It seems to be an epidemic in Mixed Martial Arts right now, fighters getting injured and withdrawing from their scheduled fights. While some of the injuries are from fluke circumstances, the majority of them are coming from training. The phenomenon has been dubbed the “injury bug” and MMA has yet to figure out a vaccine or cure for it.
TUF Live has suffered its first casualty as Team Cruz coach and UFC Bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz has injured he’s knee. The injury occurred while Cruz was training at the Ultimate Fighter gym for his upcoming UFC 148 bout against fellow TUF Live coach Urijah Faber.
While there is not one single MMA fan out there who doesn’t love a good knockout, there is nothing worse than seeing a fighter injured giving his all for the sport – especially if that injury puts the fighter on the shelve for a lengthy period of time, as was the case with the Portland, Oregon fighter Ed ‘Short Fuse’ Herman.
Less than two weeks away from UFC 137 UFC welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre has been forced to withdraw from his title fight with Carlos Condit. St. Pierre suffered a knee injury during training today and UFC president Dana White broke the news on twitter.
The injury bug has hit Vitor Belfort once again and the former UFC light heavyweight champion has withdrawn from his fight with Cung Le at UFC 139. Wasting no time though a replacement was announced the same time as the new of Belfort injury. Wanderlei Silva will now step in a fight Le at UFC 139 in San Jose, California.
Coming off the Strikeforce grand prix event last week that saw very few fighters receiving medical suspensions, every single on the UFC Fight Night 25: Battle on the Bayou card was given some form of mandatory suspensions. The majority of the competitors received a very small mandatory 7-day suspension but some of the suspensions did climb as high as 60 days.
Former Strikeforce lightweight champion, Josh Thomson has withdrawn from his scheduled bout at next month’s Strikeforce: Heavyweight Grand Prix Semifinals card. The American Kickboxing Academy fighter was set to make his first appearance of 2011 against Maximo Blanco on September 10th.
It was recently announced that Manny “The Anvil” Gamburyan had been removed from his slated UFC 135 bout with Diego “The Gun” Nunes due to an injury. As has often been the case recently, Joe Silva has to scramble and find a new opponent to face Nunes. With a Featherweight roster that is about forty-five fighters deep, a new opponent shouldn’t be much of an issue. Although many of the Featherweights have already been booked or are out with an injury, there is still a good amount of men to choose from.
