UFC 309 loses major fighters minutes before the start of the event

One of New York’s favorite UFC sons will not get the chance to compete at Madison Square Garden on Saturday.

Minutes earlier UFC309 started, the promotion was announced Chris Weidman‘s fight was canceled due to an illness of his opponent Erik Anders. The three-round middleweight bout was expected to take place during the preliminaries.

Weidman (16-7 MMA, 12-7 UFC) and Anders (16-8 MMA, 8-8 UFC) both arrived at Friday’s weigh-ins with seemingly no problems. Both had expressed excitement about the fight. Neither fighter has commented on the cancellation at the time of publication.

Had that happened, Weidman would have wanted to continue the momentum after a win over Bruno Silva in March. Anders wanted to win three out of four, having recently become drug-free for the first time in fourteen years.

With the change, the UFC 309 fight card will include:

MAIN CARD (Pay-per-view, 10:00 PM ET)

• Champion Jon Jones vs. Stipe Miocic – for heavyweight title
• Michael Chandler vs. Charles Oliveira
• Paul Craig vs. Bo Nickal
• Viviane Araujo vs. Karine Silva
• James Llontop vs. Mauricio Ruffy

PRELIMINARY MAP (ESPNews/FX/Hulu, 8 p.m. ET)

• Jonathan Martinez vs. Marcus McGhee
• Damon Jackson vs. Jim Miller
• Jhonata Diniz vs. Marcin Tybura
• Ramiz Brahimaj vs. Mickey Gall

PRELIMINARY MAP (Hulu/ESPN+, 6 p.m. ET)

• Bassil Hafez vs. Oban Elliott

For more information about the card, visit MMA Junkie’s events hub UFC309.