{"id":171798,"date":"2025-09-27T00:32:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T00:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/171798\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T00:32:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T00:32:07","slug":"again-snake-bitten-ufc-perth-card-suffers-heavyweight-cancelation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/171798\/","title":{"rendered":"AGAIN?! Snake-Bitten UFC Perth Card Suffers Heavyweight Cancelation"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Friday\u2019s early weigh ins (official results HERE<\/a>), UFC heavyweight veteran Justin Tafa was forced to withdraw from the event due to illness. Tafa was expected to meet Octagon newcomer Louie Sutherland on the ESPN+ main card.<\/p>\n

ESPN\u2019s Australia X account announced the crushing news on Friday night. See it below:<\/p>\n

Why is this such a big deal?<\/p>\n

Well, UFC Perth has experienced a list of cancelations in just the past week. Last Thursday, the co-main event featuring Tafa\u2019s younger brother, Junior Tafa, was removed from the card<\/a>. Tafa apparently withdrew due to injury, according to his opponent, Ibo Aslan. Yesterday, the bad news continued when a welterweight clash between Oban Elliott and Australian prospect, Jonathan Micallef, was scrapped due to an illness to Elliott.<\/p>\n

Despite the removal of Tafa vs. Sutherland on Friday night, UFC Perth is still expected to feature a total of 12 bouts Saturday night LIVE on ESPN+<\/a> from inside RAC Arena. Tickets haven\u2019t sold all that well<\/a> (according to some they have<\/a>) and with another fight canceled there could be some empty seats when it\u2019s all said and done.<\/p>\n

MMAmania.com<\/a> will deliver LIVE round-by-round, blow-by-blow coverage of the entire UFC Perth fight card on fight night, starting with the ESPN+<\/a> preliminary card matchups scheduled for 7 p.m. ET, followed by the remaining main card balance on ESPN<\/a>+<\/a> at 10 p.m. ET.<\/p>\n

To check out the latest and greatest UFC Perth news and notes be sure to hit up our comprehensive event archive here<\/a>. For the updated and finalized \u201cUlberg vs. Reyes\u201d fight card and ESPN+<\/a> lineup click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At Friday\u2019s early weigh ins (official results HERE), UFC heavyweight veteran Justin Tafa was forced to withdraw from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,33601,638,82,37644,702],"class_list":["post-171798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-on-espn-fight-night","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}