We now know why Phil Baroni is out of the planned fight with Thiago Alves.
Baroni was initially set to headline BKFC 12 on Friday, September 11. He would’ve gone one-on-one with Alves in Dayton Beach, FL. That ended up not being the case as Baroni was replaced by Julian Lane, who is best known for his outburst on The Ultimate Fighter where he cried out, “let me bang, bro.”
BKFC President David Feldman explained to MMAFighting.com the reasoning behind Baroni’s removal from the card.
“We lost the main event with Phil Baroni, which was probably a blessing in disguise cause I don’t think that he was training like he was supposed to be training. I’d lost communication with him and then we just had to make a last-minute decision to bring in Julian Lane. The great thing about Julian Lane, he’s known for ‘let me bang, bro’ in The Ultimate Fighter but this guy comes to fight. So this is going to be one hell of a main event — Julian Lane vs. Thiago Alves. So we’re excited about the replacement. We actually got a lot of great feedback on it, that’s going to be a tremendous fight.”
Baroni last competed under bare-knuckle boxing rules back on November 9, 2018. He was stopped in the first round by fellow former UFC veteran Chris Leben by way of TKO. His last MMA bout was back on September 7, 2019. Baroni ended up being submitted by Sai Wang in the opening frame. He hasn’t earned a win since May 4, 2018.