UFC 176 will become a question on Jeopardy now, claims UFC head Lorenzo Fertitta, because as we know, it is cancelled. It turns out that Jose Aldo injured his neck and shoulder and will be out for enough time to mean that he couldn’t make the early August date and now the UFC has decided to cancel the event. Lorenzo Fertitta went on Fox Sports 1 last night to explain the decision to cancel it and gave a possible date of October 27th at Rio de Janeiro for Jose Aldo vs. Chad Mendes.
Here’s the transcript from FightOpinion. [source]
LORENZO FERTITTA: “You know, it was a very difficult to make and part of the reason that we decided to postpone it is because Jose Aldo’s injury is a neck/shoulder injury, which he’s saying he’s not going to be able to train for only three weeks. So, it was a situation where certainly he wouldn’t be ready for August 2nd but at the same time he’s not going to be out very long. So, it’s going to allow us to essentially postpone this and reschedule this event for sometime in the early to mid Fall, probably in October. We just felt like that made the most sense. In addition to that, you know, obviously on PPV events there’s typically championship bout(s) on that card. Quite frankly right now, there was nobody that could turn around quick enough to be able to fill the August 2nd slot.”
CHARISSA THOMPSON: “So you mentioned in the Fall. Do you have a definitive date in October?”
LORENZO FERTITTA: “We are working on that right now. We don’t have a definitive date yet. We do have a date set for PPV on October 27th but we haven’t decided whether or not that Jose would fall on that date or not.”
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CHARISSA THOMPSON: “Do you have another location in mind?”
LORENZO FERTITTA: “Right now, we have a date scheduled in Rio de Janeiro for October 27th and we’re looking at a couple of other locations for earlier in October as well to see what’s available.”