Erin Blanchfield was literally minutes away from making the walk to the octagon on Saturday night when the UFC revealed her main event fight against Maycee Barber was cancelled.
The reason, according to Blanchfield? She was told Barber had a seizure and needed to be taken to the hospital. “The Future” had missed weight the day before by half a pound and looked terrible on the scale, so the withdrawal wasn’t completely shocking … but for it to happen at the absolute last minute was pretty wild.
The UFC has purposefully never laid out hard policies on what happens pay-wise when fights get cancelled. Sometimes a fighter gets their show money — which should be the legal minimum always since they, y’know, showed up. Sometimes they only get a portion of that. In Blanchfield’s case, she’s getting paid her show and win money.
That’s according to Blanchfield’s management, who shared behind-the-scenes photos of UFC CBO Hunter Campbell telling “Cold Blooded” that the fight was off.
That’s still less money than Blanchfield would have made if she’d gone out and beaten Barber in the cage. Because of the weigh-in miss, Erin was set to take 20% of Barber’s purse. Does she still get that if the UFC decides to pay Barber her show money? Will the promotion even do that?
As we mentioned, it’s all case-by-case with these SNAFU moments. A last minute seizure is a legit reason to pull the plug on a fight, but what if if it’s caused by a bad weight cut? Look at UFC’s response to Arman Tsarukyan’s late withdrawal from UFC 311 to see how sympathetic they were with him.
