UFC 328 Fight Card: Chimaev vs Strickland and more

UFC 328 Main Events Poster

UFC 328 takes place at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey this weekend (Saturday, May 9, 2026), and it’s one of the most loaded cards of the year, with two championship belts on the line, a heavyweight collision with title implications, and a stacked undercard.

Main Event: Chimaev vs. Strickland – Middleweight Title Fight

Khamzat “Borz” Chimaev (15-0-0) puts his UFC Middleweight Championship on the line for the first time after a historic title-winning performance at UFC 319, where he set a UFC record with 529 total strikes landed and 12 takedowns against Dricus du Plessis. The challenger, Sean Strickland (30-7-0), is no stranger to Newark, it’s where he delivered one of the biggest statement wins of his career, and he heads into this fight ranked #3 in the division with the longest average fight time in UFC Middleweight history at 17:47.

Tale of the Tape

StatKhamzat ChimaevSean Strickland
Record15-0-030-7-0
Sig. Strikes Landed/Min4.04High volume boxer
Striking Accuracy60%~42%
Takedown Average5.29/15 minSprawl-heavy
Takedown Defense85%Tested at elite level
Submission Average1.8/15 min4 career subs
Finish Rate80% (KO+Sub)53% (KO+Sub)

Co-Main Event: Van vs. Taira – Flyweight Title

Undefeated flyweight champion Joshua Van (16-2-0) makes his first title defense against Japan’s Tatsuro Taira (18-1-0) in what is arguably the most technically fascinating bout on the card. Van is a finishing machine ,8 KO/TKOs and 2 submissions, while Taira is a submission specialist averaging 1.67 submission attempts per 15 minutes, the highest average on the card.

Full UFC 328 Fight Card

Main Card (Paramount+, 9 PM ET)

  • Khamzat Chimaev (c) vs. Sean Strickland – UFC Middleweight Championship
  • Joshua Van (c) vs. Tatsuro Taira – UFC Flyweight Championship
  • Alexander Volkov vs. Waldo Cortes-Acosta – Heavyweight
  • Sean Brady vs. Joaquin Buckley – Welterweight
  • King Green vs. Jeremy Stephens – Lightweight

Prelims (7 PM ET)

  • Grant Dawson vs. Mateusz Rębecki – Lightweight
  • Jim Miller vs. Jared Gordon – Lightweight
  • Joel Alvarez vs. Yaroslav Amosov – Welterweight

Early Prelims (5 PM ET)

  • Roman Kopylov vs. Marco Tulio – Middleweight
  • Pat Sabatini vs. William Gomis – Featherweight
  • Baisangur Susurkaev vs. Djorden Santos – Middleweight
  • Clayton Carpenter vs. Jose Ochoa – Flyweight
Jake Skudder
Jake Skudder

Jake is an SEO-minded Football, Combat Sports, Gaming and Pro Wrestling writer, successful Editor in Chief, Sports SEO Coordinator for NationalWorld and SEO Writer for F4Wonline.com. He has more than ten years of experience covering mixed martial arts, pro wrestling, football and gaming across a number of publications, starting at SEScoops in 2012 under the name Jake Jeremy. His work has also been featured on Wrestling Headlines, Wrestlingnewsco, HotNewHipHop, The Hard Times and Sportskeeda.

Previously, he worked as the Editor in Chief of 24Wrestling, building the site profile with a view to selling the domain, which was accomplished in 2019. Jake was previously the Editor in Chief for FightFans, a combat sports and pro wrestling site that was launched in January 2021 and broke into millions of pageviews within the first two years. He previously worked for Snack Media and their GiveMeSport site, creating Evergreen and Trending content that would deliver pageviews via Google as the UFC and MMA SEO Lead. Jake managed to take an area of GiveMeSport that had zero traction on Organic and push it to audiences across the globe. Jake also has a record of long-term video and written interview content with the likes of the Professional Fighters League, ONE and Cage Warriors, working directly with the brands to promote bouts, fighters and special events.

He previously worked for the (then) biggest independent wrestling company in the UK, PROGRESS Wrestling, as PR Head and Head of Media across the social channels of the company.