Tonight’s UFC 319 event has lost it’s third fight in the space of a few days with the news that a preliminary card bout between Bryan Battle and Nursulton Ruziboev has been cancelled.

This latest call-off came as a result of the 30-year-old Battle missing weight for his middleweight fight with Ruziboev by 4lbs.

The fight was briefly set to go ahead as a 190lb catchweight instead, but was then scrapped entirely.

Weight-issues has now become a major problem for Battle as he’d only just been forced up to middleweight after missing weight twice at welterweight in recent times.

Battle weighed in 2lbs over the welterweight limit for his fight with Gabriel Green in May of 2023, while in December of last year he tipped the scales 4lbs over for a fight against Randy Brown.

Battle does have a very solid 7-1 (+1nc) record in the Octagon, but he’s now putting his place on the roster at risk due to his failure to get his weight under control, and indeed some fans are already calling for him to be released.

Battle vs. Ruziboev is the third undercard fight to be pulled from the show this week, with an undisclosed injury to King Green nixing his match-up against Carlos Diego Ferreira, while a TUF 33 welterweight final between Daniil Donchenko and Rodrigo Sezinando has also been withdrawn from the line-up after Sezinando picked up an injury too.

Thankfully the main card remains intact and will be headlined by a middleweight title fight between Dricus du Plessis and Khamzat Chimaev.