The Ultimate Fighting Championship, or the UFC for short, is seen as by far the best and most skilled mixed martial arts promotion in the world. With the company raking in millions of dollars with each card, there aren’t many scenarios where their success will be challenged. However, a random plague of injuries has been the reason for the cancellations of many huge fights over the past year.
While the UFC is so lucrative, the constant cancellations have made for lots of criticism of not only the UFC, but the fighters’ work ethics themselves.
This upcoming Saturday is UFC 313, headlined by a light heavyweight championship bout between champion Alex Pereira and number one contender Magomed Ankalaev. What was originally the co-main event, the five round bout between perennial contender and very exciting Justin Gaethje and possibly the most damage consuming fighter in the UFC Dan Hooker has been canceled due to the latter being injured.
While this fight between Gathje and Hooker was very highly anticipated and sure to be exciting, this is just another in a long line of huge fights that have been derailed due to injury.
Another example of this was the headliner of UFC 311, being a lightweight title fight between champion Islam Makhachev and top contender Arman Tsarukyan. The two had already fought once many years ago and it was very close, and as the time has passed by, both fighters have improved significantly.
This made the cancellation of the fight devastating, especially because it was only canceled the day before the card took place.
With the occasion of Makhachev vs. Tsarukyan, the fans got lucky as there was another contender that replaced the injured challenger, still granting us a championship fight and therefore “saving” the card, even though he got submitted early.
There have been many times over the past year alone where a main event or a co-main event was canceled or changed due to injuries or sickness. Some examples include Conor McGregor’s main event against Michael Chandler at UFC 303 last summer, as well as the co-main event for that exact card which was supposed to be between Diego Lopes against Brian Ortega.
A fight between light heavyweight contenders between Khalil Rountree Jr. and Jamahal Hill was changed so much that by the end, the bout was unrecognizable. Seriously, the bout went from Rountree vs Hill to Hill vs Carlos Ulberg, then to Ulberg vs Anthony Smith before Ulberg also withdrew, ending up in an insanely boring fight between Anthony Smith vs Roman Dolidze as opposed to the original exciting bout.
Finally, a welterweight championship fight between champion Belal Muhammad and undefeated challenger Shavkat Rakhmonov was set to take place in December, but the champion withdrew due to a pinky toe injury.
This isn’t a case of lightning striking twice. It’s more like the sun rising every morning. With each fantastic card that the UFC books, it’s nearly inevitable that one great fight will be canceled. It’s an unfortunate reality that the fans, fighters, and the promotion themselves have had to deal with, and a solution is unclear.
Perhaps there should be new training policies that prevent fighters from doing certain types of sparring or workouts prior to the fight. One such solution that I’ve seen that sounds helpful is punishing fighters for taking fights that they can’t make. It’s a common occurrence where a fighter just accepts a fight when they’re unsure if they’ll even make it to fight day, pulling out just a few days, or even hours before the fight is supposed to take place.
Whatever the solution may be, this situation is urgent, and it is ruining some aspects of the sport. It is not only making fans less excited, but it is also garnering criticism from the fighters, the fans, and the casual watchers who are just now getting into the sport.
Injuries have always been a looming problem, but never to this extent. Yes, injuries are a part of the sport, but what isn’t part of the sport is constantly cancelling huge fights because of them.
