UFC 205 staff picks: With 3 title fights in New York, how many belts do we think will change hands?

At long last, after years of talking about when it finally would happen, the UFC’s debut in New York City at the famed Madison Square Garden has arrived.

UFC 205 takes place Saturday with a main card on pay-per-view following prelims on FS1 and UFC Fight Pass. In the main event, featherweight champion Conor McGregor (20-3 MMA, 8-1 UFC) will try to make history when he attempts to become the promotion’s first concurrent two-division champion. He challenges lightweight champ Eddie Alvarez (28-4 MMA, 3-1 UFC) for the 155-pound belt on a card that features three title fights.

McGregor is the favorite, and eight of our 10 MMAjunkie edtiors, writers and radio hosts are picking the brash Irishman to walk away with two belts. He was supposed to make this attempt in March at UFC 196 against then-champ Rafael dos Anjos before dos Anjos got hurt. Instead, he fought and lost to Nate Diaz in a welterweight bout. He then beat him in a rematch at UFC 202, but in the meantime, dos Anjos had lost his title to Alvarez.

In the co-feature, new champ Tyron Woodley (16-3 MMA, 6-2 UFC) puts his welterweight title on the line for the first time when he meets Stephen Thompson (13-1 MMA, 8-1 UFC), who is a 2-1 favorite. The 170-pound title tilt is a bit of a toss-up on our staff with six going with the favored challenger and four picking the champion.

UFC 205’s first title fight of the night will be between a pair of unbeaten Polish women. Strawweight champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk (12-0 MMA, 6-0 UFC) takes on Karolina Kowalkiewicz (10-0 MMA, 3-0 UFC), and is the card’s heaviest favorite with 4-1 odds. With numbers like that, it’s not surprising that nine of our 10 staff members are picking “Joanna Champion” to stay that way.

To open the main card on pay-per-view, former women’s bantamweight champ Miesha Tate (18-6 MMA, 5-3 UFC) gets back to work for the first time since losing her belt to Amanda Nunes at UFC 200 in July. She takes on Raquel Pennington (8-5 MMA, 5-2 UFC), who has won three straight fights. But that didn’t seem to matter to our pickers, who made Tate the only unanimous pick on the card at 10-0.

Yoel Romero (12-1 MMA, 7-0 UFC) will have a tough task on his hands when he meets former middleweight champion Chris Weidman (13-1 MMA, 9-1 UFC). Weidman is a New Yorker who has lobbied long and hard for MMA regulation in his home state. Now that it’s finally here, he gets a fight in Madison Square Garden like he always dreamed of, and no doubt will have the fans on his side while he tries to reestablish himself in the title fight pecking order. Our pickers overwhelmingly believe he’ll get back in the win column, taking him 9-1.

In a welterweight bout, the streaking Donald Cerrone (31-7 MMA, 18-4 UFC) was supposed to meet “TUF 17” winner Kelvin Gastelum (12-2 MMA, 7-2 UFC). But Gastelum missed weight for the third time in his past six fights at 170 pounds, and the bout against Cerrone was scrapped. Cerrone is 3-0 since losing a lightweight title shot this past December and moving up to 170 pounds and has bonuses in all three of those wins. Gastelum is a former middleweight who even had to go back up to 185 pounds temporarily after his previous infraction nearly two years ago. After starting his career 10-0, he’s been up and down his past four fights. For what it’s worth, our staff members were taking Cerrone at only a 6-4 clip.

In the MMAjunkie reader consensus picks, McGregor, Thompson, Jedrzejczyk, Weidman and Tate are the choices.

Check out all the picks above.

And for more on UFC 205, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.