White: I won’t make Nunes the headliner again
Dana White: “She was medically cleared to fight, was checked and everything was fine, but she said she didn’t feel right.”
Amanda Nunes weighed in successfully for UFC 213 on Friday morning. The next day she pulled out of the main event fight with Valentina Shevchenko, citing chronic Sinusitis. On early Saturday evening UFC president Dana White appeared on SportsCenter and detailed what happened.
“Yesterday, she started to not feel good, so we took her to hospital,” said White, as transcribed by Brett Okamoto for ESPN. “[The doctor] did a full evaluation and she was medically cleared to fight. She weighed in at the ceremonial weigh-in and squared off with Shevchenko, then went home last night.
“This morning, she called again and said she didn’t feel good. So they brought her back in [to the hospital] and started running tests on her, and she said she didn’t want to fight … she didn’t feel good and didn’t want to fight. She was medically cleared to fight, was checked and everything was fine, but she said she didn’t feel right.”
So the fight was canceled. UFC strawweight champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk was in town to watch the fight, and begged to step in vs. Shevchenko. The pair had competed three times in Muay Thai. Unfortunately, it was not possible to complete the medicals in hours.
‘Bullet’ was irate. Fans had come from as far as her native Kyrgyzstan to watch the fight. Further, Shevchenko bravely fights at her natural weight, putting her at a size disadvantage.
“Today I am 100% ready for this fight,” she wrote on her social network. “During the last three months of training, I did everything to be in my best shape for this fight. Nunes couldn’t cut weight correctly and was hospitalized. She wanted to cut weight and recover rapidly to have the advantage. The end result, everything went wrong. Even though she was medically cleared to fight, she backed out. This fight was originally offered to take place in April and she would not accept then.
“I did my part and am very upset that I can’t fight for the title today on this great event. I am even more upset for all my dear fans who support me every time throughout the world and to those who traveled to see me fight here in Las Vegas live. I feel frustrated about what happened but I won’t relax, will not put down energy in my preparation, and will wait until the UFC gives us another date for the fight.”
Nunes vowed to be back.
https://twitter.com/Amanda_Leoa/status/883904398694334466
The unfortunate fact is that Nunes will not be back at 100%. No one fights at 100%.
White said he hoped to reschedule the fight for UFC 215 on September 9 in Edmonton, Alberta. “I think that it was 90 percent mental and maybe 10 percent physical,” said White of Nunes’ decision to withdraw, as transcribed by Kirstie Chiappelli for Sporting News. “She probably didn’t feel right. I think a lot of times fighters have had times they don’t feel right.”
White was asked about Nunes being the main event at UFC 215.
“I won’t do that again,” he replied.
White also said that Shevchenko was paid her show money, and Nunes was paid nothing, and that he did not consider stripping Nunes of her title.
I think [Shevchenko] got $70,000, said White, as transcribed by Damon Martin for MMA Weekly.
I didn’t consider [stripping her of the title]. We didn’t pay her.”
White said his reasoning was that Nunes was not the type of fighter to drop from a card without reason, and did not turn down opponents.
We’ve never seen anything like this from [Nunes] before,” said White. “There’s no pattern of her refusing to fight somebody. Those are the type of situations where I’ll read something where a guy says something ‘I refused to fight this guy’.
I’ll tell you it just happened with [Demetrious Johnson]. We have a fight for this guy, it’s for his chance to break the record. [T.J. Dillashaw] is a very credible guy that wants to fight and the guy’s cutting weight and getting ready and he’s absolutely refusing to fight him. So that’s when I sit there and you’re the No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter in the world, No. 1, No. 2, you’re on ‘X’ amount of defenses and you’re absolutely refusing to fight somebody. When there’s a pattern of that, I start looking at stripping a guy.