The injury-jinxed Tatiana Suarez has had to withdraw from her fight with Amanda Lemos at UFC 298 in Anaheim, California on February 17th.
The good news is that Suarez describes her latest injury as just “a minor setback” and expects to be back in the near future.
Meanwhile, the UFC has drafted in Mackenzie Dern to replace Suarez against Lemos.
The 30-year-old Dern is coming off a TKO loss against Jessica Andrade at UFC 295 in November of last year.
That continues a pattern of alternating between wins and losses for Dern in her past six fights, with wins over Nina Nunes, Tecia Torres and Angela Hill being spaced inbetween losses to Marina Rodriguez, Yan Xiaonan and the aforementioned Andrade, leaving her ranked No.8 in the strawweight division.
As for the 36-year-old Lemos, she is coming off an unsuccessful title attempt at UFC 292 last year, losing out to Zhang Weili by unanimous decision.
Prior to that Lemos had won seven of her previous eight UFC fights, and as such she still holds the No.4 spot on the 115lb rankings.
Lemos vs. Dern features on a UFC 298 card that will be headlined by a featherweight title fight between current champion Alexander Volkanovski and Ilia Topuria, while other bouts on the card include Robert Whittaker vs. Paulo Costa, Merab Dvlashvili vs. Henry Cejudo and Ian Garry vs. Geoff Neal.
