UFC 149: Siyar Bahadurzada injured, Matt Riddle now faces Chris Clements

It has recently emerged that welterweight fighter Siyar Bahadurzada has been forced to withdraw from his scheduled UFC 149 matchup against Chris Clements (11-4) due to an injury. Matt Riddle (6-3) will now step in as a replacement to take on Clements.

This whole thing started out with a planned fight between Yoshihiro Akiyama and Thiago “Pitbull” Alves, then Akiyama sustained an injury and Bahadurzada stepped in as a replacement. Alves then was injured so Chris Clements took the fight and now Bahadurzada is injured. It is scenarios like this that really outline the problems that the UFC can have with fighters getting injured.

UFC 149 will take place on July 21^st at the Scotiabank Saddledome in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The event will be headlined by a interim bantamweight title matchup between Urijah Faber and Renan Barao.

Matt Riddle enters this fight coming off a victory over Henry Martinez at UFC 143 earlier this year. He won the fight via split decision in a close fight. The win over Martinez snapped a two fight skid for Riddle who had dropped back-to-back losses against Sean Pierson and Lance Benoist. Another win and a good performance will take Riddle out of the red zone, and allow him to start climbing the welterweight ladder.

At UFC 145 Chris Clements had his promotional debut against Keith Wisniewski and won the fight via split decision. Before joining the UFC Clements had been putting in big performances on the regional circuit in Canada, after building up a four fight winning streak beating notable fighters such as Jonathan Goulet and Rich Clementi. He will no doubt look to build on his last victory and start to move up the division rankings.