A potential bantamweight title eliminator between
Henry
Cejudo and
Merab
Dvalishvili
has been booked for
UFC 298.
Multiple outlets confirmed the pairing after Cejudo initially
announced the bout on his
YouTube channel
Sunday. UFC 298 takes place on Feb. 17 at the Honda Center in
Anaheim, California, and is headlined by a featherweight title tilt
between
Alexander
Volkanovski and
Ilia
Topuria.
Cejudo returned from a three-year retirement at UFC 288 this past
May, where he dropped a split decision to
Aljamain
Sterling in a bantamweight championship clash. The Olympic gold
medalist had been unbeaten in six previous Octagon appearances from
2017 to 2020. “The Messenger” owns notable wins over the likes of
Dominick
Cruz,
Marlon
Moraes,
T.J.
Dillashaw,
Demetrious
Johnson,
Sergio
Pettis and
Jussier
Formiga, to name a few.
Dvalishvili will take a nine-fight promotional winning streak into
the matchup with Cejudo. In his last outing, “The Machine”
outdueled ex-champ
Petr Yan over
five rounds in the UFC Fight Night 221 main event on March 11.