A heavyweight bout between top-five contenders Jailton Almeida and Alexander Volkov is expected to take place at UFC 321 in the United Arab Emirates later this year.

Almeida posted on social media Wednesday evening that he has “signed the contract” and added that the matchup will be a title eliminator bout.

The UFC has yet to make an official announcement regarding the matchup. Almeida’s confirmation comes following an initial report from MMAFighting’s Guilherme Cruz.

UFC 321 is scheduled to take place Oct. 25 at Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi, the organization announced earlier this month.

Almeida is 8-1 in the UFC and coming off back-to-back stoppage wins over Alexander Romanov last year and Serghei Spivac in January. The 34-year-old from Brazil is currently the No. 5 contender in the division. His only loss since 2018 was to current No. 4 contender Curtis Blaydes 16 months ago.

Volkov is the No. 2-ranked contender coming off a controversial split decision loss to No. 1-ranked contender Ciryl Gane in December. The 36-year-old Russian had won four consecutive fights prior to that disputed loss to Gane.

Tom Aspinall is the current heavyweight champion. It is unclear at this time who Aspinall’s next title defence will be against.

The UFC held two events in Abu Dhabi in 2024: A Fight Night in August headlined by Umar Nurmagomedov defeating Cory Sandhagen in a bantamweight title eliminator, and UFC 308 in October, which featured Ilia Topuria knocking out Max Holloway to defend the featherweight title.

UFC 321 will be the 22nd total UFC event held in Abu Dhabi since 2010. There have been 20 events there to date, with an upcoming Fight Night event scheduled later this month on July 26.