A welterweight fight between Robbie Lawler and Bryan Barberena has been promoted from the prelims to the main card of Saturday night’s UFC 276 event in Las Vegas.
A bout between Miesha Tate and Lauren Murphy had originally been scheduled to take this spot, but the match-up was withdrawn from the line-up yesterday due to Murphy testing positive for Covid, and has now been moved to July 16th in Long Island instead.
Lawler, who just a few days ago had expressed his surprise at having been put on the undercard, comes into the fight off a TKO victory over Nick Diaz at UFC 266.
That brought an end to a four-fight losing streak for the former welterweight champion, who had lost out to Rafael dos Anjos, Ben Askren, Colby Covington and Neil Magny over a three-year period.
Now he’s going up against Barberena, who is coming off back-to-back wins, having earned a unanimous decision victory over Darian Weeks followed by a split decision win against Matt Brown back in March.
With Robbie Lawler vs. Barberena promoted, the UFC 276 main card is now complete and remains headlined by a middleweight title fight between Israel Adesanya and Jared Cannonier, with a trilogy featherweight title fight between Alex Volkanovski and Max Holloway taking the co-main event spot.