Since Giga Chikadze and Josh Emmett will not be facing one other, one of the main bouts at UFC 296 will no longer take place.
UFC 296 takes place on Dec. 16 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Chikadze vs. Emmett was locked in as the night’s featured prelim between the No. 6 and No. 8 featherweights in the official UFC rankings.
Giga Chikadze Faces An Injury: UFC Looking For Other Fighter
According to MMA Junkie on Monday night, Chikadze is out of the featherweight match due to an injury that was not disclosed from UFC 296. Uncertainty surrounds whether the UFC is looking for a successor, but Emmett posted a question on X (formerly Twitter) posing, “Who’s ready Dec 16th?”
The 35-year-old Chikadze defeated Alex Caceres by unanimous decision at UFC Fight Night 225 in August of last year. He had been sidelined for 19 months following a defeat to Calvin Kattar before that. A week prior to his fight with Sodiq Yusuff in September 2022, Chikadze withdrew due to an injury.
The 38-year-old Emmett was hoping to bounce back against Chikadze after dropping his first two bouts of the year. He was defeated by submission in Yair Rodriguez’s interim title bout at UFC 284, and he then lost to Ilia Topuria in the UFC on ABC 5 Fight of the Night by unanimous decision.
List Of Fights Taking Place In UFC 296
- Champ Leon Edwards vs. Colby Covington – for the welterweight title
- Alexandre Pantoja vs. Brandon Royval
- Tony Ferguson vs. Paddy Pimblett
- Ian Machado Garry vs. Vicente Luque
- Shavkat Rakhmonov vs. Stephen Thompson
- Josh Emmett vs. opponent TBA
- Irene Aldana vs. Karol Rosa
- Cody Garbrandt vs. Brian Kelleher
- Ariane Lipski vs. Casey O’Neill
- Dustin Jacoby vs. Alonzo Menifield
- Martin Buday vs. Shamil Gaziev
- Cody Durden vs. Tagir Ulanbekov
- Randy Brown vs. Muslim Salikhov
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