New Zealand is the hippest of MMA hotspots these days. Auckland’s world-class gym, City Kickboxing, has captured two UFC championships in the past year, with Israel Adesanya taking the middleweight belt and Alexander Volkanovski following up by claiming the featherweight crown.
Which makes this the perfect time for the UFC to visit the island nation for the first time since 2017.
UFC Auckland isn’t the deepest card in company history, but it has its fair share of intrigue. That certainly applies to the main event, a bout between Paul Felder and City Kickboxing’s own Dan Hooker, a matchup from which a legit lightweight contender should emerge.
The co-main, too, has high consequences, as the bout between Australian Jimmy Crute and Michał Oleksiejczuk should mark the winner as one to watch in the suddenly hot light heavyweight ranks.
UFC on ESPN+ 26 takes place Saturday (Sunday locally) at Spark Arena in Auckland, New Zealand. The event streams on ESPN+.
Without further ado, here are five burning questions heading into UFC Auckland.
****
Can Paul Felder break through to the top of the lightweight division?
Felder (17-4 MMA, 9-4 UFC) has not lost a lightweight fight since 2016.
That’s an easy fact to forget, because in his highest-profile fight since, Felder lost to Mike Perry a UFC 226 on a split decision and got his arm broken in the process.
But that fight was at welterweight, and otherwise, “The Irish Dragon” has been flawless, with five wins at 155 pounds. That includes three finishes, two post-fight bonuses, and last time out, he avenged a loss to Edson Barboza.
Now, Felder has accepted Hooker’s challenge and will face him on the latter’s home turf. The Roufusport product is 34. He’s coming up on a now-or-never point on whether he’s going to break into the highest ranks of the sport’s deepest division. If Felder can win under these circumstances, then he almost has to be given one of 155’s big dogs next.
Or is it Dan Hooker’s time?
After a perfectly mediocre 3-3 start to his UFC stint while competing at featherweight, Hooker stopped trying to force himself down to 145 and has thrived since making the jump to lightweight.
With the exception of a memorably brutal loss to Barboza in which he nonetheless exhibited exquisite toughness, Hooker has been hard to touch at lightweight, going 6-1. His UFC 243 win over Al Iaquinta, in which he earned a 30-26 on one judge’s card, demonstrated that he had reached a certain level.
Felder is roughly on the same level in the pecking order as Iaquinta. So just like a Felder win would vault him up to the elite level, so is the obverse true: Competing at home in the main-event spotlight, this is Hooker’s opportunity to show the world where he stands.
Can Karolina Kowalkiewicz turn things around?
If you traveled back in time to the summer of 2016, when Karolina Kowalkiewicz won a split decision over Rose Namajunas at UFC 201 to improve to 10-0 and earn a strawweight title, and you told fans back then that Kowalkiewicz would lose five of her next seven fights and maybe be on the chopping block for her next fight, they’d scoff and say that was as likely as the Houston Astros cheating to win the World Series and then MLB allowing them to get away with it.
But truth is stranger than fiction, and here we are. Kowalkiewicz simply never looked the same since then-champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk toyed with her at UFC 205 and won across-the-board 49-46 scores. That started a 2-5 stretch which includes three straight defeats, and while they’ve been to high-quality foes such as Claudia Gadelha, Jessica Andrade and Michelle Waterson, eventually, you simply have to start winning.
And it doesn’t get easier from here, as she meets Yan Xiaonan (11-1 MMA, 4-0 UFC), who is 4-0 in the UFC and only needs this type of high-quality win over a competitor with Kowalkieicz’s name value to get to the next level.
Is the winner of the co-main the next one to watch at 205?
Not only has the UFC’s light heavyweight division been rebuilt to the point that there are now several credible contenders capable of pushing Jon Jones to his limits, but there is also enough depth to once again start spotting up-and-comers with real futures.
Which brings us to Saturday night’s matchup between Crute (10-1 MMA, 2-1 UFC) and Oleksiejczuk (14-3 MMA, 2-1 UFC).
Just 23, Crute made a splash by traveling halfway around the world and earning a UFC contract on Dana White’s Contender Series. Then he finished a pair of vets in Paul Craig and Sam Alvey in his first two official UFC bouts, before losing a short-but-wild fight to Misha Cirkunov.
The 24-year-old Oleksiejczuk, meanwhile, scored a pair of first-round finishes in his first two official UFC matchups (his debut was a no contest), before falling prey to a Von Flue choke against Ovince Saint Preux.
The winner of this one comes out with three wins out of four in the UFC. Factor in that 17 of their combined 24 career victories are finishes, and you seem to have the makings of exactly the sort of fight which can create legit momentum for the winner.
Is there a method to Angela Hill’s madness?
If it feels like we’ve been writing about Angela Hill a lot in this space, well … we have. Hill (11-7 MMA, 6-7 UFC) was victorious just four weeks ago at UFC Raleigh, where she earned a TKO finish of Hannah Cifers.
We noted back then that Hill has made it a point to take every short-notice fight she can get her hands on, and she’s back at it again, where she’ll fight Loma Lookboonmee (4-1 MMA, 1-0 UFC).
This is Hill’s sixth fight in just under 11 months. She’s won two straight and three of her past four. If she wins, she’s right on the edge of elite status at 115 pounds. If she loses? Well, we’ll just assume she’s going to get right back at it as soon as she can.
