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

#4 UFC 200 – 07/09/16

Original main event: Conor McGregor vs. Nate Diaz

Replacement main event: Miesha Tate vs. Amanda Nunes

Amanda Nunes and Miesha Tate were never supposed to main event UFC 200

Okay, so at least we were given a title fight as the replacement main event for this one. But realistically UFC 200 was being built as the biggest show in UFC history and so – no offense to either fighter as they’re both fantastic – Miesha Tate vs. Amanda Nunes for the Women’s Bantamweight title – was hardly an amazing-sounding headliner.

It wasn’t supposed to be, though. Tate vs. Nunes was initially part of the undercard, with the rematch between Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz to be the main.

But McGregor refused to attend the amount of media days that the UFC required and ended up being removed, and so the fight was scrapped and replaced with an equally big fight – the long-awaited Jon Jones/Daniel Cormier rematch.

Then three days before the event, disaster struck. USADA announced that Jones had tested positive for a banned substance and would thus be unable to fight, and so the UFC hastily shifted Tate vs. Nunes – the only remaining title fight on the card – into the headline slot.

It was a weird choice given Anderson Silva had agreed to fight Cormier as a late replacement – making that a far bigger fight than Tate/Nunes – and Brock Lesnar vs. Mark Hunt threatened to overshadow both fights anyway, but the UFC evidently chose to show the value of their titles over anything else.

As it turned out, Tate vs. Nunes was more entertaining than both – Nunes finished Tate in the first round of a surprisingly one-sided fight to take the belt.