UFC Vegas 100 has suffered two late hits to its line-up.
Dana White plans to celebrate a century of shows at the UFX APEX facility in Las Vegas with a stacked card of fights, which will take place on Saturday night.
Welterweight contenders Neil Magny and Carlos Prates will headline the show that will feature former ONE Championship titleholder Reinier de Ridder’s promotional debut.
However, two fan favorites have withdrawn from the card in the past 24 hours.
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Cody Garbrandt and Nicolas Dalby are out of UFC Vegas 100
Former bantamweight champion Cody Garbrandt was supposed to face Miles Johns in one of the most anticipated UFC Vegas 100 matchups.
Unfortunately, ‘No Love’ has pulled out of his fight. The news was first reported by BJPENN.com and has since been corroborated by several reporters with sources close to the situation.
It’s currently unclear what forced Garbrandt off the card. The 33-year-old was originally supposed to face Johns at UFC Vegas 98 last month, but the fight was moved back to November 9 for an undisclosed reason.
Now the fight is off again. The hope is that Johns will be able to find a late replacement to face, but with just a few days until fight night that may not be possible.
Nicolas Dalby is also out of his UFC Vegas 100 fight with Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos, with promotional newcomer Zach Scroggin already announced as his replacement.
The 31-fight MMA veteran took to social media to reveal that he withdrew over a week ago after suffering an injury.
“Unfortunately, my fight on Saturday is off due to an injury on my side,” Dalby wrote on his Instagram story. “We informed UFC last Monday and I wanted to wait for them to announce it before my own announcement.
“It sucks. I was completely ready. Weight was on point, and I was leaner than I’ve ever been before. But the severity of the injury simply did not align with the time left for the fight.
“I wasn’t able to move properly at all so it would have been a s*** fight for the Elizeu, UFC, and the fans. So we had to make the tough decision of pulling out of this fight.
“This is the first time ever I’ve had to do this in my professional career in over 30 fights and 15 years, so it wasn’t a decision taken lightly… “I’ll take some time now to rehab intensively and hopefully be ready to fight again around February.”
UFC APEX shows will continue in 2025
In 2020, Dana White began utilizing the UFC APEX to host events when the COVID-19 pandemic made it impossible to put on fights for a public audience.
The pandemic is well and truly over. Still, MMA’s premier promotion continues to do cards at their Las Vegas base, which can only cater to a very small group of fans.
UFC Vice President of International and Content, Dave Shaw, recently revealed the company will branch out in 2025, but will not do away with APEX shows entirely.
“There’ll be an increased number of events outside of the Apex relative to this year as we get into the 2025 schedule,” Shaw said at UFC Edmonton.
“It’s tough for us to anticipate what two or three years down the line is going to look like. But it makes a lot of sense for a lot of reasons.
“There’s a lot of fighters in Las Vegas, it’s easy for us operationally, it’s obviously simple from a budget perspective. The rigor and pressure of being on the road, you’re week in week out, it’s tough. So, having home games, and being in the Apex, where you can just turn on the lights and lock the door, it makes a lot of sense for us.
“So, will we ever get back to pre-Covid of no Apex? I don’t think so. But I think we’re going to find the right balance for us.”
