UFC 180 was hurt by the loss of Heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez but the card took another big hit today.
The first foray to Mexico, UFC 180, has had quite a few bumps in the road even before the fight card takes place.
UFC 180 was hit huge by the loss of the main event, but that wrong was corrected by adding Mark Hunt to a fight for the interim Heavyweight title. Now, the main card took another big hit for the hometown fans as their Mexican descent fighters are slowly dwindling in numbers. Diego Sanchez was supposed to take on Norman Parke who sits at 4-0 in the UFC currently. Then when he dropped out Joe Lauzon stepped up to take on the fight which instantly made it pretty compelling.
Unfortunately, Lauzon was forced out of the fight too. Lucking or unluckily for the UFC, Diego Sanchez has dropped off the card too due to knee injury as well. This leaves the card without another big fight and it is hard to think who the UFC can pickup to fill the void. Sanchez was hoping to build off his kind of win over Ross Pearson in June of this year. Not many people think he won, and in fact many people think his last real win came over Paulo Thiago in 2010.
The only real big fights left on the UFC 180 card are the aforementioned Fabricio Werdum against Mark Hunt, Kelvin Gastelum versus Jake Ellenberger, and Ricardo Lamas taking on Dennis Bermudez. One has to wonder if the loss of Diego Sanchez, Cain Velasquez, and Erik Perez will hurt the card even though it has already sold out. Only time will tell, or maybe Dana white will pull a rabbit out of his hat by putting another big fight on this card if he can scrounge up the necessary fighters to put it all together.