The sudden withdrawal of Yoel Romero from UFC on Fox 15 leaves a hole that just can’t be filled.
Anybody who has seen the hulking Olympic wrestler compete, or even just walk into a room, can tell you that. His stocky, heavily muscled frame, newsboy fashion sense and quirky fighting style all cut Romero a unique profile in MMA.
With the possible exception of Chris Camozzi, nobody is better off without him—not fans, not the UFC itself and especially not his erstwhile opponent, Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza.
Their co-main event on Saturday was to be one of the month’s most anticipated bouts. It was a big part of why this weekend’s free network television fight card was regarded as superior to April 25’s UFC 186 pay-per-view, even before the injuries and the court orders hamstrung the latter.
Then Romero blew out his knee over the weekend, causing yet another last-minute matchmaking scramble and yet another UFC fight card that will arrive on its due date looking somewhat less than when it was announced.
Make no mistake, UFC on Fox 15 will still be very good. Without Romero, its dueling middleweight headliners—once thought to have more or less equal chance of producing the next No. 1 contender—are down to one.
At 35 years old, it also suggests another delay Jacare can’t afford.
The Brazilian jiu-jitsu phenom has won seven fights in a row—four of them in the UFC—and has been steadily closing in on (if not exactly streaking toward) a shot at the 185-pound championship for the entirety of his career in the Octagon.
Unfortunately for him, the middleweight title picture has been a stop-start affair of late. The Anderson Silva-Chris Weidman saga took most of 2013 to sort out and the surprise ouster of testosterone replacement therapy from the fight scene, coupled with Weidman’s own injury status, caused further delays.
Souza and Romero were first scheduled to meet in February at UFC 184, but the fight had to be postponed when Jacare came down with pneumonia. This weekend, it was finally supposed to happen, and—pending the outcome of Luke Rockhold vs. Lyoto Machida in the evening’s main event—it might well have represented the last hurdle between Souza and a shot at the sport’s biggest prize.
Now, it’s unclear if claiming No. 1-contender status is even on the table for him.
The company’s matchmakers have done what they do, recalling Camozzi from the obscurity of the Rocky Mountain regional fight scene and thrusting him into a rematch with Souza on six days’ notice.
Since you’re already thinking it, yeah, let’s just say it, the 28-year-old American is a poor substitute for Romero. Camozzi was drummed out of the UFC on the heels of four consecutive losses in 2013-14. Since then, he’s scored back-to-back wins in the Colorado-based Prize FC—Prize, not Pride—organization promoted by former UFC heavyweight Shane Carwin.
In case you missed it, UFC President Dana White admitted on social media over the weekend that Camozzi—who lost to Souza by first-round submission in May 2013—was a choice of absolute last resort. He also seemed a little bit touchy about fans pointing out that Camozzi-Souza II just doesn’t have the same co-main-event ring to it as Souza-Romero (NSFW language in tweets):
Clearly, the UFC was put in an impossible bind by the late injury. Still, bringing in Camozzi provides Jacare with very little relief, aside from the fact he’ll still make a payday for the first time since September of last year.
Their first bout was not competitive. Jacare put on a clinic with Camozzi on his back before choking him unconscious with an arm triangle. The whole thing took all of three minutes, 37 seconds. It’s hard to believe anything he could do a second time would be good enough to greatly improve his standing in the 185-pound pecking order.
So long as Rockhold—who is a slight favorite over Machida, according to Odds Shark—holds serve in the main event, the American Kickboxing Academy product probably coasts into the next title shot, regardless of who emerges victorious from Weidman’s UFC 189 showdown against Vitor Belfort.
That means Jacare needs to hope for a very specific set of circumstances, if he still means to jump the line and claim an immediate shot at the championship.
Basically, he needs Machida and Weidman to both win, and he needs to put on a highlight-worthy performance against Camozzi.
Any other scenario likely leaves Souza out in the cold. If Rockhold wins, he could fight either Weidman or Belfort. If Belfort wins, either a rematch with Weidman or a matchup with the Rockhold-Machida winner probably makes the most sense as his first title defense.
But since Weidman and Machida just fought each other at UFC 175—albeit in one of the best fights of 2014—it could strike everyone as too soon for a rematch. Conceivably, that would put Jacare in the lead as Weidman’s next foe.
If not, and barring future injury, then Souza likely ends up fighting at least one more time before he earns the pole position.
By then, it could be nearly 2016, and Jacare just doesn’t have time to waste.
If not now, it could be never for him.
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