Preview: UFC 298 ‘Volkanovski vs. Topuria’

Welterweights
Geoff Neal (15-5) vs. Ian Garry (13-0)
Odds: Garry (-225), Neal (+185)

Talk surrounding Garry has mostly concerned his personal life in recent months, but that mostly distracts from the fact that he's one of the brightest young talents in the sport. Signed by the UFC at 23 years old back in 2021, the Irishman already had nothing to prove on the regional scene by that point; in two years and change, "The Future" showed an ability to win fights either as a long striker with some knockout power or as a control-heavy grappler. And if anything, Garry has done nothing but raise his game over the course of his six fights in the UFC. Garry's upright striking style has gotten him tagged hard a few times, but past that there's been little adversity and a whole ton of impressive moments; Garry's shown an ability to both come into a fight with a winning gameplan and adapt as his fights go on, something extremely rare for a fighter so young. And that was all on display in his last two fights of 2023; Garry called his shot ahead of time before scoring a first-round knockout of Daniel Rodriguez with a head kick, then outmaneuvered and plugged away for a one-sided decision win over perennial tough out Neil Magny. After an illness took him out of a fight with Vicente Luque this past December, Garry makes his return after six months for a fun pairing against Neal, a grudge match buoyed by some Garry trash talk when the two were briefly matched up for a fight over the summer. Coming out of 2019, Neal looked like a potential title contender after a breakout year; he kicked off the year with a decision win over Belal Muhammad that has done nothing but age well in the meantime, then capped things off with a quick and brutal knockout of the historically durable Mike Perry. But instead of launching towards greatness in 2020, Neal's career mostly went sideways in the next few years; Neal suffered a life-threatening infection prior to his next bout, and then had a combination of understandably flat performances and middling success until 2022. But when Neal finally regained his form, the results were electric; he was shockingly the first man to knock out Luque, using his hand speed to consistently beat the Brazilian to the literal punch before ending things in brutal fashion. Unfortunately, Neal had the bad luck of running into Kazakh buzzsaw Shavkat Rakhmonov in his last fight - though he did put up a tough fight in a solid showing - before getting this chance at upending Garry's hype train. The dynamic here is fairly clear, as this looks like Garry's fight to lose; Neal's dangerous but he's mostly a headhunter, and Garry's shown both the skill and proclivity to be able to outmaneuver the American for fifteen minutes. But the fascinating thing is that even at his best, Garry is still prone to overestimating his own defensive vision at times, which can get him hurt; Jordan Williams and Kenan Song didn't have the power or skill to finish the job, but if Neal can stun Garry in similar fashion, that figures to lead to a knockout. But at the end of the day, the likeliest scenario is still the Irishman coasting out a victory, even if this figures to be a tense affair; the pick is Garry via decision.

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Volkanovski vs. Topuria
Whittaker vs. Costa
Neal vs. Garry
Dvalishvili vs. Cejudo
Hernandez vs. Kopylov
The Prelims