Artem Lobov's return to MMA postponed after Arena Fight Championship cancels December card

Former UFC lightweight Artem Lobov was looking forward to returning to MMA this weekend, but he will now have to wait for some more time before he sets foot inside the cage.

Looks like Artem Lobov's return to MMA is on hold. https://t.co/M0qI5kCSyR

— Aaron Bronsteter (@aaronbronsteter) December 8, 2020

Artem Lobov was initially scheduled to face Ylies Djiroun for the lightweight title in the main event at Arena Fight 2 in France on Saturday. But the entire event has been postponed after several staff members of the promotion tested positive for COVID-19.

In a recent press release, European MMA promotion Arena Fight Championship announced the decision to postpone the event, which was set to go down on December 12.

“This postponement follows the detection last weekend of six COVID-19 cases within the teams of the group. We have therefore put in place measures to ensure the continuity of our operations such as the isolation of positive people and contact cases, the implementation of teleworking for all team members, and the obligation to carry out PCR tests on Monday, December 7th for all our employees."

“Following this wave of tests, we regret to say that we have almost 20 positive cases within our organization and are still waiting for some results. The rest of the employees are de facto contact cases, which prevents us for obvious health and ethical reasons from maintaining AFC2 at the risk of contaminating our fighters, our service providers, our partners and, by ricochet, their families and friends.”

Artem Lobov ‘gutted’ as MMA comeback fight cancelled on week of event | https://t.co/VGx45G74el pic.twitter.com/1bkX3tJQQN

— TheMacLife (@Maclifeofficial) December 8, 2020

Artem Lobov was about to make his return to MMA for the first time since 2018, where he succumbed to a unanimous decision loss against Michael Johnson at UFC Fight Night: Volkan vs. Smith. The last time Artem was seen in action was in a bare-knuckle fight in BKFC in 2019.

Artem Lobov is a teammate and dear friend of former two-division UFC champion Conor McGregor. As McGregor gears up to return to the octagon in 2021 against Dustin Poirier, Lobov said that the Irishman would definitely emerge victorious in his rematch just like the first time around. Lobov claimed that McGregor's precise striking would prove to be too much for Poirier to handle.