Conor McGregor’s first Cage Warriors title defence delayed due to injury

Conor McGregor will have to wait a little longer before making his first defence of the CWFC featherweight title.

McGregor (11-2-0), who captured the belt with a victory over Dave Hill at Cage Warriors 47 in Dublin in June, has been forced to withdraw from his scheduled meeting with Jim Alers at CWFC Fight Night 7 on Saturday, September 1.

The Irishman has sustained a facial injury which will rule him out of competitive action for approximately six weeks.

McGregor’s debut defence of the featherweight belt has subsequently been put back until later this year.

His opponent, Alers (8-1-0), will now face experienced Brazilian Marcio Cesar at Fight Night 7 in the Jordanian capital of Amman a week on Saturday.

Cesar (15-6-1), who’s currently based in Finland, has agreed to take the fight against Alers at short notice, as he fights for the second time this year following a first-round TKO victory over Victor Tomasevic in April.

28-year-old Cesar had been on a four-fight win streak up until last year, before being stopped by current UFC star Che Mills in a welterweight bout.

Cage Warriors officials have also announced the addition of another preliminary bout to the CWFC Fight Night 7 card, with a featherweight clash between Russian pair Artem Lobov and Mavledin Khaybulaev set to kick off the Facebook prelims.

The meeting of James Brum and James Saville has now been promoted to the main card, which will be streamed live on MMAJunkie.com.

CWFC Fight Night 7

MAIN CARD

Pavel Kusch v Chris Fields – middleweight title bout
Jim Alers v Marcio Cesar
Mark Holst v Leonardo Santos
Mohsen Bahari v Piotr Ptasinski
Liam James v Olivier Pastor
James Brum v James Saville

PRELIMINARY CARD

Robert Krecicki v Mohamed Ali
Mike Ling v Brett Bassett
Artem Lobov v Mavledin Khaybulaev

(Photo: Dolly Clew/Cage Warriors)