Visa issues prevent Danillo Villefort vs Jake Rosholt WEC fight and other Hurricane Ike fallout
By: James Iannotti
Hurricane Ike is still reeking its havoc on the WEC 36 card scheduled for South Florida.
The event was originally set to take place on September 10 at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Fla., but the threat of the massive storm scared the promotion into rescheduling the show for November 5.
Because of the switch, Danillo “Indio” Villefort (8-2) — who was set to face Jake Rosholt in a middleweight bout on the card — has now been forced to return to Brazil because his temporary visa has expired and he will be unable to file the necessary paperwork in time for a new one, according to InTheGuard.tv.
Here’s a snip from “Indio:”
“I’m sad, I was very prepared and with my visa ok [for September 10], but the hurricane postponed the show and my lawyer said I’d be irregular for November.”
Now that the heavier weight classes, including middleweight, have been removed from all future WEC events, Villefort will likely miss his chance to compete in the organization. But he feels confident he’ll still make his way onto a Zuffa card under the UFC banner sometime in 2009:
“The Hurricane threw the event for November and my fight to 2009, I believe. I’ll come strong and I’ll show my game in UFC or WEC, this is a promise.”
Rosholt (4-0) — who was featured on episode four of season two of the popular TapouT reality show on The Versus Network — has yet to make his highly touted debut for the WEC and will await word on a possible replacement. If an opponent is not found to replace Villefort expect to see the former Oklahoma State University wrestling standout compete in the Octagon soon.
Real soon.
Johny Hendricks (3-0) — Rosholt’s former OSU teammate and current Team Takedown training partner who was also featured on the same episode of TapouT — was also set to fight at WEC 36 against Alex Serdyukov (12-4), but that bout has been moved to WEC 37 on December 3 in Las Vegas, Nevada, according to FiveOuncesOfPain.com.
Both Rosholt and Hendricks were national champion collegiate wrestlers as Cowboys.
WEC 36 will be headlined by a featherweight championship match between champion Urijah Faber (21-1) and challenger Mike Brown (19-4), and WEC 37 will be main evented by a bantamweight title bout between champion Miguel Torres (34-1) and challenger Manny “The Mangler” Tapia (10-0-1).
4 Comments »
why was the event postponed for so long? why not just a month?
good question
i would say most likely to give more time for them to make sure the venue was fixed up and passed safety inspections and the possibility of people not being back in town yet, those were 2 of the fights i really wanted to see too =/ and urijah faber
This SUCKS! I was REALLY looking foward to Jake Rosholt making his WEC debut. Luckily, there is still 4 weeks to find a replacement which shouldn’t make it too difficult.
I believe that Jake does need a couple more fights before being UFC ready. He has the potential to be a champion - that is FACT. He has natural born abilities combined with an unmatched work eithic, and he is very intelligent / fast learner.
Since the WEC MW division is no more, he will have little choice but to jump right into the UFC since he’s signed with Zuffa. What the UFC shoud really do with him is let him take the “Fitch route”, but not against as difficult competition. By that, I mean he should fight on the prelims against fighters that he would be a small favorite against and let him build up his quality of competition. It would be pointless to immediately throw him in the cage with a Martin Kampmann or Thales Leites because it would be dumb to have him set up to lose his first fight on the national stage.
Jake Rosholt is the real deal. Also, Johnny Hendricks and Shane Rollins have the abilities to make the UFC roster sooner rather than later.