Some great news for Irish MMA has emerged on Friday as the doubt surrounding the future of Joseph Duffy appears to have been resolved.
After an impressive decision victory over Reza Madadi back in March, the last fight on his initial 5-fight deal with the UFC, Duffy was free to test the market for a new deal and was believed to be in discussions with Bellator, but it appears as though the UFC have returned with a better deal as Ariel Helwani reported on Thursday that an agreement had been reached.
Breaking: @Duffy_MMA has signed a new 7-fight contract with the UFC, per his manager @GrahamBoylan. More shortly.
— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) July 13, 2017
Duffy's UFC record stands at 4-1 from the five fights on his initial contract, with his only loss coming via decision to Dustin Poirier, so if he were to leave the organisation it would have left a sense of 'what if', although he likely would have been given a heavy promotional push by Bellator if he had joined the likes of Rory MacDonald and Gegard Mousasi in ditching the world's biggest MMA organization.
Instead, we can look forward to some exciting fights in the lightweight division and will surely see him fight again before the end of the year.
He has made great progress since linking up with Firas Zahabi at Tristar in Montreal, so hopefully he continues to put in impressive performances in the octagon, and hopefully the UFC come back to Dublin and give him the headline event he unluckily missed out on in October 2015
