The month of June has not gone to plan for the UFC with the final two cards of a five-event month each losing their scheduled main events due to injury and illness involving two of the sport’s biggest stars.
Conor McGregor withdrew from his UFC 303 matchup with Michael Chandler due to an undisclosed injury on the same day Khamzat Chimaev pulled out of his Fight Night five-rounder versus Robert Whittaker.
“It’s been a rough couple of weeks,” Dana White said during an appearance on The Jim Rome Show Monday. “We’ve been grinding in here but this is what we do. This is the business. People get hurt and things happen.”
The UFC president and his team of matchmakers ended up supplementing UFC 303 with a new main and co-main event. Alex Pereira vs. Jiri Prochazka plus Brian Ortega vs. Diego Lopes were added to June 29’s UFC 300 plus a new, compelling headline bout for the organization’s debut event in Saudi Arabia this weekend was booked on short notice.
Whittaker is now facing Ikram Aliskerov instead of Chimaev who has now made pulling out of scheduled main events something of a habit.
“The problem is that we really don’t know (why this keeps happening),” White told Rome. “Every time this guy gets close to a fight, like I saw video footage of him on the ground violently ill and he was hospitalized again. He hadn’t trained for three or four days or five days, I don’t know exactly what the number was, but we could not put him into a fight next weekend.”
Chimaev is undefeated in mixed martial arts and burst onto the UFC scene as a blue-chip prospect in 2020, winning three fights in his first two months with the promotion. He has only fought four times since then and only once since 2022.
“He’s been on this tear and then lately it’s been hard to get him into the Octagon,” White added. “Every time he gets close to fighting, he gets really sick. I don’t know (when he will return to competition), I don’t know what to say. It’s not like he’s over here in this country and we’ve had doctors here look at him or anything like that. He’s sort of out of touch so it’s tough to deal with.”
When asked whether McGregor will ever compete inside the UFC cage again, White responded by saying, “It’s a great question,” before adding “You never know with some of the guys that get to that level. You never know if you’re going to see them again.”
White mentioned and included heavyweight titleholder Jon Jones in that same tier of established star fighters with uncertain futures before also teasing Jones “is doing well” in his recovery from a shoulder injury and could hopefully return to action either “in the summer or in the fall.”
MORE CHANGES TO SAUDI ARABIA CARD
Chimaev being replaced by Aliskerov wasn’t the only change to Saturday afternoon’s card from Kingdom Arena in Riyadh. The UFC announced the following changes to the organization’s debut event in Saudi Arabia.
– UFC newcomer Felipe Lima is replacing an injured Melsik Baghdasaryan and will face Muhammad Naimov in a featherweight matchup.
– Abu Azaitar was removed from his middleweight bout with Denis Tiuliulin. Azaitar was originally replaced by Sedriques Dumas, however due to visa issues Dumas was removed from his matchup with Tiuliulin and the fight was cancelled altogether.
– Farid Basharat was removed from his bantamweight matchup with Montel Jackson for undisclosed reasons the bout was removed from the card.
DAVIS OUT OF DOBER BOUT
An unfortunate bicep injury to Mike Davis will prevent a fan-friendly lightweight between him and Drew Dober from taking place at a July 13 Fight Night event in Denver.
Davis revealed on social media he sustained a torn bicep while training, an injury that will require surgery and keep him out of action long term.
It is unclear what’s next for Dober. The 35-year-old trains out of Denver so it would make sense for the popular 155-pound brawler to remain on the card if possible.
POSSIBLE FLYWEIGHT BANGER COMING TO UFC 305
A 125-pound matchup of a couple past flyweight title challengers is in the works for the UFC’s upcoming trip to Australia. Steve Erceg will face Kai Kara-France at the Aug. 18 event in Perth, according to the same reporter who broke the news that Chimaev was pulling out of the UFC Saudi Arabia main event.
Erceg, a Perth native, is coming off a close decision loss to current champion Alexandre Pantoja in their UFC 301 main event title fight in May, while New Zealand’s Kara-France is looking to snap a two-fight skid after being finished by Brandon Moreno in their 2022 interim title bout and losing a five-round split decision to Amir Albazi 12 months ago.