UFC 280: Abu Dhabi’s Oliveira loses three fighters to Makhachev

UFC 280 in Abu Dhabi will be fast-paced on October 22, but when the lights come on at the Etihad Arena, there will be three fewer entrants.

The event features two title fights: Islam Makhachev vs. Charles Oliveira for the vacant UFC lightweight title, and Aljaman Sterling vs. TJ Dillashaw for the UFC bantamweight title. Important divisional contender battles make up the rest of the card’s pay-per-view segment: Petr Yan vs. Sean O’Malley, Beneil Dariush vs. Mateusz Gamrot, and Manon Fiorot vs. Katlyn Chookagian.

All of these battles remain on the cards for now, but the preliminaries UFC 280 It will be slightly shorter after new heavyweight signing Slim Trabelsi is released due to contract issues with France promoting ARES FC. 5-0 Trabelsey will face 12-7 Parkerport.

slender trabel west may have only lasted a few days On the UFC’s roster, but has been billed as an exciting addition to the UFC heavyweight division. Unfortunately, some sort of conflict between managers Fernand Lopez and Ali Abdulaziz prevented Trabelsi from getting out of his ARES FC contract.

“To fight in Ares, we have to be run by Fernand Lopez,” Trabelsi on French sports interview. “Initially he said to me, you have a four-fight contract at Ares and if the UFC calls you, I will let you go to the UFC. I trusted him, I signed the contract, and when the UFC called me, he tried to Stop me with the God of War contract.”

“Ali signed me to the UFC and I was going to fight in Abu Dhabi on October 22, but Fernand stopped me. He called Ali and asked to pay 90,000 euros for me to go to the UFC. Ali offered to give him a certain amount of money. Proportion of the money I’m going to make in the UFC fight, and even then, he turned it down.”

With Trabelsey removed, Potter will no longer appear on the card. Trabelsi is already a backup fighter for Porter’s original rival Hamdy Abdelwahab. No reason was given for Abdelwahab’s end, but now that the MMA gods have beaten the second fight, the UFC has opted to remove Parkport from UFC 280 entirely.

Australian Jamie Mullarkey was also sidelined with an undisclosed injury. He will face Magomed Mustafaev in the lightweight bout. At this point, Mustafaev is still on the card and the UFC is looking for a replacement opponent for the 14-3 Dagestani fighter.

UFC 280 doesn’t hurt much by canceling these fights. The card is still loaded with 13 battles (14 if Mustafaev stayed on the card) and even sees some late additions. With the US currently being very stingy with visa approvals, many international fighters have no choice but to compete in Abu Dhabi or the rare European cards.

Given the situation, we don’t think it will be too difficult to find a replacement at the last minute if anything happens to any of the other fights.

This article first appeared on BJENN.COM