According to a report, the UFC was looking to add a big lightweight bout to UFC 210 next month, but were unable to.

With under a month to go until UFC 210, the promotion is still looking to add another big bout to the main card. Unfortunately for them, it doesn’t seem like their efforts have been successful thus far. According to Ariel Helwani of MMA Fighting, both of the prospective bouts they were looking at involved Tony Ferguson, but nothing came of it:

"Ariel Helwani ✔ @arielhelwani

Still only 4 fights listed on the UFC 210 PPV graphic. UFC did try to book Ferguson-Khabib & Ferguson-Alvarez for it this week but no luck.

1:09 PM - 12 Mar 2017"

He didn’t elaborate on why the bouts weren’t made, but it does offer a glimpse into the UFC’s line of thinking involving the Khabib Nurmagomedov and Tony Ferguson saga. It does indeed look like they’re willing to re-book the fight, despite Khabib’s last-minute pullout at UFC 209.

As you probably know by now, Eddie Alvarez has already been booked in a different fight, against Dustin Poirier at UFC 211.

Ferguson was very outspoken about his pay for UFC 209, believing that he was owed his full $250,000 show money from the promotion for making weight for the title fight, but he ended up receiving less than half of that. So money could be an issue in terms of why the UFC couldn’t book him here as well, but that’s just speculation.

Regardless, it looks like we won’t be seeing Ferguson in the cage again for a little while at least.