The UFC returns to Singapore this weekend with the action taking place on a rare Saturday morning in America. The headliner sees former UFC featherweight champion Max Holloway battle The Korean Zombie — Chan Sung Jung — in a five-round encounter after both fighters called for the matchup earlier this year.

A few years ago, this would have been a dream fight given how both fighters are all-action brawlers with granite chins. However, having it take place in 2023 is not only a mismatch — it could end up being a massive mistake from the UFC's part.

For starters, let's consider the fact that it's a fight Zombie's team didn't even want for himself — they actually wanted him to have an easier matchup. However, since the featherweight veteran particularly called for a fight with Holloway, they went along with his wishes.

“It doesn't matter if he's a 10/1 favorite or an underdog, he's still gonna go out there and do his thing,” Zombie's coach Eddie Cha said earlier this month. “But I don't think there's any pressure on him at all. He has everything to win — I think Holloway's ranked number one right now — and he has nothing to really lose.

“More importantly, this is the fight he wanted. We all wanted an easier fight for him as he's going to the tail-end of his career. But he's always looked up to Max and this is the fight he wanted. I said, ‘You've earned that right to kinda pick and choose who you want to fight with,' and I think Max wanted it too.”

It's never a good sign when your own team prefers for you to fight someone else, and let's consider why. While Zombie is not on a massive losing streak by any means — he's only lost two of his last three — his last outing was particularly noteworthy. It was a featherweight title fight against pound-for-pound great Alexander Volkanovski back in April last year.

Zombie absorbed 138 significant strikes — with 102 to the head — before he was eventually stopped by TKO in the fourth round. It was a completely one-sided fight where Volkanovski even had to ask Zombie if he was good to go at the start of the round. Now, there's no shame in losing to Volkanovski as the Aussie still remains undefeated at 145 pounds and has a huge claim to being the greatest featherweight of all time.

However, Zombie surprisingly looked very old and slow right from the get-go. It was especially surprising given how good he looked against Dan Ige nearly a year prior. And while others have also been outclassed by Volkanovski such as Yair Rodriguez and Brian Ortega, they never looked as bad as Zombie did on the night.

It makes sense in many ways. After all, Zombie is 36 and turns 37 in March. He's clearly past his prime and he's only competed three times since the start of 2020. That's a lot of inactivity. And now, after another 16 months of inactivity following the beating he took from Volkanovski, he faces arguably the best volume puncher in the UFC in Max Holloway.

Holloway lacks the power of Volkanovski, but he makes up for it with his relentless cardio and voluminous punches. This is a man who set the record for most significant strikes landed in a UFC fight with 445 against Calvin Kattar. And that was Kattar in his prime. Holloway also landed over 200 significant strikes against Ortega and Rodriguez.

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With his lack of knockout power, that only means fighters like Zombie will absorb more damage over the course of a contest. And let's not forget — this is a five-rounder. If Zombie is able to take the punches and the referee doesn't step in, we could be in for another record-setting performance from Max Holloway who is not only five years younger, but still at the top of his game going by his win over Arnold Allen earlier this year.

That's bad news for Zombie as he could be absorbing a lot of damage which will not be good for his long-term health whatsoever. UFC president Dana White was against Conor McGregor fighting Diego Sanchez, he's called for Chris Weidman to retire and previously did the same for BJ Penn. Surely, the alarm bells should have rang for this mismatch as well even if Zombie's situation is not like the previously mentioned fighters. Even when you look at the rankings, it's No. 1 against No. 8.

Now, maybe Zombie will prove everyone wrong and maybe it was just a very bad off night for him against Volkanovski. Perhaps, he'll even do the unthinkable and defeat Max Holloway. After all, we've seen some massive upsets in recent months. But the chances seem extremely low. MMA Twitter doesn't seem too confident either as there have been plenty of memes where fans are fearful of the damage Holloway could inflict on Zombie.

Hopefully for Zombie's sake, he comes out of the contest taking as little damage as possible and the fight as a whole doesn't turn out to be hard viewing.