5 times that a UFC main event was made weaker due to a last-minute change

#2 UFC Fight Night 76 – 10/24/15

Original main event: Dustin Poirier vs. Joseph Duffy

Replacement main event: Paddy Holohan vs. Louis Smolka

Paddy Holohan vs. Louis Smolka was an unexpected UFC headliner in 2015

When the UFC announced its return to Dublin in October 2015, the initially billed main event of Dustin Poirier vs. Joseph Duffy was hardly world-shattering anyway. Poirier has since developed into a genuine contender, but at that stage, both he and Duffy were prospects rather than contenders and the fight was a clear step down from the Conor McGregor-headlined show in Dublin a year prior.

Still, it sounded like fun at least. That was until three days before the show, when it was announced that Duffy would be unable to fight due to a concussion sustained in a sparring session earlier that week. Poirier was offered Norman Parke as a late replacement but turned the fight down and so the show was left without a main event.

Unable to put a new fight together on late notice, the UFC instead elevated a fight between two unranked Flyweights – the local boy Paddy Holohan and Hawaiian Louis Smolka – into the main event slot, booking probably the weakest main event in UFC history.

In the end, the fight was fun at least – Smolka submitted Holohan late in the second round after nearly ten minutes of back-and-forth grappling.