Mica Galvao will no longer be competing at WNO 23 on May 10th, 2024 due to an injury and Andrew Tackett has stepped up on short notice to face Tommy Langaker in his place. The match ruleset has changed slightly too, as it will now be contested at middleweight instead of welterweight, with no Who’s Number One title for the winner either. Galvao is the reigning welterweight champion so without him that belt can’t be put on the line unless both Tackett and Langaker were willing to make that weight limit and the promotion decided to either strip him of it or create an interim title, neither of which seem like a good idea considering how often he competes for the promotion.
Now that the match has been moved up to middleweight, it’s an unusual decision to not have that title available for the winner. The reigning champion is Tye Ruotolo and he won the belt back at the WNO Championships in 2021, but he hasn’t defended the title since then. It doesn’t seem as though he will be going to defend it any time soon either, as he is currently contracted to ONE Championship and holds their welterweight title. That means that FloGrappling could have easily justified making the belt vacant for this matchup between Andrew Tackett and Tommy Langaker at WNO 23 if they wanted to.
It’s still going to be a fantastic matchup regardless though, as both men are among the best grapplers on the planet and have won their respective continent’s ADCC Trials. This also means that Tackett and Langaker are invited to the 77kg division of ADCC 2024, and this might not be the last time that they meet on the mats this year. This isn’t the only excellent matchup booked for WNO 23 either of course, and the main event will be a fun battle between Nicholas Meregali and Vagner Rocha. It will undoubtedly be a night of high-level grappling from start to finish, and there will be plenty of highlights once the dust has settled.
Flograppling announced the news that Andrew Tackett was stepping in to replace Mica Galvao against Tommy Langaker at WNO 23 in a recent post to their official Instagram account:
