No Bo On Jersey Show

Fake news! Bo Nickal will not be fighting at UFC 302 in New Jersey, despite what fellow middleweight Jacob Malkoun is claiming on social media.

Sorry, New Jersey, you’ll have to enjoy the upcoming UFC 302 card on June 1st without Bo Nickal.

Nickal is coming off another easy stoppage win over Cody Brundage at UFC 300. That fight opened the historic 300th pay-per-view event, which tells you just how hot UFC brass is on the three time NCAA Division I champion. A quick turnaround two months later would certainly help Bo’s popularity catch up with his hype, but reports of a UFC 302 fight with Jacob Malkoun are false.

Malkoun started the rumors himself, posting an official looking Nickal vs. Malkoun fight announcement graphic on his Instagram and writing “Thanks for Mick Maynard making this fight happen. Respect to Bo Nickal and his team for accepting the fight, going to be a good test but I’m ready.”

We hate to be the ones to pour cold water on this, but MMA Mania’s own Alex Behunin followed up on Malkoun’s announcement and found nothing but smoke.

“I reached out to Bo Nickal’s management and a fight with Jacob Malkoun has not been signed or discussed,” Behunin reported.

“The fights off! He pulled out,” Malkoun wrote in an update. “Maybe going to reschedule for UFC Perth.”

Following his UFC 300 win, Nickal had called for his next fight to take place in August against someone ranked like No. 12 middleweight Anthony Hernandez. He shrugged off a potential scrap with Malkoun, suggesting it was “more sort of the same type of stuff.”

“I’m trying to fight better guys,” he said on The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani. “That’s where I’m at in my career. Like, I fought Jamie Pickett, then I had to fight a last minute replacement, and now I’ve fought Cody Brundage, who’s a guy with a better record and finishes. Now I wanna fight another good guy, maybe somebody on a little bit of a win streak or somebody that has a better record.”

In the end, though, Nickal said he’d defer to UFC matchmakers on what was next and just keep putting in the work. If that involves fighting Malkoun in Australia, so be it. But don’t buy tickets to UFC 302 in Newark, New Jersey hoping to see another Nickal wrestling clinic, because that’s not happening.