Asu Almabayev has had to withdraw from his headlining fight with Brandon Moreno at UFC Fight Night 268 in Mexico City, Mexico on February 28th after picking up an injury.
“The situation is like this, I got an arm injury two days before our flight,” Almabayev wrote on Instagram. “I don’t want to talk about the injury … no matter how much you [try], I can’t change it.”
It’s an unfortunate situation for the 32-year-old Almabayev, who was going to be undertaking his highest profile fight to date after amassing a 6-1 record in the Octagon so far.
Almabayev’s only defeat came back in March of last year when he suffered an eye-poke in the third round of a fight against Manel Kape that went unnoticed by the referee and soon after led to him being TKO’d.
Almbayev has since rebounded though with back-to-back wins in the remainder of 2025 against Jose Ochoa and Alex Perez to take the No.7 spot on the flyweight ladder.
With Almabayev out it’s not clear yet what the UFC intend to do with his opponent Moreno, but given that he’s a big star in Mexico it seems very likely that they’ll be looking for a replacement fighter to ensure he remains at the top of the bill.
The 32-year-old Moreno is coming off a TKO loss against Tatsuro Taira back in December of last year, but had beaten Steve Erceg and Amir Albazi prior to that, so he’s currently ranked No.5 in the division.
While the UFC scrambles to sort out the main event, the card proceeds with a line-up that also includes Marlon Vera vs. David Martinez, Daniel Zellhuber vs. King Green and Macy Chiasson vs. Ailin Perez.
