It’s just been announced that Craig Jones will take on Felipe Pena in the main event of UFC Fight Pass Invitational 4, which is set to take place on June 29th, 2023. The initial announcement was made by Dana White, and he also confirmed that the co-main event for the fourth edition of his grappling promotion will be a battle between two UFC veterans in Anthony Smith and Glover Teixeira. Both of these matches are going to be pretty interesting, and for very different reasons.
Craig Jones v Felipe Pena is one of the best possible matches to make in the world of professional grappling right now, as both men are among the most impressive grapplers on the planet. It’s actually a match that fans might have been able to see at ADCC 2022 if not for some extenuating circumstances. Jones has historically competed at 88kg at the world’s most prestigious no gi grappling tournament but in 2022 he decided to move up to 99kg to swap places with one of his teammates, Izaak Michell.
That decision should have put him in the same division as Pena, who won a pair of silver medals at 99kg in 2015 and 2017. This didn’t come to pass though, as Pena also moved up in weight to the over 99kg division in order to have a chance of meeting Gordon Ryan. While the co-main event might not be as exciting on paper for grappling fans, it will no doubt deliver plenty of action once the two men meet on the mats. Both Teixeira and Smith are known for fan-friendly styles throughout their MMA careers and both men are bound to give it everything they have in order to come away with the win.
Dana White made the announcement that Craig Jones v Felipe Pena would headline the upcoming UFC Fight Pass Invitational on June 29th, 2023 in a recent post to the promotion’s official Instagram account:
