It’s not even the end of 2018 and the start of UFC’s 2019 is already a bit of a mess.
The company announced Wednesday that UFC 233, scheduled for Saturday, January 26th in Anaheim, CA, has been “postponed” and that all scheduled fights will be moved to other shows. However, the numbering convention won’t change so the first UFC pay-per-view of the year will be February’s UFC 234 from Australia.
The numbering non-change is consistent with their cancelation of UFC 151 in 2012 and UFC 176 in 2014 with the costs associated with changing marketing materials cited as a reason for not just changing the number of the event.
The UFC said they will still have 12 PPVs in 2019.
While not mentioned by UFC, the reason for the cancellation is they couldn’t find a main event after moving the Henry Cejudo-TJ Dillashaw flyweight title fight up a week to main event their debut on ESPN+.
With their desire to have title fights headlining PPVs and a lack of available champions to fill that slot, something had to give and it did.
To their credit, they tried to make welterweight champion Tyron Woodley vs. Colby Covington for Anaheim, but Woodley couldn’t do it due to a hand injury, something White spoke out against last week doing press for the Toronto PPV.
This has happened to a scheduled January Anaheim show before as UFC 208, originally scheduled for January 21, 2017, was moved to August 5, 2017.
A positive for MMA fans: Bellator’s heavyweight grand prix finals in Los Angeles featuring Fedor Emelianenko vs. Ryan Bader, the return of Aaron Pico, the debut of former WWE star Jack Swagger and more will now run unopposed.