International Fight Week is the UFC’s Super Bowl.
Every year, a scorching midsummer Las Vegas week is dedicated to celebrating the biggest mixed martial arts promotion on the planet.
The week features fighter meet-and-greets, Hall of Fame inductions and caps off with a card at T-Mobile Arena.
It’s one of a few guaranteed card locations every year, along with a November card at Madison Square Garden and an October visit to Abu Dhabi.
Besides the three centennial cards, the IFW is usually regarded as the most important card year in and year out.
It’s formerly been headlined by the sport’s biggest superstars — Conor McGregor, Jon Jones and Alex Pereira, to name a few.
Yet, we sit two months away from UFC 317 — what’s supposed to be this year’s biggest card — and there seems to be no main event available.
Not a single fight has been confirmed.
Since Jones’ last fight, many assumed the UFC was waiting until IFW to give interim heavyweight champ Tom Aspinall his shot at the belt.
Islam Makhachev has Ilia Topuria and Arman Tsarukyan as potential next opponents, but Dana White has stated that Tsarukyan won’t be fighting for the title next. Makhachev’s camp seems to be opposed to Topuria earning the shot.
Topuria and Makhachev revealed this week that they’ve entered fight camp. A source close to Topuria also mentioned that his fight will be at UFC 317 and for the undisputed title, but did not specify if it was for a vacant belt or against Makhachev.
A fight seems close to being booked, but there’s still a lot of uncertainty with just two months to the card.
There are options for the sport’s biggest names right now, but they seem to be dragging their feet.
Middleweight champion Dricus du Plessis was eventually assumed by most fans to be the headliner against Khamzat Chimaev, but he was rumored to be injured while training for the fight.
Chimaev’s social media reaction suggested that the fight had fallen through as other middleweight contenders clamored for a shot at an interim title fight.
du Plessis shut down the injury rumors after a few days of chaos and explained that he would announce his next fight soon.
After UFC Kansas City on Saturday, Dana White confirmed that Chimaev would fight du Plessis next, but said that it was not the headliner for UFC 317, meaning there will likely only be two champions available come June 28.
Four champions will be recovering from their previous fights, heavyweight is an impossible logjam and middleweight is reserved for later in the year.
Flyweight champ Alexandre Pantoja is available, as are his contenders, but a flyweight main event is not the ideal for an IFW card.
It could serve as a good co-main event for a lightweight title bout, which seems like the only other possible fight. There are two deserving flyweight contenders on the card available as replacements, so this booking makes sense.
The lightweight-flyweight title bout pairing would meet the IFW standard, but anything else would probably fall short of expectations.
The UFC has thrown together amazing cards last-minute before — even for last year’s IFW card — but there’s a different level of hopelessness surrounding this one.
The expectation is that White announces the full lineup after UFC 315 May 10, but that leaves just seven weeks for fighters to train for some of the most high-profile, anticipated matchups of the year.
It feels like the UFC is on the verge of letting some all-time matchups slip through their fingers, and IFW may be their last chance to salvage them.
With time running out, the UFC needs to deliver a card that will define the year, for better or for worse.
