This weekend’s UFC 296 card has lost one of it’s main card fights. Tonight, Dana White announced that the featured welterweight battle between Ian Garry (13-0) and Vicente Luque (22-9-1) is off. Garry didn’t appear at media day today and there were a lot of rumors surrounding his absence.
White announced that Garry developed the flu and became increasingly sick. After some tests were run, the flu that Garry had turned into pneumonia. With that, Garry has been forced to pull out of this fight and Luque is coming off the card altogether.
My assumption is that they’ll try to rebook this fight in the first quarter of 2024. It’s been a rough stretch for Ian Garry outside the octagon over the past few weeks and this was the last thing that he needed to happen. While it’s certainly a tough fight to lose, UFC 296 is incredibly stacked and will push forward.
UFC 296
While there has been no official confirmation, the assumption is that Josh Emmett – Bryce Mitchell will shift to the PPV main card. The only way that fight won’t is if the promotion decides that they want to keep that fight as the featured prelim on ESPN.
There are a number of fights that could make the jump up to PPV with this news regarding Garry. Cody Garbrandt – Brian Kelleher could jump up or the light heavyweight battle between Dustin Jacoby and Alonzo Menifield. We should know more about the restructuring of the UFC 296 card either later tonight or tomorrow.