Johnson vs. McCall is UFC on FX 3 headliner, location announcement soon
The flyweight rematch between Demetrious Johnson (14-2-1 MMA, 2-1-1 UFC) and Ian McCall (11-2-1 MMA, 0-0-1 UFC) will serve as the headliner for UFC on FX 3.
UFC president Dana White on Tuesday confirmed the previously announced matchup will serve as the evening's main event, while also teasing a forthcoming announcement for the location of the June 8 event.
"It will be in a place we haven't been in a long time," White told MMAjunkie.com (
www.mmajunkie.com).
The host city selection is part of the Harley-Davidson Hometown Throwdown promotion, in which fight fans vote on the location. Sources close to the contest indicated the results of the contest have been determined, and an announcement is expected within one week.
McCall and Johnson kicked off the UFC's inaugural four-man flyweight tournament earlier this month at UFC on FX 2 in Sydney. After a spirited bout, Johnson initially was named the split-decision winner. Officials then said the scorecards were added incorrectly and Johnson actually was a majority-decision winner. But later in the night at the event's post-fight press conference, Craig Waller, the executive director of the Combat Sports Authority of New South Wales, said he recorded a judge's score incorrectly (it should have been 10-8 instead of 10-9) and that the fight actually resulted in a majority draw via scores of 28-28, 29-29 and 29-28 (for Johnson).
The UFC had planned for such a scenario and required McCall vs. Johnson (as well as Joseph Benavidez vs. Yasuhiro Urushitani, which Benavidez won) to have mandatory sudden-victory fourth rounds. However, the tabulation error was caught so late in the night that McCall and Johnson couldn't do the fourth round. So now, they rematch in June, and the winner meets Benavidez later this year, when they fight for the UFC's first-ever flyweight title.
While the UFC recently elected to schedule all main events as five-round contests. Johnson vs. McCall again will be a three-rounder (with a potential sudden-victory fourth round).
"If they fought a five-round fight and it's a draw, they'd have to go to a sixth round," White explained. "But it's the main event. Those guys deserve to be the main event, especially the way everything went down and as great as that fight was."
