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The undercard of UFC Fight Night in Jacksonville on May 16th has a replacement, as Mike Davis will no longer face Giga Chikadze in their featherweight matchup. Davis will be replaced by Irwin Rivera.
Davis withdrew from the fight for non-Covid 19 related reasons, and Rivera is a Florida-based fighter that will be making his UFC debut. He’ll be forced to weigh-in separately as well, because he hasn’t received the results of his coronavirus test yet. He is currently the Titan FC bantamweight champion, and has won his last three fights in that promotion all by KO or TKO.
Chikadze is 9-2 as a cage fighter, and 2-0 via a pair of split decisions in his UFC career. He was just fighting on March 7th of this year, giving him one of the shortest turnarounds you’ll see in the promotion. Throughout his career he’s been known as a puncher, so this fight might be unlikely to be his third-straight decision.
This should be one of the most interesting fights on the card, if only for the strangeness surrounding it. We’ll see what happens tomorrow night on ESPN.