The first Ultimate Fighting Championship show of the new
year has taken a big hit.
According to reporter Igor Lazorin on
Thursday morning, Geoff Neal
(15-4) has suffered an injury and has been forced out of his
pairing with Shavkat
Rakhmonov (16-0) at
UFC Fight Night 217. The two welterweights were set to toe the
line in the co-headliner of the UFC Vegas-based event on Jan. 14.
Per Lazorin, the promotion is looking to find a new opponent for
the top-10 170-pounder Rakhmonov. Neal, however, confirmed this
news, while stating that he seeks keeping the fight together and
pushing it to a later date.
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“Fights [sic] off people…looking to rebook Shavkat later. Nobody’s
scared,” Neal wrote on
Facebook shortly after the news broke.
Neal was aiming to lift a two-fight win streak to three straight,
as he had previously topped Santiago
Ponzinibbio at the end of 2021 and came back in mid-2022 to
knock Vicente
Luque out. “Handz of Steel” was intent on derailing the hype
train and unbeaten record of his opponent, having said in a recent
interview with
MMA Junkie that he would “take the win…easy.” Making his
promotional debut in 2018 after claiming a contract on the first
season of Dana White’s Contender Series, Neal has scored
five stoppages across his seven wins, notably putting away Luque as
well as Niko Price
and Mike
Perry on his way up.
Kazakhstan’s Rakhmonov has yet to taste defeat as a professional,
ratting off 12 wins in his first years in the sport before joining
the UFC in 2020. Since then, “Nomad” has kept his dominant ways
intact, stopping Alex
Oliveira, Michel
Prazeres, Carlston
Harris and Neil Magny
one after the other as he surged into contendership. Rakhmonov has
only been to the third round one time as a pro, and he celebrates
an equal number of knockouts to submissions on his ledger.
UFC Fight Night 217 will carry on at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas, in
a card capped off by a middleweight throwdown between Nassourdine
Imavov and Kelvin
Gastelum. If the promotion cannot find a new opponent to face
Rakhmonov, the new co-headliner will likely come in the form of a
middleweight clash between Punahele
Soriano and Roman
Kopylov. Additional main card tilts include Dan Ige vs.
Damon
Jackson at featherweight, flyweights Jimmy Flick
and Charles
Johnson battling it out and Ketlen
Vieira taking on Raquel
Pennington in the women’s 135-pound class.