Gustafsson officially out, replaced by training partner Ilir Latifi

Relative unknown fighter Ilir Latifi to make UFC debut and may headline UFC on FUEL TV 9

by Ben Heather @benheather

On Monday Wanderlei Silva got fans excited and said that he would be happy to step up and fight Mousasi if Gustafsson was ruled out before revealing that this was infact an April Fools joke.

Then earlier on Tuesday news broke that the Swedish MMA Federation had ruled that Alexander Gustafsson (15-1 MMA 7-1 UFC) had not been cleared to fight this weekend. The facial cut which Gustafsson suffered in training a couple of days ago had been ruled too severe to fight with this weekend and so his fight with Gegard Mousasi (33-3-2 MMA) was off.

This left the UFC in a tricky position with only four days left until the show how would they fill the space.

Would Mousasi still fight on the card?

What will the main event now be for the show?

and could anybody fill the giant hole left by Gustafsson?

 Dana White broke his silence and put an end to speculation of the past few days with the answer to the question that every MMA fan in the world has been asking for the past few days... What is going to happen to the main event of UFC on Fuel Tv 9. If you predicted the outcome you are either we now have you are either a) A genius, b) Dana White or c) Ilir Latifi as I dont know of anyone who could have predicted the news that Dana White broke late on Tuesday evening.

The new fight for Mousasi at UFC on FUEL TV 9 see's Gegard Mousasi face Ilir Latifi (7-2 MMA) who happens to be Alexander Gustafsson's training partner. For those who had not heard of Latifi before and there may be a few of you he is a 5ft 8" 29 year old fighter who will be making his UFC debut this weekend. He will make his way in to the octagon coming off the back of a 3 fight winning streak with his only two losses coming against current Bellator fighter Emanuel Newton and Tatsuya Mizuno.

The new match up may result in one of the most one sided odds matchups the UFC has ever seen but for now nothing has been announced.

As yet UFC have announced no news as to whether this fight will still be the main event of the night, keep checking KingdomMMA.co.uk for further news on this card.