Vaughan Lee out of UFC 167 vs. Sergio Pettis, UFC seeking replacement

The highly anticipated UFC debut of Sergio Pettis will see a change less than two weeks before the fight.

An injury has knocked Vaughan Lee (13-9-1 MMA, 2-3 UFC) from his bantamweight fight against Pettis (9-0 MMA, 0-0 UFC) next week at UFC 167. Sources close to the promotion on Tuesday confirmed the news to MMAjunkie.com. The UFC is actively seeking a replacement for Lee, but has not made an official announcement of the injury yet.

UFC 167 takes place Nov. 16 at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas and serves as the promotion’s 20th anniversary show. The main card airs on pay-per-view following prelims on FOX Sports 1 and MMAjunkie.com. The Lee-Pettis fight was slated for the preliminary-card stream on MMAjunkie.com.

Pettis, the younger brother of UFC lightweight champ Anthony Pettis, is unbeaten in his MMA career. Like Anthony, Sergio is a fixture at the Roufusport gym in Milwaukee. In late September, Pettis submitted James Porter in the first round of a North American Fighting Championship event in his home city of Milwaukee. In June, he stopped Dillard Pegg with a first-round TKO to win Resurrection Fighting Alliance’s flyweight title. But for his move to the UFC, he decided to remain at bantamweight, where he was for the Porter fight.

Lee was looking to rebound from a first-round submission loss to Raphael Assuncao at June’s “UFC on FUEL TV 10: Nogueira vs. Werdum 2? event. While Lee has also fallen short against top contenders T.J. Dillashaw and Chris Cariaso, he does boast UFC victories over Motonobu Tezuka and MMA legend Norifumi “Kid” Yamamoto.

With the change to the card, the UFC 167 lineup now includes:

MAIN CARD (Pay-per-view, 10 p.m. ET)

• Georges St-Pierre vs. Johny Hendricks – for welterweight title
• Rashad Evans vs. Chael Sonnen
• Robbie Lawler vs. Rory MacDonald
• Josh Koscheck vs. Tyron Woodley
• Ali Bagautinov vs. Timothy Elliott

PRELIMINARY CARD (FOX Sports 1, 8 p.m. ET)

• Donald Cerrone vs. Evan Dunham
• Ed Herman vs. Thales Leites
• Brian Ebersole vs. Rick Story
• Edwin Figueroa vs. Erik Perez

PRELIMINARY CARD (Facebook, 6:45 p.m. ET)

• Jason High vs. Anthony Lapsley
• Sergio Pettis vs. TBA
• Cody Donovan vs. Gian Villante

For more on UFC 167, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.

(Pictured: Vaughan Lee)