Sodiq Yusuff out of Edson Barboza fight, Makwan Amirkhani steps in on short notice
Sodiq Yusuff and Edson Barboza will no longer be fighting one another at UFC Fight Island 5.
Barboza was set to remain at featherweight to battle Yusuff in what many fans were calling one of the best fights scheduled for the five-week stretch on Fight Island. Yet, Brazilian outlet, Combate was first to report the news that Yusuff is out due to undisclosed reasons.
Sodiq Yusuff está fora da luta contra Edson Barboza por motivo ainda desconhecido. UFC procura substituto para enfrentar o brasileiro, que deve ser mantido no evento do dia 10 de outubro, na Ilha da Luta. Plano A do Ultimate é Makwan Amirkhani. #feedmma
— Raphael Marinho (@raphamarinho) September 21, 2020
MyMMANews was able to confirm that Yusuff is out due to passport reasons on his side. The hope for Yusuff’s camp was Barboza would delay the fight a couple of weeks to fight when the promotion returns to the UFC Apex. Yet, that will not be the case as Makwan Amirkhani is stepping up on short notice according to Combate.
Edson Barboza is on a three-fight losing streak and is just 1-5 in his last six fights. He made his featherweight debut earlier this year and dropped a very close split decision to Dan Ige. Before that, he suffered another split decision loss to Paul Felder and a KO loss to Justin Gaethje. His lone win in this stretch was a dominant TKO win over Dan Hooker after losing to Kevin Lee and Khabib Nurmagomedov.
Makwan Amirkhani, meanwhile, returned to the win column on Fight Island with a first-round submission win over Danny Henry. Before that, in his American debut, he suffered a TKO loss to Shane Burgos to snap his two-fight winning streak.
With the addition of Barboza vs. Amirkhani, UFC Fight Island 5 is as following:
Marlon Moraes vs. Cory Sandhagen
Ben Rothwell vs. Marcin Tybura
Edson Barboza vs. Makwan Amirkhani
Youssef Zalal vs. Seung Woo Choi
Alejandro Perez vs. Thomas Almeida
Tracy Cortez vs. Bea Malecki
Abu Azaitar vs. Joaquin Buckley
Rodrigio Nascimento vs. Chris Daukaus
Sergey Spivak vs. Tom Aspinall
Ali AlQaisi vs. Tony Kelley
Giga Chikadze vs. Omar Morales
Tagir Ulanbekov vs. Bruno Silva
