Japan native UFC fighter Riki Fukuda has been forced out of his scheduled UFC 133 fight against Rafael Natal due to an injury sustained from a recent car accident.
Fukuda reluctantly broke the news on Twitter:
“I had a car accident on 16th of [June]. I broke my left knee and it seems require surgery,” he said.
The 30-year old Fukuda made his MMA debut in 2004 and has amassed a record of 12-3-1 including a victory Murilo “Ninja” Rua, brother of former UFC light heavyweight champion Mauricio “Shogun” Rua.
But one of those losses came in his last fight at UFC 127, hosted in Australia. He fought Nick Ring at the event and had seemingly dominated the fight, but somehow lost a decision in what has been called one of the biggest robberies in MMA this year. It was so bad, in fact, that the UFC decided to pay Fukuda his win bonus anyway.
Though news has yet to come down officially from the UFC themselves regarding the injury, Ariel Helwani reported on NBCSports.com that Constantinos Philippou is expected to be Fukuda’s replacement in the bout scheduled for August 6 in Philadelphia, PA.
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