The next UFC event on tap – UFC Fight Night 138 – comes to us in about a week from some place called Moncton. Now, I’m a fairly educated man, but I wasn’t quite sure if Moncton was a place on Earth or in some other realm like Narnia or Westeros. Turns out Moncton is in Canada, which is about as real as Narnia and Westeros.
Anyway, Volkan Oezdemir and Anthony Smith are the main eventers, and both men are bangers so the promise of violence is high.
In fact, the promise of sudden, bout-ending violence is so high, I’d make sure no small children are in the room when you’re watching the fight.
The co-main event has probably the most interesting storyline. Artem Lobov, Conor McGregor’s boy who was somehow the genesis of the violence that saw McGregor smash a bus that was carrying Khabib Nurmagomedov, is fighting. If you’ll recall, Lobov was in the doghouse for his role in that whole bonkers episode. But he’s back!
Unfortunately, he was originally supposed to fight Khabib’s teammate, Zaibara Tukhugov. Unfortunately, when Khabib beat McGregor at UFC 230, and jumped into the audience for some extra innings, Tukhugov jumped into the cage to fight Conor.
Bad. Very bad.
So Tukhugov got the boot from his UFC Fight Night 138 bout. His replacement: Michael Johnson.
In my opinion, that’s actually a way better fight anyway.
The rest of the card is, well, the kind of card you’d expect for a place called Moncton.