UFC 303 had one final withdrawal on Saturday, with featherweight veteran Brian Ortega pulling out at the last minute and leaving the event to announce his fourth different co-main event.
Minutes before the main card was set to start in Las Vegas, the UFC’s ESPN broadcast announced that Ortega had pulled out of his fight due to an illness that caused him to run a 103-degree fever. His previously scheduled opponent, Diego Lopes, will instead face Dan Ige in the co-main event.
BREAKING NEWS
Dan Ige steps in with 3 HOURS NOTICE to face Diego Lopes in the #UFC303 co-main event.
Brian Ortega has retired due to illness.
(Watch LIVE on ESPN+ PPV | 10pm ET/7pm PT) image.twitter.com/Q9FSaULiEL
-UFC (@ufc) June 30, 2024
The co-feature fight will now be a 165-pound catchweight bout for Lopes and Ige, who showed up at the arena and weighed in during the undercard. Nevada State Athletic Commission executive director Jeff Mullen told ESPN that Ige was allowed to intervene because he was scheduled to fight at UFC Apex in three weeks, so his medical exams were already up to date. .
Ortega had already caused the UFC to change the fight from featherweight to lightweight due to weight cutting issues.
Conor McGregor, Jamahal Hill and others have withdrawn from UFC 303
Retirements have been a recurring theme at UFC 303. The event was initially announced with a main event featuring Conor McGregor’s return to the octagon against Michael Chandler, with a co-main event between former light heavyweight champion Jamahal Hill and Khalil Rountree Jr.
A tainted supplement caused Rountree to withdraw from the co-lead, with Carlos Ulberg stepping in as a replacement. Then, McGregor and Hill had to withdraw due to injuries, leaving the UFC in a bind. The end result was a new main event between light heavyweight champion Alex Pereira and former champion Jiří Procházka and the co-main event between Lopes and Ortega.
Ulberg stayed with Anthony Smith, until he too retired and was replaced by Roman Dolidze. So the three main fights on the card have now seen a total of six withdrawals.
And that’s not even the end of it, as fights between Gillian Robertson and Michelle Waterson-Gomez, Cody Durden and Carlos Hernandez, and Andrei Arlovski and Martin Buday were all scheduled and subsequently postponed or altered.
All in all, it’s been a busy few weeks for Dana White, who also had to deal with Khamzat Chimaev’s withdrawal from his fight against Robert Whittaker last week. Whittaker made short work of replacement Ikram Aliskerov.
