Normally when the UFC saves news for late on a Friday night, it’s not something positive that comes out. However, depending on your viewpoint, the news that Dana White broke on ESPN on Friday may have been seen as a positive. That was, of course, until the actual reason for his announcement surfaced. White’s announcement was that Ronda Rousey’s next bout, her 7th title defense, would be moved up from January 2nd to November 15th (or 14th, depending on where you are in the world), and now take place as the main event of UFC 193 in Australia. White claimed that with Rousey on the card, the UFC would break the all-time MMA attendance mark (which would be disputed anyways due to the 91,107 attendance of the original PRIDE: Shockwave event). Prior to this announcement, a welterweight title bout between Robbie Lawler and Carlos Condit was scheduled to headline UFC 193, but White made no mention of this bout being altered. Minutes later, it came out that Lawler had suffered a thumb injury, and had to withdraw from his much anticipated bout with Condit. For the UFC, this will be another windfall from their biggest PPV star, but they’re about the only ones who come out as winners here. As far as the casual fan goes, they’ll be watching in greater numbers with Rousey on the screen, but I don’t know a single hardcore MMA fan who is more excited for Rousey/Holm than they were for Lawler/Condit. I’ve already provided my thoughts in detail on the Rousey/Holm matchup in the UFC 193 Opening Odds Breakdown: Rousey vs. Holm this weekend, but if you need the short version, Rousey is going to win again, in devastating fashion. In fact, the bout being moved up from January to November probably hurts Holm more than anything, as it gives her less time to prepare for Rousey and attempt to craft a gameplan to defeat her. Over the weekend, the UFC also announced a pair of fights for the UFC on Fox 17 card in December. Cole Miller will take on Jim Alers in a featherweight bout, while Hayder Hassan and Vicente Luque will apparently rematch (I guess they fought on The Ultimate Fighter, but who watches that?). The other news to come out from the weekend is that #1 strawweight contender Claudia Gadelha suffered an injury in training leading up to her title challenge against Joanna Jedrzejczyk at UFC 195 (the card Rousey was moved from). Gadelha has guaranteed she’ll be good to go by the time UFC 195 rolls around, but given the injury history of fighters from Nova Uniao, that’s a statement meant to be taken with a grain of salt.
