Ranking all seven fights at the UFC White House event - ESPN

The UFC will put on one of its most anticipated fight cards of the year this week, as the promotion hosts an event on the White House's South Lawn on Sunday night.

In the main event, Ilia Topuria, ESPN's No. 2-ranked pound-for-pound fighter, will put the lightweight title on the line against Justin Gaethje, who beat Paddy Pimblett by unanimous decision to earn an interim title and a shot at Topuria. «El Matador» enters the fight with an unbeaten 17-0 record and has knocked out each of the UFC all-timers he has faced in his past three outings (Alexander Volkanovski, Max Holloway and Charles Oliveira, respectively).

Despite Topuria's impressive run and the title stakes in his matchup against Gaethje, their fight might not be the most anticipated bout on the card. Here is ESPN's ranking of the seven UFC Freedom 250 fights, as voted on by a panel of experts including Carlos Contreras Legaspi, Andrew Davis, Andreas Hale, Brett Okamoto and Jeff Wagenheim. The ranking is based on style matchups, pedigree, stakes, potential storylines, prefight hype and potential for jaw-dropping moments.

The job of the fighters filling the first slot on the first fight card at the White House is very simple: Start this thing off with a bang. Set the tone for the rest of the night. Lopes and Garcia were chosen for this exact spot because of how they fight. There are a lot of divisional implications to this matchup as well, and we can talk about those later. For now, all you need to know is this fight was built to be a fireworks show. — Okamoto

If there's an American sports hero on the White House card, Nickal is the guy. He's a three-time NCAA Division I wrestling national champion, and even though he has just nine MMA fights under his belt,