UFC Manila Cancelled, Fights Rescheduled After Penn Injury
UFC Manila has been cancelled just nine days away from its occurrence after headliner BJ Penn suffered an injury.
The UFC officially announced the cancellation on their website.
The fight night card becomes the third to be cancelled by the promotion, joining UFC 151 and UFC 176 on that list. All three of those events had late headliner injuries, with Dan Henderson pulling out of his 151 fight with Jon Jones a week away from the event, and Jose Aldo pulling out of his defense with Chad Mendes at 176 with less than a month to go.
This event, of course, was supposed to be headlined by MMA legend BJ Penn taking on Ricardo Lamas in his second comeback effort. Penn unfortunately suffered a rib injury two days ago, and without a worthy main event on the rest of the card, the event has been cancelled.
Fortunately, all fighters that were set to compete will be compensated for the late cancellation. All fights on the card will also be rescheduled to later events in 2016.
There are also rumors floating around that the Phillippines’ extreme stance on drug-users played a factor in the decision to cancel. Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs has an caused an astounding death toll.
According to Jeremy Botter of Flocombat, every employee of the promotion, not just the fighters, was going to be drug tested. It might have been safer for the Octagon to never land in Manila at this point.
Fans of the UFC will finally be able to exhale though. Following this weekend’s pay-per-view, there will be three weeks without an event following an eight-week run of fight cards. Don’t get too comfortable though, as there will be 10 events in nine weeks to end 2016.
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