Urijah Faber and Jeff Curran will be meeting in a rematch under Combat Jiu-Jitsu rules in the main event of A1 Combat 21 on May 25th, 2024. This match is actually a very long time in the making, as Faber and Curran first met in an MMA fight all the way back in 2007 when the two men were still competing for WEC. Both men were true pioneers in the lightest weight classes of the sport, as they were both fighting at a time when there were no opportunities for bantamweights or featherweights in the UFC.
At that point in time, WEC was the biggest stage that either of these men could fight on without being forced to move up to lightweight. Faber was the king at featherweight in 2007, as he had held the WEC title for a little over a year and already had 3 title-defenses with all 3 fights ending in submission. His professional MMA record was 19-1 and he held wins over some of the greatest fighters in the history of his weight class already, like Dominick Cruz and Bibiano Fernandes. Curran on the other hand was even more of a veteran competitor and he had traveled all around the world to amass a 31-8-1 professional record with wins over elite competitors like Baret Yoshida.
Jeff Curran then challenged Urijah Faber for the featherweight title at WEC 31, and Faber not only won the match but he also became the first person to submit Curran in professional MMA other than with strikes. Although Curran wasn’t successful, he went on to amass a 36-18-1 record and retired as one of the legends of the lighter weight classes. Faber wasn’t able to become a champion again when the UFC did introduce divisions under lightweight, but he too retired as a legend with a 35-11 record and was even inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame.
Now almost two decades later Faber and Curran are going to be settling the score with a rematch, although this time it will be under Combat Jiu-Jitsu rules as both men have retired from MMA. They will be meeting in the main event of a card put together by Faber’s own combat sports promotion, A1 Combat. Faber has plenty of experience in Combat Jiu-Jitsu in recent years and while Curran hasn’t competed as often, he’s still a phenomenal grappler with a fifth degree BJJ black belt under Pedro Sauer.
A1 Combat announced the news that Urijah Faber and Jeff Curran would be meeting in a rematch under Combat Jiu-Jitsu rules in a recent post to their official Instagram account:
https://www.instagram.com/p/C5JuR4hvkF0/
