Jeremy Stephens to fight Drakkar Klose at lightweight on April 17

UFC Veteran Jeremy Stephens will be fighting at lightweight and will make his divisional return on April 17 against Drakkar Klose at UFC Fight Night.

Stephens vs. Klose has been added to the UFC Fight Night card on April 17. That event is headlined by middleweights Robert Whittaker and Paulo Costa. Stephens will be moving back up to 155lbs, which was his original weight class in the UFC.

He has been competing at featherweight for the past seven years but is going to move back to lightweight for this bout. It’s unknown if this is a permanent move for Stephens or if he’s just taking the fight because it was available and he likes the matchup.

After a knockout loss to Yves Edwards in 2012, he moved down to the featherweight division, where rattled off three wins before his first stumble. From there, scorecards were mostly the problem for him, who lost seven of his 145-pound bouts when decisions went the other way. In the past three years, however, he has been stopped twice, once via body shot against ex-champ Jose Aldo and most recently via knockout in a fight against Calvin Kattar. At UFC 249 this past May, Kattar stopped him with a brutal elbow and punches.

Stephens (28-18 MMA, 15-17 UFC) will look to pick up his first victory in six outings. He’s gone 0-4 with one no contest, a skid dating back to July 2018. He was booked to fight Arnold Allen this past November but withdrew due to injury.

Klose (11-2-1 MMA, 5-2 UFC) has not competed since UFC 248 in March 2020. He is coming off of a brutal KO loss to Beneil Dariush in his last fight but had won three straight fights before that. Overall, this should be a very fun fight against Stephens. He was scheduled to fight Luis Pena on Feb. 20, but the fight was canceled hours before the event when Pena tested positive for COVID-19.

Jeremy is a veteran of this sport, and he is desperately trying to get back in the win column, and if you know the man you know, he is going out there to make a statement in the already stacked lightweight division.