ESPN’s Brett Okamoto reported Saturday afternoon that UFC featherweight champion Max Holloway is injured and is pulling out of his March title defense against Frankie Edgar at UFC 222 in Las Vegas, NV.
Once confirmed by the organization, this will be the second time the fight has fallen apart due to injury. The two were originally supposed to clash in December, but Edgar hurt his hand. The Holloway injury was undisclosed.
The promotion will need to find a suitable headliner as the secondary headliner is Andrei Arlovski vs. Stefan Struve, not exactly something to main event a pay-per-view with. One problem is the UFC’s current schedule which will see them do nine shows in the first quarter with three more already scheduled for April. As most of those cards are relatively thin, they will have their work cut out for them in pulling something together. The alernative: demote the show from PPV status and make it an FS1 show instead.
This is the second PPV show this year that UFC has had to find a new main event for. Next week’s UFC 221 show in Perth, Australia, was supposed to be headlined by middleweight champion Robert Whittaker vs. Luke Rockhold, but an internal staph infection knocked Whittaker out of that fight. UFC responded by reviving the interim middleweight crown and making Rockhold vs. Yoel Romero as the main event instead.