ve written about Buckley so many times over the last few months, let’s talk about someone else. Leading off the main card is a fight between two undefeated prospects, middleweights Punahele Soriano and Dusko Todorovic, that merits keeping an eye on.

A 26-year-old Serb, Todorovic made his UFC debut in October, scoring a knockout win over Dequan Townsend that turned my head. Todorovic punches with a kind of deceptive power: he doesn’t always look like he’s throwing hard, but he absolutely is, and he connected clean on Townsend over and over before finishing it in the second round.

Todorovic holds a TKO win over whacko favorite Michel Pereira from their pre-UFC days, and considering his youth, he’s bubbling under as a name to watch at 185. His fight against Soriano could be a pretty interesting one to look back on in a few years – both have the best years of their careers ahead of them. Soriano is himself still young at 28 years old, and has ridden his knockout power to a 7-0 pro record.

The Hawaiian is aggressive, has major pop in both hands, has a keen eye for the finish, and is liable to bring down some mean ground-and-pound when he gets the chance. He’s rather squat for the division and his future could be at 170, but so far his power has played at 185. He debuted in the UFC in Dec. 2019, knocking Oskar Piechota clean out with a nasty left hook.

It’s extremely early in their UFC careers, but both Todorovic and Soriano are worthy of tracking over the next few years. We’ll see who takes the next step Saturday.

Honorable mentions: Joaquin Buckley vs. Alessio di Chirico, Phil Hawes vs. Nassourdine Imavov, UFC on ABC 1; Nick Browne vs. Arthur Estrazulas, LFA 97