Cathal Pendred (13-2-1) has finally succeeded in his quest to fight in the UFC. The 26-year-old first made an appeal to Dana White et al to be signed to fight on the Boston card last year alongside his teammate Conor McGregor immediately after he beat Che Mills in Cage Warriors. Unfortunately he didn’t get the call-up.
Then earlier this year instead of waiting for the UFC to come to him, Pendred went to the UFC to apply for a place on The Ultimate Fighter series 19. After months of “is he or isn’t he on it” the Dubliner vacated his Cage Warriors title and announced that he was in the house. In last nights episode of TUF Pendred lost a razor-thin split decision to Chris Weidman’s teammate Eddie Gordan.
Disaster? Not really, every cloud has its silver lining and the UFC earlier today announced that Cathal Pendred will make his full UFC debut in Dublin on July 19th. His opponent will be the undefeated Mike King (5-0), who was a fellow Team Penn fighter on TUF.
The UFC also revealed that the fight will be at middleweight. The Dubliner, who mostly fights at welterweight, appeared on TUF as a middleweight. It is expected that after this fight he will go back down to his favoured weight of 170lbs.
As it stands Conor McGregor, Neil Seery, Norman Parke, Paddy Holohan and now Cathal Pendred are the Irish MMA representatives on the UFC Dublin card. Gunnar Nelson is also an honorary member of Irish MMA after spending a lot of time training in Dublin and under John Kavanagh.
