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The Ultimate Fighting Championship is the biggest Mixed Martial Arts promotion in the world. Throughout the history of the UFC, there has been evidence of their major fights falling apart for some reason or other, which put the entire fight card in danger.
Several times, the lack of actual headliners was bad enough that the entire fight event had to be cancelled or rescheduled. In these cases, the fights on the card had to be shifted to another nearby pay-per-view event.
The most recent of these cases was none other than UFC 233, where the entire event had to be 'postponed' and rescheduled due to the lack of proper headliner fights. In this article, we will discuss UFC 233, and 3 other times that a UFC event had to be cancelled or rescheduled.
Without any further ado, let's get into it.
#1 UFC 233
UFC 233 was nothing other than UFC's extremely floundering start to the new year.
What happened at UFC 233 was that from the very beginning there seemed to be a lack of convincing fights on the card.
The moment that TJ Dillashaw and Henry Cejudo's Champion vs. Champion fight was shifted to UFC's January 19th ESPN+1 show, UFC 233 was in danger. With Dominick Cruz's injury adding to an already tough situation it became too much for UFC to try and find another big fight for the card.
The one big fight on the card was Ben Askren's debut fight against Robbie Lawler. The fight was shifted to March instead, at UFC 235.
Dana White decided not to make the first UFC event of 2019 a half-hearted one. Combined with the fact that Bellator 214 had an event on the same date, it only made sense to shift the event.
When it will take place instead is something that UFC is yet to answer, but answer they will.
#2 UFC 151
For the longest time, UFC believed that there was never an excuse to actually cancel a show. Their motto was nothing else except the show must go on, and that's exactly what happened for the longest time before UFC 151 came around.
2012 had been a bad year for UFC with too many of their shows being put out without huge fights. UFC 151 was going to be an exception to the rule.
Jon Jones was set to defend his UFC World Light Heavyweight Title against Dan Henderson. However, an injury to Henderson meant that UFC had to scramble to find a replacement for him on short notice.
They came up with Chael Sonnen, but Jones refused to fight him. Without a second fight on the card that people would pay to see, the show ended up getting cancelled altogether. A large portion of the blame was assigned to Jones for refusing to fight Sonnen, but UFC have no one except themselves to blame for putting together such a thin card to begin with.
#3 UFC 176
UFC 176 was another event which ended up getting cancelled. An event which is still most fondly remembered for being cancelled, UFC 176 had a deep card.
The undercard featured the likes of Ronaldo Souza, Gray Maynard, Tony Ferguson, and Gregor Mousasi to name but a few. However, the main event of the night was surrounding a UFC Featherweight Title rematch between Jose Aldo and Chad Mendes.
When Aldo went down with an injury, instead of continuing with the event, UFC decided to 'postpone' the event, which was their way of saying cancelling it.
This was a huge blessing in disguise. Not only did it meant that the event did not go forward with a decreased card, it meant that all the strong fights on the card were added to the events surrounding it, acting like a big bolster to them.
#4 UFC 208
The most recent fight even which was actually rescheduled was UFC 208. January and UFC seem to have a less than good relation, as UFC 208 was scheduled to take place on the January of 2017.
What is another similarity to UFC 233, was that the card had been set to go head-to-head with Bellator's Tito Ortiz vs. Chael Sonnen fight.
The reason given for the rescheduling was that there had been a lack of suitable headliners for the card. Instead, UFC 209 was renamed as UFC 208, with it taking place in February in Brooklyn, New York, with Holly Holm and Germaine de Randamie headlining the card.
UFC 208 itself was rescheduled for August 21st. It will be interesting to see if UFC does something similar for UFC 233 this time.
In UFC's defence, UFC 205 and UFC 207 was loaded with huge fights which were extremely high profile, leaving them with a dearth of main events for the first pay-per-view of 2017.
