UGer Powerful DJH, known in some circles as Dan Hughes, had a bad reaction to the recent cancellations.
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On October 24th at UFC Fight Night Dublin, Patrick Holohan will take on Louis Smolka in a main event Flyweight bout. If you told either man they would be headlining the sold out venue just a few days ago, like the rest of us, they would be completely shocked.
Just ten days before the UFC’s Dublin show, on October 14th, the card took its first major blow as Stipe Miocic was forced out of his co main event fight against Ben Rothwell. This hit me like a body shot, taking the air out of me for a second. The Rothwell Miocic fight was one that had the MMA community buzzing and also had major title implications, the type of fight that undoubtedly warrants a main event or co main event status. When Miocic pulled out, the fans were stung, the same sting we felt just weeks ago, during the fight week of UFC 192 when another fight with title implications between Johny Hendricks and Tyron Woodley was pulled from the card just days beforehand.
Just seven days after Miocic pulled out and just Three days before the event, news broke that Joe Duffy, fighting in the main event against Dustin Poirier, suffered a concussion that left him medically unfit to fight. “Please, not the main event,” I told myself. As I read through the various sources it confirmed the terrible news and acted as a final knockout blow to me, sucking all the air and excitement I had for the event out of me. Let me be clear, I’m not saying UFC Dublin won’t be a good card. In fact, there are still fights I’m excited for and will be watching, but the disappointment of losing two very intriguing fights is still very real. I won’t go into what made the original main and co main events so special, as that would be fairly obvious to the casual MMA fan. Despite my best efforts, I haven’t moved on from the disappointment to look at the card in depth and I don’t know if I can. I’m still grieving the loss of these fights.
Injuries and bouts being cancelled are a part of MMA, and they always will be, but is there anything like a fight week injury or a fight being scratched to take excitement out of the card? In response to the news of Duffy’s injury, John Kavanagh (owner of SBG Ireland and head trainer of interim featherweight champion Conor Mcgregor) tweeted “update the software, without damaging the hardware” in reference to the type of training he prefers. This method involves far less sparring and more technical drilling. Could a shift in training approach help reduce the amount of injuries in camp or on fight week? As MMA continues to evolve, training methods have evolved with them and hopefully this will result in less fights getting cancelled in the future. After all, that’s all a fan can really do when a exciting fights announced for a later date…Hope.
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