Petr Yan is out of his headlining fight against Song Yadong at UFC Fight night 233 in Shanghai, China on December 9th due to an injury.
In place of the former bantamweight champion, Chris Gutierrez has now been brought in on a month’s notice to fight Yadong instead.
This will be the 32-year-old Gutierrez’ first chance to headline a show and comes at a time when he’s holding the No.14 spot in the flyweight rankings after compiling a 8-2-1 record in the promotion to date.
Gutierrez’ biggest win to date was a brutal KO knee finish over Frankie Edgar a year ago in New York City, but he did then suffer a unanimous decision loss against Pedro Munhoz that ended an eight-fight unbeaten stretch. However, Gutierrez has since got back on track with a decision win against Alateng Heili just a few weeks ago.
Now he’ll prepare to take on the 7th ranked Yadong, who has a very similar UFC record to Gutierrez, having gone 9-2-1 so far.
Yadong has consistently been fighting higher-profile opponents though, and he’s beaten the likes of Marlon Vera, Marlon Moraes and most recently Ricky Simon, though he was also TKO’d by Cory Sandhagen back in September of last year.
Yadong vs. Gutierrez leads a UFC Fight Night 233 card that will mark the UFC’s first even in Shangai since 2017 and will feature other bouts like Andre Muniz vs. Jun-Yong Park and Nasrat Haqparast vs. Jamie Mullarkey alongside four ‘Road To UFC Season 2’ finals.
