After B.J. Penn's withdrawal, UFC cancels next week's UFC Fight Night 97 event in Philippines

Unable to secure a replacement opponent in time for next week’s UFC Fight Night 97 headliner, UFC officials have elected to scrap the event.

The promotion today announced that following UFC Hall of Famer B.J. Penn’s decision to withdraw from a planned contest with Ricardo Lamas, it has elected to call off the entire card.

MMAjunkie confirmed with a UFC official that the remaining 19 fighters on the card all will be awarded their contracted show money despite not competing.

UFC Fight Night 97 was expected to take place Oct. 15 at SM Mall of Asia Arena in Pasay, Manila, Philippines. The entire event was to stream on UFC Fight Pass.

The UFC has canceled events on two prior occasions. UFC 151 was scrapped in Las Vegas in September 2012 after Dan Henderson had to pull out of a title fight against then-light heavyweight champ Jon Jones, and Jones now infamously declined to take a short-notice fight against Chael Sonnen. And UFC 176, scheduled for August 2014 in Los Angeles, was canceled when then-featherweight champ Jose Aldo pulled out of a fight with Chad Mendes a month before the fight.

UFC Fight Night 97 will mark the first time a non-pay-per-view has been scrapped by the promotion. It was to be the UFC’s second trip to the Philippines following UFC Fight Night 66 in May 2015. The promotion hopes to reschedule another event in Manila at a future date.

B.J. Penn

As MMAjunkie first reported, Penn pulled out of UFC Fight Night 97 earlier this week, citing injury as the culprit. He was attempting a comeback after retirement, which came following a July 2014 TKO loss to Frankie Edgar. That was his third straight setback during a stretch that saw him go 1-5-1 starting when he lost his lightweight title to Edgar in April 2010.

Penn announced in January he planned to return to competition and started training at Jackson-Wink MMA. He was expected to return at UFC 197 in April, but a criminal investigation kept him off that card. He was booked to fight Dennis Siver, who was replaced by Cole Miller, at UFC 199 in June, but was removed after he self-disclosed taking an IV for rehydration out of competition. The use of IVs for rehydration is banned year-round.

Lamas was hoping to get back in the win column after a unanimous decision loss to Max Holloway at UFC 199, which gave him two losses in his past three fights. Lamas fought Jose Aldo for the featherweight title in February 2014 and lost a decision, but is just 3-2 since then.

The announcement also comes amidst a time of

Prior to today’s announcement, the UFC Fight Night 97 lineup included:

MAIN CARD

• Ricardo Lamas vs. opponent TBA
• Derrick Lewis vs. Marcin Tybura
• Jenel Lausa vs. Yao Zhikui
• Mizuto Hirota vs. Cole Miller

PRELIMINARY CARD

• Sam Alvey vs. Alex Nicholson
• Jon Tuck vs. Alex Volkanovski
• Ryan Janes vs. Dongi Yang
• Seo Hee Ham vs. Danielle Taylor
• James Moontasri vs. Alex Morono
• Ali Bagautinov vs. Kyoji Horiguchi

For more on UFC Fight Night 97, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.