Giga Chikadze replaces Gavin Tucker, now fights Cub Swanson on May 1
Cub Swanson will remain on the May 1 card and will now face Giga Chikadze.
Originally, Swanson was booked to face Gavin Tucker in a phenomenal fight. However, Tucker took a short notice fight against Dan Ige, and now Chikadze has stepped up to face Swanson. MyMMANews has confirmed the fight booking after adjarasport.com was the first to report the news.
Cub Swanson is coming off a TKO win over Daniel Pineda at UFC 256. The win was his second win in a row after he beat Kron Gracie by decision to snap his four-fight losing skid. The fight against Pineda marked his return to the Octagon after having knee surgery. In his last two fights, Swanson has looked like a completely different fighter and is looking to become a ranked featherweight again.
Giga Chikadze, meanwhile, is 12-2 as a pro but is 5-0 in the UFC. He did come up short on the Contender Series losing to Austin Springer by submission. He then rallied off two wins in a row to get a short notice fight against Brandon Davis. After back-to-back split decision wins over Davis and Jamall Emmers he then beat Irwin Rivera and Omar Morales by decision. He completed his 4-0 2020 with a TKO win over Jamey Simmons in November.
The May 1 card is expected to be headlined by a light heavyweight bout between Dominick Reyes vs Jiri Prochazka. The card doesn’t have a location as of yet.
With the addition of Cub Swanson vs Giga Chikadze, the May 1 event is as follows:
- Dominick Reyes vs Jiri Prochazka
- Ion Cutelaba vs Devin Clark
- Shamil Abdurakhimov vs. Augusto Sakai
- Cub Swanson vs Giga Chikadze
- TJ Laramie vs Damon Jackson
- Kai Kamaka III vs. TJ Brown
- Mike Jackson vs. Dean Barry
- Ji Yeon Kim vs. Poliana Botelho
- KB Bhullar vs. Andreas Michailidis
- Sam Hughes vs. Loma Lookboonmee
- Sean Strickland vs. Krzystof Jotko
- Felipe Colares vs. Journey Newson
- Gabriel Benitez vs. Jonathan Pearce
