Three title fights headline UFC 261 in Jacksonville, Fla., as the promotion welcomes a full crowd for the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the gold is handed out at VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena, Canadian Tristan Connelly will face American Pat Sabatini on the prelims card on TSN.

Catch the UFC 261 Prelims LIVE tonight at 8pm et/5pm pt on TSN4, TSN5 and TSN Direct.

Connelly returns to the Octagon for the first time since making an explosive UFC debut against Michel Pereira at a Vancouver Fight Night event in September of 2019.

The 27-year-old moved up to welterweight and took the fight against one of the UFC’s rising prospects on five days notice and earned a unanimous decision victory in one of the upsets of the year in 2019.

Connelly was scheduled to face Alex da Silva in April of 2020, but the event was cancelled due to the ongoing pandemic.  

Subsequently, the Victoria, B.C., native had surgery on his neck stemming from a car accident that he was involved in that predated the Pereira fight.

The Canadian, who holds a 14-6 overall professional record, will meet Bristol, Penn., native Sabatini in the featherweight division.

Sabatini will be making his UFC debut and enters on a two-fight winning streak.

He was originally supposed to face Rafael Alves at a Fight Night card in February, but his opponent missed weight by 11.5 pounds and the bout was cancelled.

Sabatini is 13-3 in his professional MMA career.

In the featured prelim bout, veteran Alex Oliveira will face Randy Brown to close out the show on TSN.

Oliveira suffered a first-round submission loss to Shavkat Rakhmonov in his last bout at UFC 254.  

The 33-year-old was riding a two-fight winning streak with victories over Max Griffin and Peter Sobotta prior to that setback.

He has a 22-9-1 professional MMA record with two no-contests.

Brown also enters the fight off a loss, suffering a KO defeat to Vicente Luque in his last outing at a Fight Night card in August of 2020.

The 30-year-old has a 12-4 record and, prior to losing to Luque, earned victories over Bryan Barberena and a performance of the night winning submission of Warlley Alves.

UFC 261 will be headlined by the welterweight title rematch between champion Kamaru Usman and challenger Jorge Masvidal.

The pair met at UFC 251 on Fight Island with the champion earning a decisive unanimous decision victory in a bout that was put together on six days notice.

In the co-main event, Zhang Weili defends the strawweight belt against former champion Rose Namajunas.

Zhang’s last title defence was a Fight of the Year war against former champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk at UFC 248.

The third title fight on the card will see dominant flyweight champion Valentina Shevchenko put her gold on the line for the fifth time as she faces former strawweight champion Jessica Andrade.

After capturing the vacant belt in Toronto, Shevchenko has turned away Jessica Eye, Liz Carmouche, Katlyn Chookagian and Jennifer Maia in title fights.​