Injury to Robbie Lawler sends Ronda Rousey to Australia to headline UFC 193
An injury to welterweight champion Robbie Lawler forced a postponement of his Nov. 15 title defense against Carlos Condit in the main event of UFC 193 in Melbourne, Australia.
As he often does, UFC president Dana White turned to women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey to fill the void. White said Friday on “SportsCenter” that Rousey’s title defense against Holly Holm, which was previously announced as the headliner for UFC 195 on Jan. 2 in Las Vegas, will now headline UFC 193 in the 90,000-seat Etihad Stadium.
White told Yahoo Sports on Friday he is not certain when Lawler will fight again, but said it is not a serious injury.
He said when he heard that Lawler needed time to recover, he had no problem granting it. But he needed Rousey to bail him out given the importance the company is placing on UFC 193.
“I swear on my life, I called her today when I thought something might happen and I said to her, ‘Hypothetically speaking, … ‘” White said. “She interrupts me and said, ‘I’ll do whatever you need me to do.’ So I laugh and I’m telling her how much I love that attitude and I’m going on and she stops me again and says, ‘Hey, so what is up? What do you need?’ She’s incredible. In 15 years of doing this, I’ve never seen anyone remotely like this woman.”
White, who said Rousey is the UFC’s highest-paid fighter “even before pay-per-view,” said he hopes to set a new attendance record for an MMA event.
He’s not certain what he’ll do to fill the slot in the main event at UFC 195. Lawler-Condit is a possibility, but White said he hasn’t had enough time to work through things. He wanted to move strawweight champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk’s title defense against Valerie Letourneau, which had been set for UFC 195, to Melbourne as the co-main to Rousey-Holm, but it is too soon for Letourneau to be ready.
“I just have to rethink all of this,” White said. “There are a lot of ways we can go, but we’ll make this a kick-ass event and we’ll get back at it and figure out [UFC 195] and do the same thing with that.”
