Less than 24 hours after finding a huge replacement for the UFC 294 main event, the promotion has once again pulled off a marquee short-notice change for the co-feature bout.
Paulo Costa was originally scheduled to compete against Khamzat Chimaev in the co-feature of the pay-per-view event in Abu Dhabi, but will not be medically cleared to compete due to a staph infection. Chimaev (12-0 MMA, 6-0 UFC) will remain on the card, and will now face former welterweight champion Kamaru Usman who is stepping up on 10 days’ notice for the middleweight bout.
UFC CEO Dana White officially announced the new matchup Wednesday on social media.
Usman, 36, moves up to middleweight following back-to-back welterweight title fight losses to current champion Leon Edwards. Prior to the consecutive losses, Usman (20-3 MMA, 15-2 UFC) reigned longly over the 170-pound division and racked up five title defenses. He has not competed since UFC 286 in March.
Chimaev, 29, has not fought for even longer. His most recent win was vs. Kevin Holland at UFC 279 in September. Chimaev missed weight before the bout. After some discussion between his team and the UFC brass, Chimaev ultimately elected to move up to middleweight, where he already has two wins in the UFC.
Costa (14-2 MMA, 6-2 UFC), who is in Abu Dhabi, also revealed in a since-deleted social media post that he will have to undergo a second elbow procedure, just weeks after he had an initial one for a right arm bursa.
I am doing everything in my power to fight gourmet Chen Chen here in Abu Dhabi. Possible and impossible. The shit is that Staphylococcus infection is no joke, I had it in Brazil 8 weeks ago and took antibiotics for 10 days to kill it. It seemed resolved so I came to Abudhabi but it came back worse than before. 5 weeks before the fight there was necessarily surgery to clean everything and take another 14 days of antibiotics. I told them to let me fight because I’m extremely well conditioned. Even though I used 1 arm to train for 14 days until I had 10 stitches removed in my right elbow, the doctors were worried about all the anesthesia and medication I was taking, but they gave me a chance and I did my best to overcome myself, training everything without my right arm., and you know what, I was happy just to fight and do something that seemed crazy possible. Now the doctors came and told me that it was necessary to REOPEN a smaller place because the bacteria was still there and had developed resistance. After the update, there is no way to release doctors for fight 21
My team keeps it clear since first moment with UFC all these things and the peoples from UFC gave me all support, they tried their best as well paying for surgery and everything here in abudhabi, thanks UFC and whole staff for support.
For those whom said I pulled out go fuck u self. I never pulled out, I just didn’t agreed to fights that I NEVER signed up for and neither miss weight we both agreed 205.
I need 3 weeks to be cleared in doctors opinion. I just wait this fight the entire year, so I hope to fight before the end of 2023. See u 🙌🧃
The co-main event switch-up comes less than 24 hours after White announced the previously scheduled main event between Islam Makhachev and Charles Oliveira was off and that Alexander Volkanovski would replace Oliveira, who suffered a cut in training Monday.
With the change, the UFC 294 fight card includes:
- Islam Makhachev vs. Alexander Volkanovski – for lightweight title
- Kamaru Usman vs. Khamzat Chimaev
- Magomed Ankalaev vs. Johnny Walker
- Ikram Aliskerov vs. Nassourdine Imavov
- Muin Gafurov vs. Said Nurmagomedov
- Tim Elliott vs. Muhammad Mokaev
- Trevor Peek vs. Mohammad Yahya
- Javid Basharat vs. Victor Henry
- Abu Azaitar vs. Sedriques Dumas
- Mike Breeden vs. Anshul Jubli
- Muhammad Naimov vs. Nathaniel Wood
- Viktoriia Dudakova vs. Jinh Yu Frey
- Shara Magomedov vs. Bruno Silva
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 294.
