April Fool's? If only
It was not an April Fool's, it turned out, as it was announced on April 1st that Tony Ferguson had been forced to withdraw from the highly-anticipated main event slot at UFC 223 against Khabib Nurmagomedov through injury.
That same day, it was announced that current featherweight champion Max Holloway would step up on 6 days notice to face the undefeated Russian.
It would in turn offer the Hawaiian a chance to become only the fifth fighter in UFC history to win 2 different belts and just the second to hold two simultaneously, after Conor McGregor.
It wasn't the fight that many had been looking forward to, but nonetheless it was a matchup that created intrigue.
McGregor comes to town
The drama continued into fight week, with current champion McGregor storming the Barclays Center in New York and attack the bus which housed the red corner fighters.
It was reported that McGregor and a number of friends had flown in from Ireland on a private jet to seek out Nurmagomedov, who had had an altercation with McGregor's teammate Artem Lobov just a few days prior.
McGregor then fled the scene along with his group of disciples, before eventually handing himself in to the police.
The Irishman's actions caused a domino effect to occur and alter the fight card unimaginably.
Three fights were soon scrapped, with Lobov's bout against Alex Caceres cancelled due to the Russian's involvement in the incident.
Lightweight contender Michael Chiesa suffered cuts to his face in the incident and was deemed unable to fight against Anthony Pettis, as well as Ray Borg, who was pulled from his flyweight bout against Brandon Moreno.
Will an opponent for Khabib please stand up?
Then, on Friday morning at the weigh-ins, Holloway was pulled from the main event after doctors declared him medically-unfit to be able to continue cutting weight.
The search for a last minute replacement began, with three lightweights in consideration, all of whom were due to fight on the card.
The first of those was former champion Pettis, who had yet to weigh in because of his cancelled fight with Chiesa.
He weighed in at 155.2lbs, missing the Championship mark by 0.2lbs.
The New York State Athletic Commission (NYSAC) was reported to have allowed Pettis an extra two hours to shed the 0.2lbs to make the title fight official.
However, it was then reported that Pettis was not being considered for the bout after asking for too much money to take the fight.
That left the main card matchup between Al Iaquinta and Paul Felder to determine a potential opponent.
Felder had weighed in at 155lbs, thus making championship weight, but the NYSCA deemed him too lowly-ranked to take the fight.
Eventually, 11th-ranked Iaquinta was offered the fight and he duly accepted.
Title fight or not?
However, Iaquinta had weighed in earlier at 155.2lbs for his non-title bout with Felder and was therefore unfortunately deemed exempt from the chance to win the title.
This was despite the Long Island representative's underwear being later weighed at 0.2lbs, meaning he could have made the Championship limit earlier in the day had he had the foresight to think ahead to the potential craziness that duly occurred.
UFC president Dana White confirmed later that Iaquinta would be considered the champion if he beat Nurmagomedov, but officially, the Russian is the only man who can win gold tonight.
