Golden: UFC and Texas' Moody Center are a match made in fisticuffs

The Moody Center walls have already witnessed a Hall of Fame grouping of musical talent in Year One.

George Strait, Willie Nelson, the Eagles, the Who and a personal childhood favorite, Earth, Wind & Fire, have played to standing ovations in the $380 million facility on the Texas campus, but things are taking a turn this weekend.

We all love good tunes, but those sweet notes are about to be replaced by the sound of bodies being slammed to the mat and gloved fists colliding with faces as a houseful of passionate fight fans scream for more.

Bring on the fisticuffs.

Three years after the third and final UFC card at the venerable Erwin Center, Moody will get its first taste of combat sports Saturday night with an action-packed card that will be nationally televised on ESPN and the ESPN+ app.

If you like brawls, don’t blink during the main event, pitting 145-pounders Calvin Kattar and explosive knockout artist Josh Emmett.

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Styles make fights, and Kattar, at nearly 6 feet tall, will try to keep Emmett, a powerful wrestler, at bay in a bout that promises some big shots. He’d love to have an easier night at the office than we witnessed five months ago when he decisioned Giga Chikadze in a bloodfest where the fighters took turns leading with their chins.

With the powerful Emmett, Kattar has to avoid getting lured into a firefight, but anyone who has watched him over the years knows he's rarely in a bad fight. In January 2021, he took a five-round bludgeoning at the hands of the faster, more active Max Holloway in Abu Dhabi.

These fighters can both take a punch, so expect fireworks.

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“It can go one of two ways,” Kattar said. “Either one of us gets it done early and makes it look easy, or it becomes a five-round banger.”

It’s a main event that will have the locals coming back for more, especially if someone gets stretched. Austin as a fight city doesn’t match up with meccas like Vegas or New York, though Boxing Hall of Famer Ann Wolfe, two-time world champion Jesús Chávez and former world No. 1 junior middleweight contender James Kirkland did their best to keep the spotlight on our city over the past 20 years.

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While boxing continues to draw great numbers on the major pay-per-view cards, UFC has consistently grown its product over nearly 30 years and has passed the sweet science by sheer volume of cards and the fact that UFC President Dana White finds a way to fight the best against the best, whereas boxing promoters often engage in political battles, which hurts the quality of events.

White, the consummate promoter, waded through the pandemic in 2020 with three successful pay-per-view cards held with no live fans, including UFC 249 in Florida, which drew 700,000 buys on ESPN+, according to the Sports Business Journal.

This isn’t a pay-per-view, but if Austin brings a big crowd, then bigger names could come this way in the future. The fourth-fastest-growing city in America has a constant stream of young professionals between the ages of 25 and 44 moving here, making the ATX and Moody Center a likely long-term pairing.

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More than 8,000 fans attended the first UFC event at the Erwin Center in the fall of 2012. On a star-studded night that included celebrity appearances by the Undertaker — a WWE legend who lives in Austin — and rap icon Hammer, Brazilian lightweight Charles Oliveira earned a $40,000 bonus for performance of the night when he won via stoppage.

Two years later, featherweight Frankie Edgar submitted Cub Swanson one day after visiting the American-Statesman and telling me he wanted to be the first to stop an opponent who had said earlier in the week that he “wouldn’t mind punching” Edgar.

Of the action-packed fights on Saturday's card, the middleweight clash between St. Louis’ Joaquin Buckley, 28, and former training partner Albert Duraev, a 33-year-old Russian grappler and winner of 10 straight fights, is one to watch.

“This is my first time in Austin,” Buckley told me Wednesday. “It’s going to be a good time for me going out there. This will be my first live arena with the UFC with it being packed, and I know Austin is going to come out and have a good time with the UFC. I’m just excited to show not just the world on TV, but the people live because they will never forget what I’m going to bring to the cage.”

While Buckley is a youngster with title aspirations, middleweight Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone is at the tail end of a 52-fight career. The longtime fan favorite, who scored a first-round knockout of Hawaiian Yancy Medeiros in Austin back in 2018, will fight Joe Lauzon. Their bout was originally scheduled for May 7 in Phoenix, but the usually reliable Cowboy pulled out with what White called food poisoning.

Cerrone, 39, is a media favorite who speaks in the most colorful language of anyone in the sport, but he has lost five straight — the longest losing streak of his career — which is a clear signal that the end is near. He said Wednesday that his goal is to retire with 50 combined fights in the UFC and WEC. He says he is currently at 48, though the UFC lists his overall record at 36-16.

“When I walk out there Saturday, I’m setting records again,” Cerrone said. “The only thing cooler than setting records is breaking your own. It’s a cool feeling. (I’m just) setting so many that the young kids have got a hell of a job to try to catch me.”

Live Nation was smart to continue the cultivation of a successful partnership with UFC. Shoot, it will be great to see some nice scraps downtown that don’t involve sloppy drunks flailing away at one another on Dirty Sixth after last call.

“It’s cool being in Texas,” Cerrone said. “We will have a lot of people wearing Cowboy hats and screaming. It’s another live card, and I’m glad the world is coming back around. It’s fun.”

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: UFC and Moody Center partner on big fight card Saturday