Early yesterday afternoon just hours before UFC 213 was set to take place in Las Vegas, Nevada, it was announced that bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes had fallen ill and would no longer be competing against Valentina Shevchenko in their scheduled main event bout.
While Nunes has cited a sickness as her reason for withdrawing from the bout, UFC President Dana White said that ‘she was physically OK’ to fight:
“Leading up to [Friday’s] ceremonial weigh-ins, I got a call that she wasn’t feeling well, and it was questionable whether she was going to show up to the ceremonials,” White said at the post-fight press conference. “Because the doctor needed to see her and they needed to find out what was going on with her, so, she does them, everything’s good.”
“This morning, I wake up and I hear that she’s not feeling well again,” White continued. “And … she’s not feeling well again and she’s probably not going to fight. So, I asked the doctors what’s wrong with her. She was medically cleared. She was physically OK, they found nothing wrong with her, but she didn’t feel right.”
White continued on, saying that he believes Nunes’ situation was more mental than physical. The UFC boss also said that he will not schedule Nunes to headline another card after yesterday’s debacle:
“It’s not like she was like ‘I’m absolutely refusing to fight,’” White said. “She said ‘I don’t feel right, I don’t feel good.’ I think that it was 90 percent mental and maybe 10 percent physical, I think a lot of fighters have had times where they don’t feel right.
“These situations arise all the time,” White later added. “I don’t think we’ve ever had a situation like today, though, where she was physically capable of fighting.”
“I won’t do that again,” he said. “I won’t headline with that title again.”
What do you make of White’s comments?
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