Bo Nickal won’t be fighting on the UFC 322 main card after all.
An early bout order released by the UFC had Nickal’s fight against Rodolfo Vieira featured on the main card while a battle between ranked lightweights Beneil Dariush and Benoit Saint Denis was on the preliminary card. That has changed now with a new bout order set for Nov. 14 at Madison Square Garden in New York with Nickal vs. Vieira moved down to the prelims while Dariush vs. Saint Denis now opens the UFC 322 pay-per-view main card.
When the initial bout order was released there was immediate blowback due to Nickal receiving similar spots after first signing with the UFC as a highly touted prospect as a three-time NCAA champion wrestler, but without much big fight experience.
Nickal kept winning and embracing the compliments and the criticism, but then ran into a brick wall after suffering a knockout loss to Reinier de Ridder back in May. Still, it looked like he was going to get a main card spot for one of the biggest UFC cards of the year and Nickal definitely embraced it.
“Main card UFC 322,” Nickal wrote on Twitter. “Maybe I have 100’s of thousands of grassroots American wrestling fans or maybe it’s just rage bait. Either way I can’t wait to fight.”
In the end, the UFC decided to make a change to the lineup with Dariush vs. Saint Denis now taking that main card opener spot with Nickal vs. Vieira moving to the featured prelim.
Here’s the full card as it stands for UFC 322:
MAIN EVENT: Jack Della Maddalena vs. Islam Makhachev
CO-MAIN EVENT: Valentina Shevchenko vs. Zhang Weili
Sean Brady vs. Michael Morales
Leon Edwards vs. Carlos Prates
Beneil Dariush vs. Benoit Saint Denis
Bo Nickal vs. Rodolfo Vieira
Roman Kopylov vs. Gregory Rodrigues
Erin Blanchfield vs. Tracy Cortez
Malcolm Wellmaker vs. Cody Haddon
Kyle Daukaus vs. Gerald Meerschaert
Pat Sabatini vs. Chepe Mariscal
Angela Hill vs. Fatima Kline
Baisangur Susurkaev vs. Eric McConico
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