Cyrille Diabate meets Ilir Latifi when UFC returns to London in March
A pair of European light heavyweights will square off when the UFC returns to London in March.
Cyrille Diabate (19-9-1 MMA, 4-3 UFC) will take on Ilir Latifi (7-3 MMA, 0-1 UFC) at the promotion’s first “European tour†stop of 2014. UFC officials announced the bout on Thursday.
The London tour stop takes place March 8 at O2 Arena in London and will be headlined by a light heavyweight bout between Latifi teammate Alexander Gustafsson and England’s Jimi Manuwa. A rematch between Ross Pearson and Melvin Guillard also is scheduled for the event. Broadcast plans for the card have not yet been announced, but are expected to be revealed in the coming days.
Diabate will be looking to start another win streak. He had a modest two-fight run halted in February in London against Jimi Manuwa when he couldn’t continue after one round with a torn calf muscle. Prior to that, he had back-to-back wins in 2012 against Tom DeBlass and and Chad Griggs, the latter coming by first-round submission at UFC 154 in Montreal.
Latifi made his UFC debut in April on short notice when Gustafsson was forced out of his UFC on FUEL TV 9 headlining bout in his home country of Sweden thanks to a training cut the week before the fight. Latifi was called upon and was a game opponent for Gegard Mousasi, but ultimately dropped a unanimous decision. Now he’ll get another shot to stick around the UFC 11 months after that debut.
