Frankie Edgar’s bantamweight debut has been delayed after the UFC veteran has been drafted in to replace the injured Brian Ortega for the December 21 main event in Busan, South Korea, the promotion announced late on Thursday.
Ortega had announced his withdrawal from the bout on Wednesday and cited an ACL injury as the reason but the UFC didn’t wait long to source a replacement fighter in Edgar (a former opponent of Ortega’s incidentally). ‘The Answer’ has already been booked for a January 25 fight against Cory Sandhagen in what was to be Edgar’s debut at 135-pounds and despite maintaining his intention to make that date, the very fact that he is taking on a fight four weeks beforehand will undoubtably put this into doubt.
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News of the change was reported by MMA Junkie and confirmed by the UFC overnight. The short notice bout will headline the UFC’s first ever trip to the second most populous city in South Korea.
Edgar was most recently in action in a failed title effort against featherweight champion Max Holloway in July. It was a defeat which motivated the move down a division to bantamweight as his hunt to be considered the best in the world moved to a different weight class, but apparently the opportunity of one last hurrah at 145-pound proved too difficult to resist.
Chan Sung Jung, or the Korean Zombie, last fought in June where he defeated Renato Moicano by TKO.
