KSW 121: Phil De Fries is off the card, Marcin Wojcik steps in
KSW 121 loses Phil De Fries from the main event. Stefan Vojcak now faces Marcin Wojcik, the man De Fries submitted in April, and a second bout moved to the prelims.
Phil De Fries is off KSW 121, and the man replacing him is the man De Fries submitted five months ago.
The card in Liberec on Saturday was built around a rematch. De Fries stopped Štefan Vojčák by TKO at 4:27 of round three at KSW 111 last October, and the two were booked to run it back in the Czech Republic, in front of Vojčák's own crowd. That bout came off our card feed on September 13. In its place, Vojčák now meets Marcin Wójcik, who was submitted by De Fries with a rear-naked choke at 4:08 of round one at KSW 117 in April.
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No reason for the withdrawal appears in the event's change log, and KSW has not attached one to the card. De Fries is 40 and has won fifteen straight in the promotion since April 2018, over Karol Bedorf, Tomasz Narkun twice, Michal Kita, Todd Duffee, Szymon Bajor, Augusto Sakai, Darko Stosić, Arkadiusz Wrzosek, Vojčák and, in April, Wójcik. The English heavyweight's UFC run ended in 2013; everything since has happened in Poland, and almost all of it has ended with somebody on their back.
The switch reached our card feed six days out, and Wójcik is not a tourist. The 37-year-old from Piła has won three of his last five, including a unanimous decision over former UFC heavyweight Augusto Sakai at KSW 113 in December and a second-round TKO of Ibragim Chuzhigaev in July 2025. His two recent losses are to Rafał Haratyk and to De Fries. It should be noted that he has been in KSW on and off since 2008, which is longer than some of the promotion's current champions have been fighting.
Vojčák, meanwhile, gets the fight he needs rather than the one he wanted. The 36-year-old Slovakian is 3-1 in his last four, the loss being the De Fries fight, and he most recently smothered Arkadiusz Wrzosek in round two at KSW 119 in June. A win over Wójcik is a win over a man De Fries beat; a win over De Fries would have been something else entirely. For his part, Vojčák keeps the top line of the marquee either way.
The main card lost a second bout in the same sweep. Tagir Machmudov was due to face Djibril Nsenga at welterweight; he now fights Szymon Kasprzyński at a 174 lb catchweight, and that fight has moved from the main card down to the prelims. KSW also pushed the whole event back an hour on September 15, so the prelims now start at 17:00 UTC and the main card at 19:00 UTC rather than 16:00 and 18:00.
What is left is nine bouts at the Home Credit Arena, with Michal Michalski against Radoslaw Paczuski at middleweight and Lukasz Charzewski against Josef Stummer at featherweight underneath the heavyweights.
KSW 121 takes place on Saturday, September 19 in Liberec, Czech Republic. Prelims start at 17:00 UTC with the main card at 19:00 UTC; the full running order and the broadcaster in your country are on the event page.