Thursday’s chaotic circumstances already had taken a scalpel to Saturday night’s UFC 223 card after Conor McGregor and his crew attacked a bus full of fighters and cornermen, injuring two mixed martial artists scheduled to fight Saturday. And now this: Max Holloway, who was scheduled to fight Khabib Nurmagomedov for the UFC lightweight belt in the headline bout, has been declared medically unfit to fight by the New York State Athletic Commission before Friday’s weigh-in.
[ Conor McGregor arrested after rampage at UFC event ]
“With much regret, and after careful review, a joint decision was made between the state athletic commission and the UFC,” Kim Sumbler, NYSAC executive director, told reporters at Friday’s official weigh-ins before Saturday’s card at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. “We’ve deemed Mr. Holloway medically unfit to attend the scales [to weigh in]. No further comments at this time. We apologize.”
The status of the title bout remains unclear as UFC officials scrambled to find a fit enough opponent for Nurmagomedov. According to MMA Junkie, Anthony Pettis was under consideration. Pettis was scheduled to fight Michael Chiesa before he suffered injuries in the McGregor incident. MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani also reports that Al Iaquinta has offered to fight Nurmagomedov for the title instead of Paul Felder, his scheduled foe at UFC 223. His team is “actively pushing for the fight right now,” Helwani reports, adding later Friday that Iaquinta “is emerging as the frontrunner” to fight Nurmagomedov. But Iaquinta weighed in 0.2 of a pound over the 155-pound limit, which may be clouding things.
A Long Island native, Iaquinta would be a huge crowd favorite in Brooklyn should he be given a chance to win the title. However, there also is some question whether the reworked bout would be for the championship, Helwani reports.
Felder, who made weight Friday, also threw his name into the ring, so to speak:
But according to MMA Junkie’s Mike Bohn, Felder will not be allowed to fight Nurmagomedov in a title bout because he’s “not ranked.”
Nurmagomedov made weight Friday. Pettis, who has lost four of his past six fights, would have to make weight and be approved to fight Nurmagomedov by NYSAC, Helwani reports. Pettis weighed in at 155.2 pounds Friday and reportedly would be given two hours to shed the two-tenths of a pound needed to make weight. If Pettis is indeed Nurmagomedov’s opponent, Helwani says it would be a three-round bout.
Three bouts already had been removed from the card thanks to the McGregor fracas, cutting it down to 10 fights. Chiesa, who was to fight Pettis, was cut in the face and deemed unfit to fight by the New York State Athletic Commission and the UFC medical team. Ray Borg, a flyweight who was scheduled to battle Brandon Moreno, also was deemed unfit to fight after suffering corneal abrasions.
Artem Lobov, a McGregor friend and ally who was part of the incident, also was pulled from the card by UFC.
Holloway stepped in to replace Tony Ferguson at UFC 223 only on Sunday after Ferguson suffered a knee injury in a freak tripping accident. There was one issue, however: Holloway had not fought since Dec. 2 and had not been in training, so he needed to cut a substantial amount of weight to get down to 155 pounds for the bout against Nurmagomedov. George Lockhart, the nutritionist who was overseeing Holloway’s weight loss, told Bloody Elbow’s Three Amigos Podcast on Monday that “this is literally tied with the biggest cut I’ve ever done.”
In a separate conversation with ESPN’s Brett Okamoto, Lockhart said the weight cut would be difficult but not impossible with a combination of an extreme low-carb diet and exercise. But apparently the New York doctors thought that it would not be healthy for Holloway to continue that regimen.
It’s unclear how much weight Holloway had to lose before the fight. In his conversation with Okamoto, Lockhart said that if Holloway had weighed 187 pounds when he took on the fight it “would have been an automatic, ‘No way in hell.’ ”
According to Bohn, Holloway got down to 159 pounds, four pounds above the limit.
The Ferguson-Nurmagomedov and then Holloway-Nurmagomedov bouts were an attempt by UFC to declare an official lightweight champion. McGregor previously had held the belt but has not fought in the octagon since November 2016, stepping away to train for last year’s lucrative boxing match against Floyd Mayweather. In October, Ferguson beat Kevin Lee to win an interim lightweight belt; his bout against Nurmagomedov was supposed to be for the official championship after White declared this week that McGregor had been stripped of his title.
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