ESPN Deportes<\/a>. Gaziev also confirmed the news on social media.<\/p>\nUFC Qatar will take place at the Ali Bin Hamad al-Attiyah Arena in Doha and feature Arman Tsarukyan vs. Dan Hooker in a five-round lightweight main event. It\u2019s still unclear what led to Spivac\u2019s withdrawal.<\/p>\n
Cortes-Acosta (15-2) knocked out Ante Delija in under four minutes earlier this month, rebounding from a decision defeat to Sergei Pavlovich and improving to 6-1 since mid-2023. \u201cSalsa Boy\u201d makes his fifth appearance of 2025, and accepted the bout on Wednesday. Cortes-Acosta traveled to Qatar hours later from Phoenix to take the short notice opportunity, his team confirmed to MMA Fighting. The Dominican Republic native has now won eight of 10 under the UFC banner, topping the likes of Andrei Arlovski, Robelis Despaigne, Ryan Spann and Spivac.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnytime, anywhere, against anybody,\u201d Cortes-Acosta posted on Instagram stories. \u201cJust to prove I\u2019m one of the best and I\u2019m always ready. See you Saturday in Qatar.<\/p>\n
Gaziev (14-1) was slated to face Spivac in three different dates in 2025 but neither came to fruition. He hasn\u2019t entered the octagon since a first-round knockout over Thomas Petersen in February, improving to 3-1 with a pair of finishes in the promotion.<\/p>\n
\u201cRespect to the pirate for stepping on board,\u201d Gaziev wrote on X<\/a>, \u201cbut the Gulf is my territory, and it\u2019s going to be very tough for your ship to row here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Waldo Cortes-Acosta will replace Serghei Spivac on three days\u2019 notice and face Shamil Gaziev at Saturday\u2019s UFC Qatar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-297275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}