The best and worst from UFC Fight Night 149: Overeem vs. Oleinik

#1 Worst: The Ural Hulk’s debut has to wait

Ivan Shtyrkov's UFC debut was cancelled under strange circumstances

Outside of the Overeem/Oleinik fight there wasn’t a lot to look forward to on this show, and so I was pretty pumped for the debut of ‘The Ural Hulk’ Ivan Shtyrkov. Prior to researching the card I hadn’t really heard of the Russian, but after watching his fight footage I was wowed; Shtyrkov was bringing a 15-0 record in for his fight with Devin Clark, and had destroyed UFC veterans like Thiago Silva and Fabio Maldonado on the Russian circuit. The fact that he looked so physically intimidating made his debut a must-watch, too.

And then of course, it never happened. Despite weighing in at the 205lbs limit on Friday, Shtyrkov was apparently hospitalised and had to withdraw from the fight at some stage between Friday night and Saturday morning. The announcement of the fight being cancelled actually came from Clark, which means that there are still a ton of questions around why it happened, too. Did Shtyrkov cut too much weight? Was he busted by USADA? Who knows.

At any rate, considering the card didn’t have any true stinkers, to me this was probably the worst point. There’s few things worse than looking forward to a fight and then seeing it scrapped, after all. Hopefully Shtyrkov can overcome whatever issue sidelined him and make his UFC debut soon.