Pedro Marinho will now be defending his light-heavyweight title against Rafael Lovato Jr at Who’s Number One 21 on November 30th, 2023. This isn’t the first time that these two men have been matched against one another either, as they were originally scheduled to meet at the last WNO event. Marinho had to pull out of that match at the last minute though and the promotion had to scramble to find a replacement for Lovato Jr to compete against in a non-title match. He ended up taking on Ricardo Evangelista, and he submitted him with a triangle choke just a little over halfway through the match.
It was certainly a risk for Lovato Jr to take another match while he already had a title-shot guaranteed in the future, but it paid off in a big way in the end. Another submission win after a string of impressive performances on the mats just meant that the match between Lovato Jr and Marinho simply had to get rebooked. Now Lovato Jr will get his title-shot, just a little later than originally planned. He’ll be coming up against a fully healthy Marinho though, so the two elite competitors will be in the ideal position to give the fans an exciting match in the co-main event.
Pedro Marinho and Rafael Lovato Jr will be meeting on the mats shortly before Gordon Ryan takes on Lucas ‘Hulk’ Barbosa in the main event of the night. The rest of the main card and any preliminary matches will be announced in the coming weeks and it’s a pretty safe bet that the promotion will put together a fantastic set of matches for the fans. There might even be more titles on the line, although two on the same event is already pretty great matchmaking.
FloGrappling announced the news that Pedro Marinho would now be defending his light-heavyweight title against Rafael Lovato Jr at Who’s Number One 21 in a recent post to their official Instagram account: