UFC 224

UFC 224: Nunes vs. Pennington was a mixed martial arts event produced by the Ultimate Fighting Championship that was held on May 12, 2018, at the Jeunesse Arena in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Background

The UFC was initially targeting a UFC Women's Featherweight Championship bout between the current champion Cris Cyborg and the current UFC Women's Bantamweight Champion Amanda Nunes to take place at this event and potentially serve as the headliner. However, Cyborg was instead scheduled for a title defense at UFC 222 in March, and the plans were scrapped. In turn, it was announced on February 23 that Raquel Pennington would instead face Nunes for the bantamweight title.

A light heavyweight bout between former UFC Light Heavyweight Championship title challengers Volkan Oezdemir and Glover Teixeira was briefly linked to take place at the event. However, Oezdemir was pulled from that pairing in favor of a matchup with former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Maurício Rua the following week at UFC Fight Night: Maia vs. Usman.

At the weigh-ins, Mackenzie Dern weighed in at 123 pounds, seven pounds over the strawweight non-title fight upper limit of 116 pounds. As a result, the bout proceeded at catchweight, and Dern was fined 30% of her purse which went to her opponent Amanda Cooper.

Results

Bonus awards

The following fighters were awarded $50,000 bonuses:

• Fight of the Night: Kelvin Gastelum vs. Ronaldo Souza
• Performance of the Night: Lyoto Machida and Aleksei Oleinyk

Aftermath

This event tied the record, with UFC Fight Night: Rockhold vs. Bisping, UFC 281 and UFC Fight Night: Imavov vs. Borralho for having the most finishes on a single modern UFC card with 11 finishes.