‘We Couldn’t Go In At 80 Percent’

‘Do Bronx’ shared in his own words what happened to take him off UFC 294 in Abu Dhabi on two weeks notice.

It’s just another SNAFU week of news for mixed martial arts as the UFC’s big Abu Dhabi card is being turned upside down due to injuries. Earlier in the week, Paulo Costa revealed he had gotten bursitis surgery on his elbow, and then the elbow had gotten infected with staph. He says he’s still ready to fight Khamzat Chimaev at UFC 294 in two weeks. UFC doctors may say otherwise.

And now we have Charles Oliveira being forced to pull out of his lightweight title fight main event against Islam Makhachev due to a cut. UFC CEO Dana White confirmed that the rumors were true: Oliveira suffered the injury in the last spar of his camp before flying out to the UAE. Featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski will step in on two weeks notice to fight Makhachev in a rematch of their February scrap.

White had some not-so-nice words for Oliveira and his team over how the cut was managed and how the news got out. Read about that here. Now we have “Do Bronx” himself speaking directly to his fans about the situation.

“What’s up, my family,” he said in a video posted to his socials (translated from Portuguese). “I’m passing by to give you a message. I think some of you already know: I’m out of UFC Abu Dhabi.”

“What happened? Today, in my last training here in Brazil before traveling, I ended up suffering a clash of heads. I had a very deep cut, I took 8, 9 stitches, something like that, I don’t know exactly. It’s a very deep cut, too deep to be able to fight, to be able to recover with the little time I have, and to be able to have a great fight. So, the team, together with us, with the UFC, we decided to leave the fight and be 100% ready for the next one.”

“Everyone knows the importance of this fight,” Oliveira continued. “It’s not just a fight, it’s a title fight. There were big, big things involved, so we couldn’t go in. I know a lot of people are going to judge, a lot of people are going to talk, but it’s a very important fight for us. So, we couldn’t go in at 80%, we have to be 120% ready for it.”

Oliveira wasn’t at 80% … that cut above his eye would take him from 100% to 0% the moment Makhachev hit it. It’s the worst kind of cut: right above the eye and curling into the socket. Exactly the kind of cut that would have a referee waving the fight off if it opened up. And it would have. Two weeks isn’t long enough for an injury like that to heal and withstand a direct punch, even with the best plastic surgeon getting involved.

This sucks, but sometimes these things happen in MMA. Fortunately, wild last minute replacement fights are also a things that happen too. We now have a surprise Islam Makhachev vs. Alexander Volkanovski champion vs. champion rematch to look forward to. And then Charles Oliveira waiting in the wings for the winner?