Following UFC 296 withdrawal, Ian Garry slated to face Geoff Neal at UFC 299

Unfortunately for us fight fans, no. 10 ranked UFC welterweight contender Ian Garry was forced from his clash against no. 9 ranked Vicente Luque last night at UFC 296 courtesy of a bout with pneumonia he suffered.

It doesn’t appear he’ll be out of the cage for long however, as he already has another bout lined up, and he won’t be facing Luque.

Instead, Garry will be meeting the only man to ever knock Luque out in his 32-fight career, no. 8 ranked Geoff Neal.

This bout is slated to go down on March 9, 2024, live from the Kaseya Center in Miami, Florida, at UFC 299.

It’s a bit surprising the UFC brass didn’t try and keep the Garry versus Luque bout moving forward, but this is also an intriguing matchup. Not many welterweights hit harder than Luque, however, Neal may be one of the very few on that short list.

In contrary to being the only man to knock Luque out in MMA competition, he’s also the only man to knock Mike Perry out, doing so in just 90 seconds four years and three days ago back in 2019, though he will come into the contest off a loss to undefeated finisher Shavkat Rakhmonov.

Garry on the other hand has been perfect thus far into his 13-fight career, going 13-0, claiming the Cage Warriors welterweight strap in just his seventh professional fight, and going 6-0 with three knockouts thus far into his UFC tenure.

Who do you see coming out on top of this welterweight scrap going down at UFC 299?

Full UFC 299 fight card is as follows:

Sean O’Malley (17-1) vs Marlon Vera (21-8-1)

Katlyn Chookagian (18-5) vs Maycee Barber (13-2)

Curtis Blaydes (17-4) vs Jailton Almeida (20-2)

Mateusz Gamrot (23-2) vs Rafael dos Anjos (32-15)

Pedro Munhoz (20-8) vs Kyler Phillips (11-2)

Michael Page (21-2) vs Kevin Holland (25-10)

Petr Yan (16-5) vs Song Yadong (21-7-1)

Ian Garry (13-0) vs Geoff Neal (15-5)

Gilbert Burns (22-6) vs Jack Della Maddalena (16-2)

Lauren Murphy (16-6) vs Karine Silva (17-4)

CJ Vergara (12-4-1) vs Assu Almabayev (18-2)

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Brady Ordway

I became a fan of combat sports when I was 12 years old. I was scrolling through the channels and landed upon Versus, where WEC was televised. Urijah Faber fought Jens Pulver for the second time that night. That's the first fight I ever saw, and I was immediately hooked. So eventually, I began covering the sport in the fourth quarter of 2018, and have since started writing about animals as well. If you'd like to see those pieces, be sure to check out learnaboutnature.com!

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