A couple of years ago, the UFC had a really terrible run of luck with dozens of high profile fights getting scrapped due to various injuries suffered by fighters while training. Nowadays there seems to be a new horrible trend of main event fights getting called off last minute due to illness. Just in the past few months we’ve lost Tony Ferguson vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC 209, Amanda Nunes vs Valentina Shevchenko at UFC 213, and now Demetrious Johnson vs. Ray Borg at Saturday’s UFC 215 event in Edmonton.
“Due to a viral illness to UFC flyweight contender Ray Borg, the main event bout against champion Demetrious Johnson at UFC 215 has been cancelled,” the UFC announced via a statement on their site. “Borg was deemed unfit to compete by the UFC medical team.”
While Borg’s history of missing weight has many wondering whether his illness is the result of another botched weight cut (the same culprit that knocked Nurmagomedov off UFC 209 and various other fighters off cards), his team insists his cut was going well and this was a completely unrelated sickness that Ray had been struggling to deal with all week.
Whatever the case, the removal of the fight will result in flyweight champ Demetrious Johnson missing his chance to break Anderson Silva’s record for most consecutive successful title defenses by a UFC champion. Johnson and Silva are currently tied with 10 defenses.
The UFC had originally wanted Johnson to break the record in a fight with former bantamweight champ TJ Dillashaw, but Johnson had refused the fight on the grounds that Dillashaw had never fought at flyweight. He instead demanded Borg, who has missed the flyweight limit of 125 pounds twice in his past four fights. Dillashaw reacted to Borg’s latest issue with a short emoji filled tweet:
🤦🏼♂️ 🐭 💸💸💸💸
— TJ Dillashaw (@TJDillashaw) September 8, 2017
Dillashaw is set to fight Cody Garbrandt for the bantamweight title at UFC 217 in November. It’s expected that the UFC will reschedule the Johnson vs. Borg fight for another event in the near future. Fans in Edmonton with tickets can contact their point of sale for refunds.
