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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
More injuries have hit the UFC for this fall, as two fighters have been forced out of next month's UFC Fight Night 25 card in New Orleans, also known as the "Battle on the Bayou" event.
The UFC announced on Wednesday that welterweight DaMarques Johnson and featherweight Mackens Semerzier are out of their fights with Clay Harvison and Mike Lullo, respectively. Johnson's replacement has already been found, while the organization is still searching for a new opponent for Lullo.
Johnson, who was looking to bounce back from a one-sided loss to Amir Sadollah in March, has been replaced by Ultimate Fighter 11 competitor Seth Baczynski according to a report from MMAWeekly.com.
Though he failed to make it into the house on TUF 11 initially, losing to eventual winner Court McGee, Baczynski was given a chance to return when an injury took another fighter out of the show. He fought on the finale event, but lost to Brad Tavares. He has since won two fights outside of the UFC, defeating former WEC and UFC fighter Tim McKenzie and Canadian Alex Garcia.
Penick's Analysis: The Baczysnki-Harvison bout is an alright replacement fight, but will more than likely be a preliminary card fight for this event. The loss of Semerzier is especially disappointing, as he's always in entertaining fights, and even in his three fight losing streak he was competitive and the fights were all good fights. So the loss of Semerzier and Johnson bring these fights down a bit, but the UFC will find a decent featherweight replacement, just as they've done for the welterweight fight here, and the event will be alright.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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