As things stand, a bantamweight title fight between Cody Garbrandt and TJ Dillashaw is set to headline UFC 213 in Las Vegas on July 8th, but according to one of the event’s other major stars, woman’s bantamweight champ Amanda Nunes, a new main event may be in the works.
“I think the main event is still (a work in progress),” told reporters during a media lunch earlier this week. “I don’t think it’s gonna be Cody and Dillashaw.
“I think it’s gonna be somebody else. I know, but I can’t say,” Nunes added with a smile.
It wouldn’t be too much of a surprise if Garbrandt and Dillashaw was pulled from the event as it emerged last week that the champion is currently suffering from a back injury, and even though he’s undergoing state-of-the-art stem cell treatment in Germany, there’s no guarantees that it will fix his issue, or leave him enough time to properly train for the fight.
Another interesting wrinkle to all this is that it had been assumed that Nunes latest title defense against Valentina Shevchenko would be the co-main event for the show under Garbrandt and Dillashaw.
However, during the media Q&A, Nunes appeared to suggest that her fight may only be intended to be the third fight on the bill as things stand.
“If this fight [between Garbrandt and Dillashaw] don’t happen, I might go to a co-main event,” Nunes said. “(But) I hope it happens because I want to see this fight. I want to see that fight for sure.”
So that suggests another big fight could still be in the works for the marquee event, which will serve as the centerpiece of ‘International Fight Week’ in Las Vegas.
At this stage there’s no real indication of what the fight is though, and it could be that Nunes just has her wires crossed.
There had been suggestions that the UFC may have been trying to book middleweight champion Michael Bisping vs Yoel Romero for the show, but with ‘The Count’ revealing that he has a knee injury and still has his heart set on a fight with GSP later in the year, that now seems unlikely.
