When Alistair Overeem was removed from his UFC heavyweight title match with Junior dos Santos, there was a social media movement to get feel-good story and surging Mark Hunt the shot. Dana White shot the idea down and Frank Mir got the nod instead, leaving Hunt to remain in his fight with Stefan Struve on the UFC 146 undercard.
However, Hunt said on Twitter Thursday that he is now off the event due to a PCL injury, leading to Lavar Johnson getting a major opportunity against Struve instead.
At the time of this writing, Hunt (8-7) didn’t go into many other details but said he said he hopes to have surgery in California and then will head home to Australia. Going into the Struve fight, he had won his last three in a row, recently defeating Cheick Kongo by first round TKO.
The 34-year-old Johnson (17-5) has done well since being brought over from Strikeforce, knocking out Joey Beltran in his debut and following that up with a first round TKO of Pat Barry to open up UFC on Fox 3. ESPN’s Chuck Mindenhall noted that with this injury, every main card fight for UFC 146 has been altered.