By Hunter Homistek

UFC 200 is upon us.

Since the promotion’s historic UFC 100 affair on July 11, 2009, fight fans and critics have been eagerly anticipating this Saturday’s event.

Boasting an estimated 1.6 million pay-per-view buys, UFC 100 set a new standard for excellence inside the eight-sided cage. The card featured Brock Lesnar and Georges St-Pierre in championship affairs. A then-rising star named Jon Jones wrecked house on the undercard. Dan Henderson unleashed the most brutal knockout of his career against Michael Bisping.

Topping all that isn’t easy.

But the UFC’s done it with July 9's UFC 200. The fight card, miraculously, didn’t disintegrate. The big fights stayed put, and we even gained an unexpected throwdown between Lesnar and Mark Hunt along the way. That’s gonna get the blood pumpin’.

For all the figures one can dish out regarding UFC 200—nine current or former champs competing, three title fights, etc.—it’s the undercard that really separates this offering.

A bout between Jim Miller and Takanori Gomi kicks off the action on UFC Fight Pass. Put another way: A matchup that could easily headline a UFC Fight Night card is the first fight of the night. And it only gets crazier from there.

Gegard Mousasi vs. Thiago Santos follows Miller vs. Gomi, then Joe Lauzon and Diego Sanchez close out the UFC Fight Pass portion of the card. Lauzon and Sanchez combined for 13 Fight of the Night awards throughout their lengthy UFC careers. Neither man will shy away from blood, nor will either accept pain and adversity as a reason to pack it in. This one will get rowdy—that’s a guarantee.

Combining these three bouts with the FOX Sports 1 portion of the card creates a lineup that could stand on its own. Two former champs in T.J. Dillashaw and Johny Hendricks compete on the undercard, while a high-profile bantamweight tilt between Cat Zingano and Julianna Pena headlines the preliminary festivities.

To keep things extra marketable, there’s a little dash of Sage Northcutt thrown into the casserole on FS1. Delicious.

This is depth we’ve never experienced in MMA. It’s here that UFC 200 separates itself from the 2009 mega-card. The UFC expertly developed its roster in the seven years since UFC 100, and now we see what happens when they really want to stack the deck.

Even more impressively, two fight cards featuring title fights take place the same week. UFC 200 isn’t loaded at the expense of everything around it—it’s going down in the middle of the best stretch of events in the company’s history.

As great as UFC 200 appears, what’s more exciting as a fight fan is this might become the norm moving forward. It could be unreasonable to expect three title fights per event regularly, but the UFC possesses the depth of talent to churn out top-to-bottom masterpieces with ease. That much is clear when looking at the bigger picture, the entire stretch of events in 2016.

UFC 100 will always hold a special place in MMA history, but UFC 200 is about to one-up it. The sport is evolving, and with that evolution comes an increase in quality. Never will that be more evident than July 9 inside Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena. The fight card might not break UFC 100’s pay-per-view record (but it won’t be surprising if it does).

It might not feature a Henderson vs. Bisping-quality knockout. It might not even feature Lesnar frothing at the mouth and shouting into a camera, demanding the world fear him for the monster he is.

But what it will feature is better: the world’s best fighter and his greatest rival. It’ll feature an undercard that smokes UFC Fight Night events. It’ll feature a guaranteed bloodbath and a chance for former champions to regain their past glory.

Until further notice, it will be the greatest fight card in UFC history.