“Third time’s the charm” will not be the case for the scheduled Middleweight bout between hard hitting Middleweights Jorge Rivera and Alessio Sakara. After being scheduled to fight at UFC 118, Rivera injured his arm in training and was forced to withdraw from the bout and Sakara was forced off the card later on with his own injury. The rescheduling of the bout had the two fighters set to compete at UFC 122 in Germany, but just hours before the event Sakara began vomiting cancelled immediately. The third time was scheduled for the upcoming UFC 133 card with the two fighters expected to be contenders for Fight of the Night, though that seems to have changed yet again. On Monday July 25, news broke that Sakara had suffered a torn ACL and will have to be forced out of the bout and off an already injury plagued card. The UFC will look for a suitable replacement on less than two weeks notice, though finding another fighter that can live up to the hype of the original bout may not happen. Stepping in as a late replacement on short notice for the second time in a row will be Constantinos Philippou, who was originally scheduled to take on Rafael Natal in the Preliminary card.
UFC 133 has suffered multiple lineup changes on the main card alone. In the main event, former Light Heavyweight champion Rashad Evans was set to take on top undefeated prospect and former 4x NCAA1 All-American collegiate wrestler Phil Davis. Just a few weeks from the bout, Davis suffered a knee injury that would prohibit him from practicing kickboxing properly and therefore would not be fully prepared for the fight. The UFC made the decision to have Davis pulled from the bout, and after former division champion Lyoto Machida agreed to take the fight on short notice, he was turned down after asking for equal payment than that of his training partner and longtime undefeated Middleweight champion Anderson Silva. After that, fellow former division champion Tito Ortiz called and offered to step in on late notice having coming off a career saving upset win at UFC 132 just a month before this upcoming event. Following this switch the co-main event suffered a setback when former PrideFC star Antonio Rogerio Nogueira was injured during training and no suitable replacement could be found in time a such a high profile bout, and therefore his opponent and former Middleweight champion Rich Franklin opted to pull out of the card completely, which prompted the UFC to promote the midway bout between former Light Heavyweight champion Vitor Belfort and Japanese MMA star Yoshihiro Akiyama to so-main event. This also prompted the UFC to promote the Welterweight bout between experienced veterans Brian Ebersole and Denis Hallman from the preliminary card to fill in as the midway bout on the main card. The free televised SpikeTV Preliminary card also suffered a setback after former Light Heavyweight contender Vladimir Matyushenko was injured while training for his bout against Alexander Gustafsson; and this happened after UFC President Dana White stated that Matyushenko was the last choice on his list to replace Davis against Evans in the main event. Stepping up to take Matyushenko’s place will be former TUF3 alumni Matt Hamill. These multiple mishaps have made fans specultate that this card is cursed, and coincidentally the same mishaps happened to UFC 108 where Evans headlined the event.
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