Fighters take issue with Chiesa-Miller exclusion from UFC Fight Night 80 'Embedded' series

Jim Miller

When one of the UFC’s young guns, “12 Gauge” Paige VanZant, was announced as the UFC Fight Night 80 headliner, the speculation almost immediately began.

Would one of her fellow up-and-comers, Sage Northcutt, make his way to the card for some built in “Paige and Sage” marketing? We soon found out: Of course he would.

VanZant (6-1 MMA, 3-0 UFC) is in the main event against Rose Namajunas (3-2 MMA, 1-1 UFC), and Northcutt (6-0 MMA, 1-0 UFC) is down the card two spots against Cody Pfister (12-4-1 MMA, 1-1 UFC). But many still have dubbed UFC Fight Night 80, which takes place Thursday at The Chelsea at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas and streams on UFC Fight Pass, as “The Paige and Sage Show.”

It seems the UFC, so far anyway, has followed that line of promotion for the show. For the first time, the UFC has done an “Embedded” series for a non-pay-per-view event – and one that isn’t even taking place on TV. In the three episodes that have been released so far, the focus has been on VanZant and Namajunas and Northcutt and Pfister.

The co-main event on Thursday is a lightweight fight between Michael Chiesa (12-2 MMA, 5-2 UFC) and Jim Miller (25-6 MMA, 14-5 UFC), but so far, they’re nowhere to be found in the “Embedded” series – and fighters, including Chiesa, have started to take notice.

“I’ve been in Vegas for 3 weeks, 20 minutes from UFC HQ but they fly to Texas for Pfister,” Chiesa posted on his official Twitter account.

Undefeated UFC lightweight James Vick commiserated with Chiesa, saying “this sh-t is f-cking pathetic,” and UFC bantamweight Aljamain Sterling, who is unbeaten, but fighting on the middle of Thursday’s prelims said the exclusion of Chiesa-Miller was “baffling.”

We’ll still see more episodes of the “Embedded” for UFC Fight Night 80 before Thursday’s event – but will we see Chiesa and Miller now that Fight Week has arrived?

Check out the three “Embedded” episodes for UFC Fight Night 80:

• ‘UFC Fight Night 80 Embedded,’ No. 1: Much hype around the Paige and Sage card
• ‘UFC Fight Night 80 Embedded,’ No. 2: A ‘young Thundercat,’ the joys of coffee
• ‘UFC Fight Night 80 Embedded,’ No. 3: Sauna with Paige and Urijah, on the road with Sage

For more on UFC Fight Night 80, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.