Chris Weidman vs. Uriah Hall bounced from UFC 258, could be rescheduled

A middleweight fight between Chris Weidman and Uriah Hall has been removed from the UFC 258 bill after the former tested positive for COVID-19.

News of the fight’s cancelation was first reported by Ariel Helwani of ESPN, the official broadcast partner of the UFC. Helwani added that the fight could be rescheduled for UFC 261 on April 24, which could potentially occur in Singapore, as recently reported by SCMP MMA’s John Hyon Ko.

Chris Weidman vs. Uriah Hall is being moved. The fight, which was scheduled for UFC 258 on Feb. 13, has been canceled, sources say, after Weidman tested positive for COVID-19 recently. The current plan is for the fight to be moved to UFC 261 on April 24, according to sources.

— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) January 29, 2021

“Chris Weidman vs. Uriah Hall is being moved,” Helwani wrote. “The fight, which was scheduled for UFC 258 on Feb. 13, has been canceled, sources say, after Weidman tested positive for COVID-19 recently. The current plan is for the fight to be moved to UFC 261 on April 24, according to sources.”

Chris Weidman and Uriah Hall have met once before, having fought under the Ring of Combat banner in 2010. The fight, which was Weidman’s third as a pro and Hall’s fifth, was won by the former via first-round TKO.

Since then, both men have had major success in the UFC.

Chris Weidman joined the promotion in 2010, and after picking up wins over the likes of Alessio Sakara, Demian Maia and Mark Munoz, captured the middleweight title with a jaw-dropping knockout of Anderson Silva. He then defended the title with wins over Silva, Lyoto Machida and Vitor Belfort, before ultimately surrendering it to Luke Rockhold.

Since losing the title, Weidman has fallen on tough times, interspersing a string of losses to Yoel Romero, Gegard Mousasi, Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza, and Dominick Reys with two wins over Kelvin Gastelum and Omari Akhmedov.

Uriah Hall, on the other hand, burst into the MMA limelight on The Ultimate Fighter 17. After coming up short to Gastelum in the show’s finale, he began a commendable run through the UFC middleweight division, defeating the likes of Chris Leben, Thiago Santos, Gegard Mousasi, Krzysztof Jotko, Antonio Carlos Junior, and most recently, the former champion Silva, which set him up for the Weidman rematch.