UFC Sydney lineup gets a number of late adjustments

Earlier this week, news broke that Mark Hunt had been removed from his UFC Sydney headlining showdown with Marcin Tybura (and he’s not happy about that). Former UFC heavyweight champion Fabricio Werdum will serve at Hunt’s replacement against Tybura in the card’s main event.

As it turns out, this is not the only recent change to the UFC Sydney lineup. The card has experienced another handful of adjustments over the last few days.

The first UFC Sydney shakeup occurred when Canada’s Jeremy Kennedy was forced out of a planned bout with Australia’s Alex Volkanovski with a back injury. Luckily, the UFC was able to find a replacement for the injured Canadian in Humberto Bandenay. This news was first reported by BJPenn.com’s Tom Taylor.

Sources tell me that Humberto Bandenay will replace the injured Jeremy Kennedy against Alex Volkanovski at #UFCSydney

— Tom Taylor (@TomTayMMA) October 11, 2017

The UFC Sydney lineup experienced another shift when TUF 25 winner Jesse Taylor was forced out his planned bout with Belal Muhammad. Once again, however, the UFC matchmaking team was able to come up with a replacement, calling on all-action striking specialist Tim “The Dirty Bird” Means to step in. This news was first reported by Shawn Bitter on Twitter.

The UFC’s return to Sydney goes down on November 18.  Here’s the card’s lineup as it stands after the aforementioned changes.

• Fabricio Werdum vs. Marcin Tybura
• Joanne Calderwood vs. Bec Rawlings
• Tim Means vs. Belal Muhammad
• Daniel Kelly vs. Elias Theodorou
• Humberto Bandenay vs. Alex Volkanovski
• Ryan Benoit vs. Ashkan Mokhtarian
• Jenel Lausa vs. Eric Shelton
• Alex Chambers vs. Nadia Kassem
• Rashad Coulter vs. Tai Tuivasa

Which fight on the UFC Sydney bill are you most excited for?

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 10/12/2017.