{"id":437552,"date":"2026-01-28T01:03:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T01:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/437552\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T01:03:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T01:03:09","slug":"vitor-petrino-gets-new-opponent-for-ufc-vegas-114","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/437552\/","title":{"rendered":"Vitor Petrino gets new opponent for UFC Vegas 114"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Four days after the UFC announced Vitor Petrino vs. Kennedy Nzechukwu for the March 14 card at the Meta APEX, the Brazilian heavyweight already has a new opponent as Steven Asplund stepped in as a replacement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Multiple people with knowledge of the promotion\u2019s plans confirmed the switch to MMA Fighting on Tuesday. It\u2019s still unclear what forced Nzechukwu off the card.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Petrino (13-2) has scored two wins since moving to heavyweight in 2025, tapping out Austen Lane with a rear-naked choke and then pocketing a $50,000 performance bonus for his third-round knockout over Thomas Petersen at UFC Rio.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Asplund (7-1) stopped Sean Sharaf via knockout in his UFC debut this past December after he scored with a 16-second knockout win over Anthony Guarascio, which earned him a contract at Dana White\u2019s Contender Series just three months earlier.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">UFC Vegas 114 is headlined by featherweight finishers Josh Emmett and Kevin Vallejos. Check the updated lineup below.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Mike Heck contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four days after the UFC announced Vitor Petrino vs. Kennedy Nzechukwu for the March 14 card at the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702],"class_list":["post-437552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437552","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=437552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}