Perhaps Aleksei Oleinik and Ilir Latifi just weren’t meant to fight.
After a Latifi (15-8 MMA, 8-6 UFC) illness forced the cancellation of the planned match at UFC on ESPN 33 this past week, promotion officials have now announced that “medical issues” have forced him out of the rescheduled contest at next week’s UFC 273 event.
Replacing Latifi is Jared Vanderaa (12-7 MMA, 1-3 UFC), who now faces Oleinik (59-16-1 MMA, 8-7 UFC).
Here’s the very brief announcement from the promotion:
Due to medical issues, Ilir Latifi has been removed from his heavyweight bout with Aleksei Oleinik.
Replacing Latifi will be UFC veteran Jared Vanderaa.
With the changes to the card, the lineup for UFC 273, which takes place April 9 at VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Fla., now includes:
MAIN CARD (Pay-per-view, 10 p.m. ET)
- Champ Alexander Volkanovski vs. Chan Sung Jung – for featherweight title
- Champ Aljamain Sterling vs. Interim champ Petr Yan – to unify bantamweight title
- Gilbert Burns vs. Khamzat Chimaev
- Mackenzie Dern vs. Tecia Torres
- Aleksei Oleinik vs. Jared Vanderaa
- Kelvin Gastelum vs. Dricus Du Plessis
PRELIMINARY CARD (ESPN, 8 p.m. ET)
- Aspen Ladd vs. Raquel Pennington
- Ian Garry vs. Darian Weeks
- Josh Fremd vs. Anthony Hernandez
- Jairzinho Rozenstruik vs. Marcin Tybura
PRELIMINARY CARD (ESPN+, 6 p.m. ET)
- Mickey Gall vs. Mike Malott
- Julio Arce vs. Daniel Santos
- Mark Madsen vs. Vinc Pichel
- Kay Hansen vs. Piera Rodriguez
