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After it was reported this week that Floyd Mayweather and Shane Mosely would fight on pay-per-view on May 1st, the same night that the UFC had scheduled UFC 113 for Montreal, UFC President Dana White discussed the possibility of moving the Montreal event to avoid a head to head match up on pay-per-view.
Now, that move is going to take place, as White confirmed with Yahoo!'s CageWriter blog that the event would take place on May 8th instead. The Bell Centre was able to move a previously scheduled concert for that night to facilitate the move.
Said White, "We were trying to not go the same night as boxing but these [expletive] guys can't get out of their own way. I have never seen anything so unorganized, selfish and dysfunctional as boxing. It's a joke!"
UFC 113 in Montreal will be headlined by the Light Heavyweight Championship rematch between Lyoto Machida and Mauricio "Shogun" Rua. Machida retained his Title by unanimous decision at UFC 104, though most observers felt the nod should have gone to Rua in that bout.
Penick's Analysis: Like I said the other day, this is a good move. Even though the Mayweather-Mosely bout hasn't been made official the UFC is being proactive here and making the move anyway. The Machida-Shogun rematch will definitely be highly anticipated, but it's not a million buy selling fight and they would definitely risk losing some of their audience for that night if Mayweather was fighting at the same time. It will be a good night for the Montreal fans and should be yet another good card in Canada.
[Lyoto Machida art by Cory Gould (c) MMATorch.com]
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