Ultimate Fighting Championship officials wasted little time in finding a replacement for injured featherweight Erik Koch, naming Ricardo ‘The Bully’ Lamas (11-2) as his replacement for the upcoming UFC 143 event.
Lamas will now meet Dustin ‘The Diamond’ Poirier (11-1) at the Vegas event this February.
“Lamas is coming off a knockout victory followed by a Submission of The Night’ win in his last two spectacular outings; while Poirier is a highly-touted power-punching prospect looking to make his case for a host at the title” said White. Both fighters have verbally agreed to the bout.
UFC 143: Diaz vs. Condit is scheduled to take place on February 4th at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. The event is headlined by a UFC interim welterweight title match between former Strikeforce champ Nick Diaz, and former WEC champ, Carlos Condit.
Lamas debuted with the UFC this past June, making his featherweight debut in the Octagon versus Matt Grice at the UFC on Versusu 4 show. ‘The Bully’ would finish the Grice with a head kick to earn a first round TKO finish. Lamas then fought in November at the UFC on FOX show, earning a second round submission over Cub Swanson as well as the “Submission of the Night” bonus. Previous to joining the UFC, Lamas fought six times in the WEC cage, going 4-2 with his last fight being a loss to Yuri Alcantara at WEC 53.
Poirier had asked for a fight with ‘The Korean Zombie’ Chan Sung Jung, but will instead meet Lamas. ‘The Diamond’ has won four straight, with three wins in the UFC where he to dropped to featherweight making his debut at UFC 125. At the Jan. 1 event, Poirier would earn a decision over Josh Grispi, then go on to beat Jason Young by the same result at UFC 131, and finally, earn a submission victory against Pablo Garza at the FOX show in November.
Featherweights with strong records for each fighter, this is going to be an exciting matchup for certain. Despite this one likely happening on the preliminary card I plan on catching this one whether it’s on Facebook or FOX.com.