Polaris 28 is scheduled for June 15th, 2024 and the promotion has just announced a fantastic openweight match between MMA veteran Yoel Romero and popular English grappler Owen Livesey. This was the first match that has been announced for the event, but the promotion quickly followed it up with a welterweight title-fight as well. Mateusz Szczecinski is the reigning champion in the under 77kg division and he is putting his belt on the line against exciting Australian competitor Levi Jones-Leary, who is fresh off an impressive performance at the Polaris Welterweight Grand Prix at their last event.
Although a lot of the attention is going to be on the welterweight title-fight, the openweight match will definitely be one to watch as well. Yoel Romero is known for being one of the most explosive and athletic professional MMA fighters of all time, and he has challenged for world championships in both the UFC and Bellator during his career. Although he has generally won fights with striking and hasn’t registered a single submission win, he was one of the best wrestlers on the planet at one point in time. Romero won a silver medal in freestyle wrestling at the 2000 Olympics and five world championship medals, including one gold in 1999.
There’s definitely going to be a ton of standing exchanges in the match between Yoel Romero and Owen Livesey at Polaris 28, and not just because of Romero’s background. Livesey is a commonwealth games gold medalist in Judo and a catch wrestling world champion, who most recently defended that title against Josh Barnett. Livesey definitely has the advantage over Romero in submission wrestling experience though, and hes a frequent face on the Polaris mats. Although he went out in the opening round of the absolute grand prix last year, he did register a huge win over Chris Weidman at Polaris 23 before that.
Polaris announced the openweight match between Yoel Romero and Owen Livesey and the title-fight between Mateusz Szczecinski and Levi Jones-Leary for Polaris 28 in a series of posts to their official Instagram account:
