With a featherweight title rematch closely rumored for later in 2025, Ilia Topuria and Alexander Volkanovski will not directly face off Feb. 8 at UFC 312.
One fighter’s loss is one other’s acquire. After Cody Haddon suffered a damaged foot that pressured him out of a struggle on the Sydney card vs. Aleksandre Topuria, the UFC enlisted newcomer Colby Thicknesse to fill the void.
Information of the change was first reported just lately by Alvaro Colmenero and confirmed by the groups and the promotion Wednesday on social media.
Topuria (5-1 MMA, 0-0 UFC) is the brother of the UFC featherweight champion, Ilia. UFC 312 will mark his promotional debut simply six fights into his skilled profession. He’s by no means gone the gap in his profession, with three TKOs and two submissions throughout 5 wins.
Thicknesse (7-0 MMA, 0-0 UFC) is a coaching associate of Volkanovski, who gained the HEX Struggle Sequence bantamweight title in November. 4 of his seven professional wins have come inside the gap.
With the change, the UFC 312 lineup now contains:
- Champion Dricus Du Plessis vs. Sean Strickland – for middleweight title
- Champion Zhang Weili vs. Tatiana Suarez – for girls’s strawweight title
- Justin Tafa vs. Tallison Teixeira
- Rodolfo Bellato vs. Jimmy Crute
- Jake Matthews vs. Francisco Prado
- Anshul Jubli vs. Quillan Salkilld
- Viacheslav Borshchev vs. Tom Nolan
- Jack Jenkins vs. Gabriel Santos
- Bruna Brasil vs. Cong Wang
- Kody Steele vs. Rong Zhu
- Kevin Jousset vs. Jonathan Micallef
- Hyun Sung Park vs. Nyamjargal Tumendemberel
- Colby Thicknesse vs. Aleksandre Topuria
For extra on the cardboard, go to MMA Junkie’s occasion hub for UFC 312.
Make sure to go to the MMA Junkie Instagram web page and YouTube channel to debate this and extra content material with followers of combined martial arts.