UFC 281 takes place Saturday at Madison Square Garden in New York. The main card airs on pay-per-view following prelims on ESPNews and early prelims on ESPN+.

Kicking off the main card in a fashion that Joe Silva would approve of is a lightweight battle between Dan Hooker and Claudio Puelles.

Perhaps it’s my admitted bias toward older fighters being counted out by the public, but I believe that Edgar has a shot to leave this brutal sport on a win. Gutierrez is an excellent kicker who has quietly improved his counter wrestling and boxing in recent years, I just suspect that Edgar’s propensity to parlay caught kicks into takedowns will be a much more tangible path to victory here than it was against Marlon Vera.

In one of the harder fights to feel confident about on this card, Dustin Poirier will do battle with Michael Chandler at 155 pounds.

The co-main event for UFC 281 features a strawweight title fight between Carla Esparza and Zhang Weili. As stated in my in-depth breakdown, do not be surprised to see Esparza test Zhang’s wrestling defense early and often. And if Zhang has failed to improve her getup game that was lacking back at UFC 268.

The main event in The Garden features a middleweight title fight between two high-level strikers who share a history that stems back to their days on the kickboxing circuit. As I lay out in my in-depth breakdown, I believe that the context of their matches, as well as Alex Pereira’s kickboxing career, is relevant to understanding the matchup at hand.