A highly ranked heavyweight bout between Alistair Overeem and Francis Ngannou has been added to UFC 218 on Dec. 2 in Detroit.
Both sides have agreed to the fight, officials have told ESPN. It is expected to co-headline the UFC 218 pay-per-view event, which will take place at Little Caesars Arena.
Overeem (43-15), 37, is coming off a majority decision win over former champion Fabricio Werdum in July. He came up short in a UFC title bid against Stipe Miocic late last year, but he bounced back with wins over Werdum and Mark Hunt.
Fighting out of Albuquerque, New Mexico, Overeem has won six of his past seven contests.
He'll face a rising up-and-comer in Ngannou (10-1), 31, who is 5-0 in the UFC. A Cameroon native, he relocated his full-time training camp from Paris to Las Vegas earlier this year.
Ngannou hasn't fought since a first-round TKO over Andrei Arlovski in January. He was scheduled to face former champion Junior dos Santos in September, but the bout fell through when dos Santos was flagged for a potential anti-doping violation.
ESPN.com ranks Overeem and Ngannou the Nos. 2 and 7 heavyweights in the world, respectively.
The winner of this fight will be an obvious candidate to potentially challenge Miocic for the UFC title. Miocic hasn't fought since UFC 211 in May.
Information from KweseESPN reporter Francis Okupa was used in this report.
