After his fight against Dominick Cruz fell through due to his opponent getting injured and subsequently retiring, Rob Font will now remain on the UFC Fight Night 252 card in a late replacement match-up against Jean Matsumoto.
Matsumoto had originally been scheduled to fight Chris Gutierrez at UFC 313 next month, but he’s now been pushed forward to take this fight instead.
It means a much shorter training camp for the 25-year-old Matsumoto, but the plus side is that he’s now facing a top 10 ranked bantamweight opponent as Font currently holds down the No.9 spot.
So this is a big opportunity for Matsumoto given that he’s only two fights into his UFC run. That being said, his resume so far does suggest that he was on the right path anyway as he’s currently undefeated in his 16-fight career and earned a submission win over Dan Argueta in his UFC debut last year before going on to beat Brad Katona on the scorecards.
This will be his biggest test to date though against an established veteran in the 37-year-old Font, who is coming off a unanimous decision victory over Kyler Phillips last year, which got him back to winning ways after decision losses to two leading contenders in Deiveson Figueiredo and Cory Sandhagen before that.
Font vs. Matsumoto is a welcome addition to a UFC Fight Night 252 card from Seattle next weekend that has been ravaged by call-offs recently, but still remains headlined by Henry Cejudo vs. Song Yadong, along with Brendan Allen vs. Anthony Hernandez in the co-main event.
