It’s hard to ignore the similarities between UFC 161 in Winnipeg and UFC 149 in Calgary last year in terms of shows suffering major setbacks due to fighter injuries.
The UFC 149 card was absolutely ravaged by injury and lost names like Jose Aldo, Eric Koch, Mauricio “Shogun” Rua and Michael Bisping along the way. The final show that took place was a stark contrast from the card originally promoted.
It appears the UFC might just be cursed when traveling to Western Canada, because the same series of events started to unfold for UFC 161 a few weeks back when the main event for the UFC interim bantamweight title fight between Renan Barao and Eddie Wineland fell off the card after the champion suffered a foot injury.
The co-main event then also fell by the wayside following an injury to Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, which in turn left his opponent Mauricio “Shogun” Rua without an opponent as well.
It appeared the UFC might pull together a big-name replacement on short notice when Chael Sonnen offered up his name as a possible candidate, but for unknown reasons the fight never came together and Rua was yanked from the show as well.
On Tuesday during a media conference call, Tom Wright, director of Canadian operations for the UFC, was asked why the Rua vs. Sonnen fight didn’t come together.
Wright was unable to offer specifics, but he did say that a Rua-Sonnen fight could still happen down the road, just not at UFC 161.
“It’s one of those things, you know how it works for the UFC. I can tell you that Dana (White) and Joe Silva would have been working very hard to find somebody to come in at a short period of time, but as the case with some of these things, a whole bunch of circumstances probably came into play,” Wright told Bleacher Report. “In the end, it was felt the best thing to do was to let perhaps a Chael-Rua fight happen later, but we would go with the card we have in place.”
It was obvious by Wright’s response and when other similar questions came up on Tuesday that the promotion is shying away from any negativity surrounding the potential drawing power of the card after being devastated by so many injuries.
Keeping things positive was the message of the day from Wright, and the UFC seems content moving forward with UFC 161 as it stands today.
“I’m very confident these guys will put on a great show,” Wright said. “We’ve got a bunch of champions, a bunch of Canadians, we’ve got the first ever women’s fight in Canada featuring Rosi Sexton and Canadian Alexis Davis, so nothing that I can comment on specifically why the Chael thing didn’t happen, but it is what it is and we’re going to move forward with a great night of fights.”
Damon Martin is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report and all quotes were obtained first hand unless otherwise noted.
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