Super Bowl weekend became decidedly less super for MMA fans Monday when heavyweight champion Fabricio Werdum withdrew from the main event of UFC 196.
The news, delivered by Guilherme Cruz of MMA Fighting, comes precisely one day after former champ Cain Velasquez pulled out of the fight with Werdum because of a back injury. It was to be a rematch between the two greats and the first bout for both since Werdum defeated Velasquez for the title last June.
Because of the history and stakes involved, this was a hotly anticipated fight and the clear anchor of the UFC’s always-important Super Bowl weekend pay-per-view event.
The whole thing got us to thinking: Although there’s a pretty good chance this one gets rescheduled at some point in time, as it stands, where does Werdum-Velasquez 2 rank among the biggest UFC fights that never were? We shall now rank the top five based on how good the fight could have been and how important it was.
Two notes: First, these are fights that were on the official books at one time but didn’t happen. This is no hypothetical matchmaking. Second, we’re talking about fights that were cancelled entirely, as opposed to those where one fighter changed or something like that.
Got it? That’s great. Let’s get it on.