Garbrandt’s bantamweight return gets a new date

Cody Garbrandt was supposed to fight Rani Yahya in July.

Cody Garbrandt has struggled since losing his UFC bantamweight title to T.J. Dillashaw in 2017. Prior to that Garbrandt was an 11-0 fighter coming off an impressive championship winning performance over Dominick Cruz.

After being TKO’d by Dillashaw in the second round, Garbrandt was handed an immediate rematch. That ended in a first round KO. In 2019 Garbrandt suffered his third stoppage loss in a row, a first round TKO to Pedro Munhoz.

Garbrandt tasted success after that fight, by KO’ing Raphael Assuncao at 2020’s UFC 250. That was his first win in over three years.

Since then Garbrandt dropped a decision to Rob Font and was then TKO’d by Kai Kara-France. The loss to Kara-France was Garbrandt’s flyweight debut.

After that short stop at flyweight, Garbrandt announced his intention to return to his more familiar bantamweight division.

He was supposed to fight Rani Yahya in July. However, that fight was cancelled after Yahya suffered a neck injury.

But it seems as if the Brazilian submission specialist has recovered. According to MMA Mania, who spoke to a source with knowledge of the situation, Garbrandt vs. Yahya is back on.

That outlet has reported that the fight is now scheduled for UFC on ESPN+ 69 on October 1. At this time of writing no venue for that event has been announced.

Former ADCC champion Yahya is currently on a three fight unbeaten streak. He won his last two fights, versus Kang Kyung-ho and Ray Rodriguez, and drew versus Enrique Barzola.

Before that he lost a unanimous decision to Ricky Simon. Yahya owns 13 UFC wins in total, including victories over Luke Sanders and Mike Brown.

The October 1 event is expected to feature strawweight contenders Mackenzie Dern and Yan Xiaonan in the main event. Other bouts announced for that card include Brendan Allen vs. Krzysztof Jotko, Randy Brown vs. Francisco Trinaldo and Vinc Pichel vs. Jesse Ronson.