Being the poster-designer for the UFC must be a horrible job. You spend all day selecting the perfect photos of each headliner, tweaking size and shading until they’re juuuuust right, and then you get a frantic phone call from your boss just as you’re leaving for the weekend, saying that so-and-so blew out his such-and-such, and it’s time to start over.
Case in point, check out the poster above. For a brief moment between UFC 151 being canceled and Jones vs. Belfort being booked, some poor bastard actually had to make a Jones vs. Machida 2 poster, and Lyoto Machida hadn’t even accepted the fight. I’m not saying a lot of time was spent on this, I’m saying that no matter how long it took, that time could have been better spent napping.
We’ve compiled a lot more outdated UFC posters in the pages below. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be reminded of great fights that were sunk due to injury, and of the fragility of human ACLs. If we’ve left out any good ones, shoot us some links in the comments section.
(UFC 3: The empty promise that started it all. Though they were matched up on the poster, neither Royce Gracie nor Ken Shamrock made it to the finals of the event’s eight-man tournament.)
(The infamous “Kevin Randleman accidentally knocks himself out backstage” event. UFC 24 lost its main event on the shortest of short notice, though Randleman and Rizzo would fight two events later.)
(If Mark Coleman was able drag his ass to the cage that night, then Josh Koscheck really had no excuse. Still, this was one of those times where injuries actually made the main card a little more interesting.)
(Wiman and Danzig got injured in the same week, and Belcher had to withdraw due to eye problems. UFC Fight Night 22′s new main event was…interesting?)
(Isn’t it bad luck to have twins on the same fight card? It was in this case, as Big Nog had to drop out due to a hip injury. Mirko Cro Cop came in to replace Nogueira for a “Fight of the Year, Just Kidding” candidate against Mir.)
(A knee injury pulled the rug out from Rashad Evans, ushering in the Jon Jones era…and so our troubles began.)
(Edgar and Maynard are so evenly matched, they even get injured simultaneously.)
(The mighty Brock was felled by diverticulitis, and Shane Carwin stepped in as Junior’s replacement victim.)
(Marquardt vs. Story — the intermediate stage between Marquardt vs. Rumble and Marquardt vs. TRT.)
