Tank Abbott vs. Mike Bourke Dropped From WARGODS (...or is it?)

From Sherdog:

A heavyweight co-main attraction between David “Tank” Abbott and Mike Bourke has been scratched from Friday’s Wargods “Valentine’s Eve Massacre” at the Selland Arena in Fresno, Calif., confirmed State Athletic Commission Assistant Executive Director Bill Douglas late Thursday.

However, efforts are still afoot to resurrect the fight, said a rep for the promotion.

Abbott (9-14) and Bourke (8-11-1) both reported to the event’s official weigh-ins on Thursday, only to be turned away by CSAC officials who said the promotion had cancelled the bout themselves almost a week before.

“Tank Abbott was never even considered [on the card Thursday] because as of five days ago, the promotion conveyed to us that he was completely off the show,” Douglas told Sherdog.com late Thursday.

So to get this straight, the promotion axed the fight a week earlier and had the fighters show up at the weigh-in anyway.  Well, that isn't the full story according to one WARGODS exec:

“We took the fight off the card and were going to replace it with our current heavyweight champion Lavar Johnson, who was approved to fight Ruben ‘Warpath’ Villareal,” said the executive.
...
The executive said he put the fight back on the roster on Tuesday, but the commission employee assigned to supervise the event was on vacation and couldn’t accept the request.

Yes, the man assigned to oversee this show...was not available to oversee the show.

From the article the promotion sounds confident that the fight will happen, the CSAC sounds pretty confident that it won't, and perhaps most telling is the fact that Tank told Sherdog that the fight is off.  So the show now appears to have only 8 fights compared to the 13 they originally submitted and they are trying to scramble to pull off some last minute miracles.

In addition to their Hail Mary attempts to put Abbott/Bourke back on the card they submitted a fight featuring Tonya Evinger last night that is awaiting CSAC approval.  No word on who the opponent is or if the CSAC will approve such a late card addition, but Evenger would be the most legitimate fighter on the show if they can pull it off.

Whatever happens make sure to check back in for our live coverage of the WARGODS webstream at 9:30pm EST.