With UFC 281 officially in the books, it’s time to get a look ahead to next weekend with UFC Vegas 65, which will be headlined by a battle of top heavyweights in Derrick Lewis and Sergei Spivac.

While that fight should be a pretty good matchup between a former UFC heavyweight title contender and a fighter who is currently trying to chart his own path towards a title shot, the rest of this card leaves quite a bit to be desired overall in my opinion.

There a few solid fighters sprinkled throughout, as well as a couple of fights that could be interesting, but this card definitely isn’t one of the more heavily stacked lineups that the UFC matchmakers have given us in recent months.

There might not be many household names on this card for the average MMA fan other than Lewis, but hopefully there will be a handful of fighters on this card looking to make some impressive statements with the opportunities they are being given here.

Ion Cutelaba and Kennedy Nzechukwu should be an exciting fight, but with all due respect to both fighters, it has no business being the co-main event of a card. With that said, it should still be an entertaining fight with a pretty solid chance of seeing a finish.

Waldo Cortes-Acosta will be making his second UFC appearance after winning a contract on DWCS earlier this year and will be taking on Chase Sherman, who is coming off a win in his most recent fight but had dropped the previous four fights prior to that.

Andre Fialho and Muslim Salikhov should be a fun fight with both fighters looking to bounce back after suffering knockout losses in their most recent fights.

Jack Della Maddalena will certainly be looking to put on an impressive performance as he looks to potentially receive a quality matchup at UFC 284 in Australia in a few months’ time if he can come away from Las Vegas with a dominant victory.

With all six of the fights currently scheduled for the main card being contested at welterweight or higher, I think there is a pretty solid chance that we could see a handful of highlight reel stoppages.

I have slightly lower hopes with the undercard, with all seven of the prelim fights scheduled to be contested at 135 pounds (three of them are women’s fights as well).

Those divisions historically have pretty low finish rates, but there are still a couple of fights here that have potential to possibly see finishes or at least end up being entertaining fights with both fighters looking for stoppages across the distance.

There were originally 14 fights scheduled for the event, however, William Knight was forced to recently drop out of his fight against Maxim Grishin.

Unfortunately, there won’t be a UFC event the following weekend after this card, so the next action we get to see in the octagon won’t come until December 3rd when Kevin Holland and Stephen Thompson will headline the UFC Orlando event.

Which fights are you looking forward the most on the UFC Vegas 65 lineup? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below. Be sure to check back throughout the week for our full previews, picks, and betting card for this weekend!

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