THE UFC HAS finally found a high-profile title bout to headline its return to Madison Square Garden on Saturday, 3 November. The organisation has also lost the most eagerly-anticipated fight that had already been scheduled for the card.
Derrick Lewis, one of the big winners on last weekend’s UFC 229 bill, will perform a four-week turnaround to challenge reigning heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier in the UFC 230 main event at the famous New York arena.
However, the lightweight meeting of Dustin Poirier and Nate Diaz has been scratched. ESPN were the first of several US media outlets to report overnight that Poirier has been forced to withdraw from the match-up due to an undisclosed injury.
With an official announcement yet to be made by the UFC, it is not yet known if a replacement opponent will be sought to ensure that Diaz remains on the card.
That blow is somewhat cushioned by the long-awaited confirmation of a main event, with Lewis stepping in on relatively short notice to compete in his first UFC title bout.
Lewis (21-5) substantially increased his following on Saturday night with a significant win over the hotly-fancied Alexander Volkov in Las Vegas on the pay-per-view card which was headlined by Khabib Nurmagomedov’s victory over Conor McGregor.
A 33-year-old native of Louisiana, Lewis completed a comeback win by knocking out Volkov with just 11 seconds of the fight remaining, before earning plenty of new fans with his colourful post-fight interview with Joe Rogan.
Cormier (21-1), who previously declared himself unavailable for the Madison Square Garden date due to an ongoing hand injury, will nevertheless make the first defence of the 265-pound title he won from Stipe Miocic in July.
The 39-year-old, also a native of Louisiana, knocked out Miocic at UFC 226 to become just the second fighter in history to hold two UFC titles simultaneously. He is also currently the organisation’s light-heavyweight champion.
Cormier had been expected to sit out until an expected heavyweight title clash with Brock Lesnar in 2019, but instead he’ll return to headline a card for which the UFC has struggled to confirm a main attraction.
As recently as last week, they were seemingly pressing ahead with a bout for the vacant women’s flyweight belt between Valentina Shevchenko and Sijara Eubanks. Those plans have subsequently been scrapped, with Eubanks taking to Twitter to express her anger.
Instead, as originally planned, Shevchenko and Joanna Jedrzejczyk will fight for that title at UFC 231 in Toronto on 8 December. Jedrzejczyk had briefly been ejected from the equation after refusing to sacrifice five weeks of her training camp in order to accommodate the UFC by bringing the fight forward to 3 November.
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