Whittaker’s team was worried the tough Australian might not be able to fight if swelling from surgery didn’t go down enough in time.
Robert Whittaker went through some serious difficulties getting into the cage for his main event fight against Ikram Aliskerov at UFC Saudi Arabia. Not only did he take on a new opponent on a week’s notice, he did it following emergency surgery to treat a tooth abscess!
Whittaker would end up finishing Aliskerov less than two minutes into their fight, reminding everyone why he’s one of the best in the world at middleweight (watch the highlights here). And now his team is revealing that he almost didn’t fight due to the painful infection in his mouth.
“Rob has a really bad abscess that flared up a week before flying out,” his agent Titus Day told Fox Sports Australia. “He had headaches, tooth pain, it was like he’d been kicked in the side of the head. He couldn’t train, couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. It was f—ing painful. The whole side of his head was in pain so we had to rush him in for emergency surgery.”
“Rob had already stopped training a few days prior to the surgery in Sydney. And then flew out with his face still numb. We had no idea if it was going to be alright. Everyone was just praying the swelling would go down and everything would be OK. And thankfully, it was. But Rob’s still got pain there. Still needs more surgery to be done in the next couple of weeks.”
“It came out of nowhere,” he said. “A few fights back, Rob got cracked and his lower teeth moved a bit and he was going to have surgery to fix that. But instead, he decided to get it done later. But the abscess popped up out of nowhere.”
A tooth abscess is a bacterial infection around or under the tooth, and it can be extremely painful if it’s touching the nerve, which it sounds like it was for Whittaker. The situation is still bad enough that his agent is unsure if “The Reaper” can compete or serve as backup at UFC 305 on August 18th, less than two months from now.
“Right now, regarding Perth, it’s just too early to say,” Day said. “Obviously there was a lot of talk on the night about Rob being the backup for that UFC 305 main event. There was also talk about him fighting somebody else, too. And potentially, he could still do either of those. He’ll have to meet with the team and talk it through.”
Here’s hoping the abscess doesn’t stop Whittaker from being able to participate in the upcoming Perth card. “The Reapoer” is now 2-0 in 2024, but he’ll need to keep grinding if he wants to earn another shot at his former middleweight belt. He lost to current champ Dricus Du Plessis in July 2023 and is 0-2 against challenger Israel Adesanya. An opportunity to step in should either man withdraw might be his chance at UFC gold any time soon.