Filed under: UFC, FanHouse Exclusive, News
LONDON — Steve Cantwell just can’t buy a break.
The light heavyweight was forced to pull out of his UFC 120 fight against Stanislav Nedkov Friday morning after suffering a knee injury in training on Wednesday.
“Wednesday we were training,” Cantwell told MMA Fighting. “It was my last medium day training, just trying to cut weight, loosen up a little bit. I was just having a really, really great training session. Literally, the last five minutes I was rolling — we did three rounds on pads and two rolling — literally the last minute, I rolled, hit a move, my foot got caught and torqued my knee and popped my lateral collateral ligament. I couldn’t walk. I tried to play it off because there were all kinds of people in the room, like, ‘Ah, I got a cramp. I’m done training,’ kind of thing.”
The 23-year-old was understandably disheartened by the news, especially considering the fact that a string of issues have kept him out of action since September 2009. The Nevada State Athletic Commission refused to clear him to fight at UFC 108 against Vladimir Matyushenko due to an undisclosed reason and he also pulled out of a UFC 116 fight against Ricardo Romero in July.