On July 29th at UFC 214, rising UFC prospect Sage Northcutt was initially slated to fight Claudio Puelles, however after Puelles was forced to withdraw from the fight following a successful UFC debut, the promotion was tasked with finding a replacement opponent for Northcutt.

Now, news has surfaced from Sherdog regarding the scrap, revealing that Johh Makdessi will be stepping in for Puelles to fight Northcutt at the Anaheim California based-event.

Makdessi will be looking to return to the win column after dropping a 1st round KO to Lando Vannata in his final fight of 2016, which returned him to the loss column following a split decision win over Mehdi Baghdad almost exactly a year ago.

Northcutt on the other hand, who has been training with Urijah Faber at Team Alpha Male, will be looking to return to the Octagon and bounce back from his second round submission loss to Mickey Gall at ‘UFC Fight Night: Sacramento’ in December of 2016. That loss returned ‘Super Sage’ to the loss column after picking up a unanimous decision win over Enrique Marin at UFC 200. The win over Marin of course, returned Northcutt to the win column after a 2nd round submission loss over Bryan Barberena in January of 2016.

The fight between Northcutt and Makdessi is of course expected to be placed on the preliminary card of the highly anticipated pay-per view event, which will be headlined by a light heavyweight title fight between Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier. In addition, Cris Cyborg and Megan Anderson will fight for the vacant featherweight championship in the co-main event in a fight that has fight fans thrilled.

The fight of course is a pivotal one for both men, as they both look to return to the win column following their respective losses in their most recent fights.

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 6/20/2017.