Any hope of the UFC’s stars keeping injury-free for the rest of the year is now lost as hot on the heels of the news that Shane Carwin is out of the TUF 16 Finale it’s now emerged that Gray Maynard has also withdrawn from his fight with Joe Lauzon at UFC 155 on December 29th.
As yet it’s not known exactly what the injury was that will keep Maynard from competing, but it’s sure to have come as a blow for the lightweight fighter who had been hoping to build on a win over Clay Guida earlier in the year as he plots his way back to another title shot.
The good news is that the UFC have quickly found a more-than-worthy replacement for Maynard, with Jim Miller now agreeing to step in and fight Lauzon.
Miller has had a tough spell by his standards of late after losing two of his last three fights. However, when you consider that his defeats came to current champion Ben Henderson and No.1 contender Nate Diaz then it doesn’t look quite so bad, and let’s not forget he was on a seven fight winning streak prior to that.
As for Lauzon, he sweeped up both the ‘Fight Of The Night’ and ‘Submission Of The Night’ awards after his victory over Jamie Varner in August and also holds a big win over former title hopeful Melvin Guillard last year, though in-between those two impressive showings he suffered a tough KO loss to Anthony Pettis.
Personally I think Lauzon Vs Miller is at least as good a fight as the originally planned bout, and perhaps more evenly matched so this doesn’t detract in any way from the UFC’s end of year show, though they’ll surely now be keeping their fingers tightly crossed that there’s no more call-offs in store in the coming weeks.
