UPDATE: December 7, 12:53 p.m. PT
Brown tweeted the specific nature of the injury: he has three herniated discs in his lower back.
Ariel Helwani of MMA Fighting reported that Condit has, in fact, been pulled from the fight. The UFC is looking to move him to UFC 170, but no opponent has been named.
— End of update —
Next week’s UFC on Fox 9 event just lost one of its most interesting fights.
Matt Brown, currently riding a six-fight winning streak and nearing a top contendership position in the welterweight division, has withdrawn from his much-anticipated main card bout against former interim champion Carlos Condit.
Sources close to the fight confirmed the news with Bleacher Report on Saturday morning. The possibility of Brown’s withdrawal was first reported by Twitter user Front Row Brian on Friday, but our sources told us that Brown’s decision to withdraw from the fight was not actually made until Saturday morning.
>>> Matt Brown is injured and out of his fight with Carlos Condit.
— FrontRowBrian (@FrontRowBrian) December 6, 2013
The injury itself was not disclosed.
Brown’s last three wins came over Mike Pyle, Jordan Mein and Mike Swick. He is currently ranked No. 9 in the UFC’s official rankings and has been one of the more remarkable comeback stories of the last few years. He’d lost four of five fights as 2011 came to a close, but a win over Chris Cope at UFC 143 started Brown on the best stretch of his career.
We were not able to determine if a late-notice replacement opponent for Condit will be tabbed, but it’s likely that Condit will be removed from the card and have a fight scheduled for a later date. Whether or not that’s against Brown—once he returns from healing the unspecified injury, of course—remains to be seen.
After suffering consecutive losses to Georges St-Pierre and Johny Hendricks, Condit returned to his winning ways in August with a win over Martin Kampmann.
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