Several parties are extremely unhappy with the way the Swedish MMA Federation killed the original Alexander Gustafsson vs. Gegard Mousasi main event at UFC on Fuel 9, with an internal review hitting the commission.
That’s the latest word on the event from The Telegraph, as MMA journalist Gareth A. Davies highlights the issues surrounding the medical staff:
George Sallfeldt, president of the Swedish MMA federation, told Telegraph Sport after the event: “We will be looking into the situation that happened, and the way it happened. We’ll be asking the medical committee how they arrived at their decision [on the Tuesday night] and why it was made when it was.”
But he added: “It someone contacts the federation it is difficult to do anything different to what happened. But I have to say that this situation has never happened before.”
Just a handful of days before the event in Stockholm, Sweden, news broke (via Swedish MMA news site MMANYTT) that Gustafsson would most likely be medically unfit to compete at UFC on Fuel 9 against Mousasi due a cut over his left eye, suffered in training.
UFC president Dana White and his staff was forced to scramble to find a late replacement in local Swedish fighter, Ilir Latifi—Gustafsson‘s training partner.
Although he had just a few days to prepare and cut weight, Latifi lasted 15 minutes in a one-sided decision to Mousasi.
While the crowd seemed to want more action from the former Strikeforce and two-division DREAM champion, Mousasi admitted in his post-fight interview that he was ill and suffering from an injured knee as he handily improved to 34-3-2 in his UFC debut.
White posted a picture of Gustafsson on Twitter roughly three days before the card, where the light heavyweight’s cut seemed healed, calling it the “worst decision” he had “ever” seen to pull a fight.
Gustafsson is expected to be medically cleared for an upcoming bout soon enough. But his next opponent is unclear, although many UFC fighters in his division are currently awaiting upcoming event contracts and announcements.
McKinley Noble is an MMA conspiracy theorist. His work has appeared in NVision, PC World, Macworld, GamePro, 1UP, MMA Mania & The L.A. Times.
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