Less than 24 hours after Dana White announced that Stipe Miocic would replace Cain Velasquez as the main event for UFC 196, Fabricio Werdum announced he is pulling out as well.
MMA Junkie received confirmation from Werdum that he is withdrawing.
The move makes Johny Hendricks versus Stephen Thompson the de facto main event of the traditional Super Bowl Weekend card.
The late scratch should be a disappointment for Miocic who looked to be on a roll going into this title shot.
Payout Perspective:
It’s unlikely that the UFC will cancel the card regardless of what you think. However, a Hendricks-Thompson headline is not an attractive fight. None of the undercard has any attractive fights as well. With a UFC event this Saturday on cable TV, it will make it hard to sell the casual fan to buy the following week’s PPV.
Hahaha.fighters now fighting dw….o oh
Getting “injured” is the new ducking in the UFC
I agree Gil!
Werdum is an idiot. I understand he doesn’t want to face stipe on 12 days notice, I understand his toe is broken. You don’t go public and say “I would have faced Cain anyways, but not Stipe”. That opens the door to too much bullshit.
This definitely does not look good.
Stipe should be pissed.
150k ppvs.
That’s 150k more than Klitschko v. Fury I. And II.
UFC 196 zero. Big goose egg.
How bout that diego?
Enjoy your ppv on FS1.
UFC 196 will do less ppvs than Klitschko-Fury.
By the way klitschko fury was a ppv in the U.K.
UFC 196 gets zero ppvs, which is the same amount of ppvs sold by the entire sport of boxing in 2016 so far.
Klitschko-Fury was a ppv for some people in the UK- others can get a subscription with Sky tv. The ppv also was less than half of what a UFC ppv costs and drew a fraction of what the last 2 did. The UFC did more ppv buys last qtr than boxing will do all year. The anti-mma boxing crowd is still reeling from last year’s record numbers from the UFC.
UFC breaks UFC records. Boxing breaks combat sports records.
UFC breaks UFC records…..which are the combat sports records. Boxing will have under 3m ppv buys this year. Hahaha. Yup, talk about record breakers.