In the wake of Ben Rothwell pulling out of his ‘UFC On FOX 4’ fight with Travis Browne the UFC have decided to promote a prelim fight between Mike Swick and DaMarques Johnson to the main card instead.
The news will come as a blow to Browne who is now set to fight Buddy Roberts in the preliminary portion of the L.A event next weekend.
While Browne Vs Roberts did seem like an unbalanced fight to be taking up valuabe real-estate on the live FOX card that’ll be watched by millions of fans on Saturday night, the replacement fight sees the UFC taking a bit of a gamble too.
While Swick and Johnson are certainly capable of putting on an entertaining fight, the major issue here is that Swick hasn’t fought since February of 2010 due to a long battle with a stomach condition that left him unable to eat properly.
Prior to that Swick had been a notable player in the UFC’s welterweight division but had experienced a slump in form, coming up short in a title eliminator with Dan Hardy before going on to lose to Paulo Thiago.
Meanwhile former TUF Season 9 finalist Johnson has had decidely mixed fortunes in the UFC, going 4-4 overall in the Octagon so far.
While the card has seen a few alterations recently the main two fights remain the same, with Mauricio ‘Shogun’ Rua Vs Brandon Vera taking the main event slot while Lyoto Machida Vs Ryan Bader gets the co-main event berth.
