By Sheldan Keay
As we prepared for the fighters to weigh in for this Sunday's UFC on Versus 4 event, nobody expected that we would recieve news from Dana White that the UFC has released a high profile fighter, and it was an even bigger shock when that fighter turned out to be Nate Marquardt, who was scheduled to main event the card on Sunday.
The shocking news first came to a head when it was announced that Marquardt was pulled from the card due to him failing a pre-fight test which he is required to take in order to fight. It was initially believed that this could have been due to an injury Marquardt had picked up in training that he had failed to recover from, but after Dana White announced via his Twitter page that Marquardt has been released, it would appear that it is much more serious than that.
Several rumours are floating around that Marquardt's firing could be due to irregularity during his drugs test, however those are just rumours at this current time. Marquardt had already been facing a change of opponent in Rick Story, and now Story will have only 24 hours to prepare for his new opponent, Charlie Brenneman, who was set to feature on the card against T.J Grant, but that fight was called off after Grant fell ill earlier this week.
Despite this set back, all the other fighters on the card succesfully made weight for the event, and due to the cancellation of the main event, Cheick Kongo VS Pat Barry will be promoted from co-main event to the main event on the card, with Rick Story and Charlie Brenneman becoming the co-main event of the evening.
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