What a difference a few hours make.
When the fight world awoke on Friday morning, UFC 223 was headlined by a tantalizing lightweight title fight between💟 the Dagestani destroyer Khabib Nurmagomedov (25-0) and UFC featherweight champion Max Holl🌠oway (19-3).
Now, No. 11 ranked Al Iaquinta is going to be fighting Nurmagomedov in a five-round main event. If Nurmagomedov wi༺ns, he’ll be the lightweight champion. However, Iaquinta cannot win the title because he missed championship weight by two-t🐽enths of a pound.
UFC 223 reache൩d this poi🍰nt through an insane series of events.
At 9 a.m. on Friday morning, fighters started weighing in. Forty-six minutes later, ESPN reported that Holloway had been declared medically unfit to fight. Shortly thereafter, an official from the New York State Athletic Commission (NYSAC) confirmed the bad news. The official d﷽id not explain why Holloway was deemed unfit.
Quickly shifting into crisis mode, the UFC scrambled for a replacement and set their sights on former lightweight champion Anthony Pettis. Pettis had been scheduled to fight at UFC 223, but his fight was canceled after his original opponent, Michael Chiesa, was injured in Thursday’s Conor McGregor melee.
After all the other fighters on the card made weight, including Nurmagomedov, Pettis emerged from ba𝓡ckstage and stepped on the scales. He weighed 155.2 pounds. The lightweight limit for championship fights is a strict 155 pounds. According to NYSAC rules, Pettis had two hou♛rs to shed the .2 pounds, however negotiations between Pettis and the UFC broke down before he could get back on the scale.
So it was back to the drawing board, again.
Shifting right back into crisis mode, the UFC turned to the only other lightweights on the card: unranked Paul Felder, who weighed in at 155 even, and No. 11 ranked Al Iaquinta, who weighed in at 155.2. According to multiple reports, the NYSAC stepp🔜ed in once again and ruled Felder out because he’s unranked, whꦚich sounds good except for the fact that the rankings are completely arbitrary and are fully controlled by the UFC.
Thus, Long Island’s Iaquinta is now going to fight Nurmagomedov in UFC 223’s five-round main event. Iaquinta, 30, has only fought once since 2015 because of a series of devastating i🍷njuries. Before his injuries, he was considered a risi💦ng star, having defeated the likes of Jorge Masvidal, Joe Lauzon, who is fighting at UFC 223, and Kevin Lee.
Iaquinta is the third fighter booked against Nurmagomedov. Tony Ferguson was the first, but he pulled out a week before the fight due to a freak injury sustained during a media event. Holloway was brought in to replace him on six days’ notice. But his epic weight cut — he attempted to lose roughly 25 pounds in six days — ended up costing him. Iaquinta is benefiting from their loss.
In the co-headliner, UFC strawweight champion Rose Namajunas will defend her belt for the first time in a rematch against former champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk. The two women fought in November at UFC 217 at Madison Square Garden. Despite being a gigantic underdog, Namajunas won the fight via a shocking first-round knockout. With a win, Namajunas can prove that UFC 217 wasn’t a fluke. Jedrzejczyk, meanwhile, is fighting for her legacy.
The rest of the card is a total hodgepodge because of McGregor’s antics. Michael Chiesa and Ray Borg were both injured by flying glass, which forced their fights to be cancelled, while McGregor’s friend, Artem Lobov, was thrown off the card because of the part he played in Thursday’s fracas. Because Iaquinta was bumped up into the ♛main event, his original fight with Paul Felder has been scr🌟atched.
All told, UFC 223 had 13 fights on Thursday morni꧒ng. Now there will be only 9🐬.