(On the bright side, my Thiago Alves Fathead is still in pristine condition.)
The run of awful luck for UFC welterweight Thiago Alves shows no sign of ending. After snatching defeat from the jaws of victory against Martin Kampmann in March 2013, Alves was forced out of his UFC 149 return fight due to an injury. The Brazilian striker was scheduled to come back from his long layoff at UFC on FOX Sports 1: Shogun vs. Sonnen (August 17th, Boston) against gritty* 170-pounder Matt Brown, but has now pulled out of that fight because of a tear in his left biceps tendon. FOXSports1′s twitter account broke the news yesterday, adding that Brown will instead face Mike Pyle.
From an competitive standpoint, I’d call that a fair trade. Matt Brown is on a five-fight win streak with all but one of those wins coming by KO/TKO, and Pyle has been victorious in his last four (with three of those wins via KO/TKO), and is coming off a split-decision win against Rick Story at UFC 160. Both fighters have griped about not getting enough respect from fans and media despite their recent success, so this is a perfect opportunity to see who really deserves it.
Also off the “Shogun vs. Sonnen” card is featherweight Akira Corassani, who we thought was already doing hard time for purse-snatching or something. [Ed. note: Different guy.] Corassani was supposed to face former WEC champ Mike Brown** on the card, but is now out with an undisclosed training injury, and will be replaced by TUF 14 vet Steven Siler.*** Unfortunately, Corassani has developed a bad reputation for pulling out of fights, after not being able to fulfill previous bookings at the TUF 14 Finale, UFC on FUEL TV 2, and UFC 156.
* I feel like every time I write about Matt Brown, I describe him as “gritty.” It’s starting to get redundant, but if you know of any better adjectives for this guy, I’m all ears.
** Whoa, Matt Brown and Mike Brown are on the same card? Has that ever happened before? It’s a holiday, so don’t expect me to spend 10 minutes on Wikipedia trying to find out.
*** Remember when this event was reportedly at risk because Massachusetts was requiring all foreign-born fighters to have social security numbers? And then Dana White was like, nah, it’s cool, we figured it out you pussies? Jump-cut to this week, and three foreign-born fighters — Nick Ring, Alves, and Corassani — have pulled out of this event with injuries, some of them vague and “undisclosed,” and they’ve all been replaced by American guys. Yeah, you can easily poke a hole through this line of thinking, but I just thought it was odd. #boringconspiracies