After initially booking a women’s strawweight title fight between Valentina Shevchenko and Joanna Jedrzejczyk at UFC 231, the UFC has decided to switch things up.
Shevchenko has been pulled from UFC 231, which takes place Dec. 8 in Toronto, and will instead fight Sijara Eubanks in the main event of UFC 230, which takes place at Madison Square Garden in New York on Nov. 3.
UFC 230 also features the anticipated return of Nate Diaz as he’s set to meet Dustin Poirier in a battle of lightweight stars but the UFC never announced a headliner. The new main event is somewhat of an eyebrow-raising decision considering a Shevchenko-Eubanks matchup generates nowhere near the buzz Diaz-Poirier does, but the UFC prefers having a title fight at the top of their pay-per-view cards, which is why the audible was called.
Jedrzejczyk wrote in a lengthy Instagram post that she found out about the switch through media reports and wasn’t happy about it.
“I feel angry and sad,” she wrote. “The already signed contract on the 8th of December was ignored. They were trying to persuade me into taking the fight in November, at the same time depriving me of a chance to properly prepare for the fight during the camp.”
UFC president Dana White explained the decision in an interview with ESPN’s Brett Okamoto.
“As we moved it sooner, Joanna wasn’t ready,” White said. “Joanna wasn’t ready for that fight [date]. Valentina doesn’t care. This girl will fight tomorrow. She’s one of those [fighters] if we called her tomorrow she’d fight tomorrow and she wants to fight every month so she absolutely made sense. And we made sure that Eubanks was on weight. Sijara is close to weight and Valentina’s a beast and wanted this fight. It’s a fun fight.”
Jedrzejczyk added: “As a professional and a person who treats her life and work obligations serious, I feel truly resentful about the breach of the fight agreement. My feelings are even more intensified when I think of the obligations I had to resign from, as they would have happened in the time of my camp. I always plan everything long before a fight announcement. Once I sign the contract, there is nothing more important than fight preparations.”
Shevchenko (15-3) was all set to compete for the women’s 125-pound title at UFC 228 in September, but now-former champion Nicco Montano was hospitalized during her weight cut and later stripped of her title—a belt she never managed to defend.
Montano won the inaugural title in December with a unanimous decision win over Roxanne Modafferi at The Ultimate Fighter 26 Finale. However, she was originally scheduled to face Eubanks, who went 3-0 in the preliminary rounds of the tournament, but Eubanks was hospitalized with kidney failure stemming from her weight cut.
UFC 230 also features a rematch between former middleweight champions Luke Rockhold and Chris Weidman.
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