Vice President Tom Atencio and the Affliction team announced earlier today that the entire Affliction ‘Trilogy’ event has been officially canceled. The third Affliction show was scheduled to take place at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California on August 1st. However, the California State Athletic Commission denied Josh Barnett from participating in the event earlier this week. Apparently, Barnett tested positive for steroids which immediately forced him off of the main event fight that was supposed to be against Fedor Emelianenko.
These past few days, Affliction began to scramble in search of a replacement fighter to take on Fedor. Their goal was to save the show by finding a marketable opponent to take on the WAMMA heavyweight champion. Due to such a short notice, Affliction decided to cancel the event completely.
Snip from VP Tom Atencio:
“Finding an opponent for the No. 1 ranked MMA heavyweight champion in such a short period of time was a huge endeavor and I’m thrilled at the amount of fighters willing to take on this challenge. But in the end, we just didn’t have enough time to promote a new fight to our standards.”
