Many fans may have forgotten amidst the hoopla of the Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier rivalry, but the initial UFC 178 main event was set to be the highly anticipated rematch between Jon Jones and No. 1 contender Alexander Gustafsson.
Unfortunately, that bout was scrapped when Gustafsson was forced to withdraw from the bout citing a knee injury. The UFC was able to procure quite the replacement fight when Cormier was selected to fill in for Gustafsson, and the rivalry between Cormier and Jones made the bout one of the most anticipated fights of all time.
Once Jones was forced to withdraw as well due to a knee injury, the UFC announced that the fight between he and Cormier would be postponed to UFC 182 in January. As expected, Gustafsson was not happy that the UFC decided to leapfrog him and stick with the Jones vs Cormier bout.
The caption from Gustafsson himself:
Apparently @ufc thinks that acting like clowns on a press conference will hype a fight more than doing the fight of the century, thats ridiculous.
Gustafsson has all the right in the world to be unhappy, but unfortunately for him this is the way of the fight game. The media day brawl between Cormier and Jones hyped the bout to astronomical levels. Although the Gustafsson and Jones rematch would be highly anticipated as well, it simply can not match up the hype of the Cormier bout.
For now, Gustafsson will have to sit and wait his turn. At this point, expect to see him back in the cage in April or May of 2015.
