The title fights at UFC 312 that includes Dricus du Plessis vs. Sean Strickland and Zhang Weili vs. Tatiana Suarez are anticipated to fly with none parachute heading into Sydney.
A number of folks near the promotion confirmed to MMA Combating on Monday there aren’t any plans to make use of backup fighters for the championship bouts in Australia on Feb. 8.
Whereas it has grow to be frequent for the UFC to contract a backup fighter for title bouts, particularly in the course of the international pandemic that began in 2020, the promotion hasn’t finished that not too long ago.
There was no backup fighter in place for the flyweight title combat between Alexandre Pantoja and Kai Asakura at UFC 310 and the identical goes for the 2 championship bouts scheduled at UFC 311 in January.
That almost backfired after light-weight champion Islam Makhachev misplaced initially scheduled opponent Arman Tsarukyan to a again harm the evening earlier than the official weigh-ins. Happily for the UFC, ranked light-weight Renato Moicano was already competing on the cardboard so he ended up changing Tsarukyan and dealing with Makhachev on simply 24 hours’ discover.
On the subject of UFC 312, neither the middleweight title combat nor the strawweight title combat have any notable names in these divisions elsewhere on the cardboard. Most of the prime contenders in each divisions are additionally already booked or unavailable, though middleweight Caio Borralho is planning on attending UFC 312 as he’ll be cornering Bruna Brasil for her combat that evening.
At strawweight, Virna Jandiroba is already booked to face Yan Xiaonan at UFC 314 in April so they’re unavailable backups for this card.
Guilherme Cruz contributed to this report
