It’s not looking good for Rashad Evans following his knee injury, at least according to “Dr. Dana White.”Jeremy Botter tweeted a quote from White about the severity of Evans’ knee injury.News broke Wednesday that Evans had injured his knee and was…
It’s not looking good for Rashad Evans following his knee injury, at least according to “Dr. Dana White.”
Jeremy Botter tweeted a quote from White about the severity of Evans’ knee injury.
Yahoo! Sports’ Kevin Iole initially reported that Evans wouldn’t need surgery and only rehab after speaking with UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta.
Brett Okamoto of ESPN.com also gave an update that the scheduled fight between Evans and Cormier would likely be pushed back to UFC 172 or UFC 173.
It appears none of those options are available as the UFC president believes Evans will miss quite a bit of time.
It’s not the first time Evans has been on the shelf for an extended period of time. The former light heavyweight champ infamously sat on the sidelines, waiting for a chance to fight for the title, only to end up suffering an injury.
The injury would allow his teammate, the surging Jon “Bones” Jones to slide into the title shot against then-champion Mauricio “Shogun” Rua—the rest is history.
Evans was on the way to re-establishing his stock in the light heavyweight division after it seemed as though he’d lost his passion for fighting. A not-so-flattering decision win against Dan Henderson and a dominant TKO finish of Chael Sonnen had Evans maintaining his top-five ranking in the division.
Cormier will still fight on the UFC 170 card against Patrick Cummins, according to Yahoo! Sports, but it’s a blow to Cormier’s chances at getting a title shot in the 205-pound division. Even if Cormier wins, he’ll likely have to face another high-profile fighter rather than being next in line, which is exactly where he could’ve found himself if Cormier had defeated Evans.
We at Bleacher Report hope for the best with Evans’ knee injury and hope for a speedy recovery from the former champ.
A day after Rashad Evans had to bow out to injury, Daniel Cormier looked to be without an opponent. Now, it looks like Cormier will in fact stay on the UFC 170 card.
Dana White tweeted out this afternoon that former collegiate wrestling standout and un…
A day after Rashad Evans had to bow out to injury, Daniel Cormier looked to be without an opponent. Now, it looks like Cormier will in fact stay on the UFC 170 card.
Dana Whitetweeted out this afternoon that former collegiate wrestling standout and undefeated MMA fighter Patrick Cummins will take on Cormier on just about a weeks notice. This came after a failed bid by Chael Sonnen to get that fight in Las Vegas.
The fight will serve as the co-main event under the bantamweight title bout between Ronda Rousey and Sara McMann.
This is huge news for UFC 170, as the card took a huge hit when Evans was forced to withdraw. Many thought that Cormier would be kept off the card as well, which would have pretty much killed the card as a pay-per-view draw.
Cormier now takes on a skilled wrestler with developed striking in Cummins. This is not a guy you want to sleep on, as he is considered by many to be one of the top prospects at 205 pounds.
Sherdog has Cummins listed as 4-0 in his MMA career, and trains with Reign and Kings MMA in California. There, he has put together some solid striking skills to back up his grappling credentials.
He has yet to go to decision as well. He owns two submission wins via arm-triangle choke and guillotine choke, as well as two victories by TKO.
This is a huge step up for him, though. Cormier is an Olympic-level wrestler with more experience and higher competition level. Cormier has also kept busy in comparison to Cummings, who has fought just twice in 2013.
The pay-per-view buyrate will likely still take a hit in Evans’ absence, but Cormier’s inclusion in the card should be able to salvage a few of the people who were put off.
The UFC’s marketing angle may not sit well with Jon Jones, but Ronda Rousey won’t be complaining anytime soon about stealing the spotlight from the light heavyweight champ.
Whenever Rousey isn’t in the cage throwing opponents around l…
The UFC’s marketing angle may not sit well with Jon Jones, but Ronda Rousey won’t be complaining anytime soon about stealing the spotlight from the light heavyweight champ.
Whenever Rouseyisn’t in the cage throwing opponents around like rag dolls and slapping on armbars, she’s in Hollywood taking selfies with A-list celebrities, starring in movies and gracing the covers of magazines.
With Georges St-Pierre on an indefinite vacation and Anderson Silva sidelined with a broken leg, the argument can be made that the women’s bantamweight champ is now officially the UFC’s biggest star.
Unfortunately, this notion is frustrating to a fighter like Jones, who is a six-time defending champion and the greatest light heavyweight in UFC history.
Jones recently admitted to feeling slighted by UFC marketing during an interview with BloodyElbow.com. According to Jones, the UFC’s attention is fixated on a certain blonde-headed Olympic medalist with a knack for making opponents cry uncle:
We don’t always see eye to eye with the UFC, so I don’t know if they are always necessarily pushing me and whether that’s a smart idea on their end or not, who knows. I do know that they are pushing Ronda Rousey really hard, and she’s gotten a lot of great opportunities. I don’t know what they’re going to do, but I’m pushing myself all the time so, I’m not really worried.
Rousey took an opportunity to respond to Jones’ remarks during the UFC 170media conference call on Wednesday.
While she wasn’t necessarily perturbed by the comments, she was determined to make it known that she has worked incredibly hard to earn every opportunity in her career. Rousey said:
I feel like, I’m owed a little bit of help, dammit. I had to do so much to get to this. I’m not going to complain. This is nice. They can help me all they want.
I don’t know exactly what [Jones] said, but I work really, really hard. I might be getting some help from the UFC now and I appreciate all their support, but to get to this point, there’s been a lot of spots where I didn’t have any help at all.
Rousey will be looking for her third straight UFC title defense on February 22 when she takes on Olympic silver medalist and wrestler Sara McMann. It’ll be interesting to see how she manages to juggle a full training camp with all of the other commitments in her professional career.
She recently landed starring movie roles in The Expendables 3 and the new Entourage movie.
As for Jones, he may think twice before snubbing Sensei Steven Seagal for a locker room visit again (h/t BloodyElbow.com). If the UFC truly is exhausting all of its marketing resources on Rousey, Jones may want to be on standby just in case Under Siege 3 gets made.
Details on Evans’s injury are scarce, although UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta told Yahoo!’s Kevin Iole that Evans would need four weeks of rehab. (Iole’s report called it a knee injury, by the way.) Depending on Rashad’s recovery, the UFC may reschedule the Evans/Cormier match to take place at UFC 172: Jones vs. Teixeira (April 26th, Baltimore). We’ll update you if that becomes official.
Details on Evans’s injury are scarce, although UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta told Yahoo!’s Kevin Iole that Evans would need four weeks of rehab. (Iole’s report called it a knee injury, by the way.) Depending on Rashad’s recovery, the UFC may reschedule the Evans/Cormier match to take place at UFC 172: Jones vs. Teixeira (April 26th, Baltimore). We’ll update you if that becomes official.
A huge blow was just dealt to the UFC 170 card as Rashad Evans has announced that he suffered a leg injury and will be unable to compete in the co-main event. The development was first announced by Yahoo! Sports’ Kevin Iole on Twitter:
Breaking news: …
A huge blow was just dealt to the UFC 170 card as Rashad Evans has announced that he suffered a leg injury and will be unable to compete in the co-main event. The development was first announced by Yahoo! Sports’ Kevin Iole on Twitter:
Evans was slated to compete opposite former heavyweight standout Daniel Cormier. Cormier, per Iole, will be removed from the card entirely. A heavyweight standout, he was scheduled to make his highly anticipated light heavyweight debut.
“Suga'” most recently demolished former middleweight and light heavyweight contender ChaelSonnen at UFC 167. He easily outwrestledSonnen en route to a first-round TKO victory. That, combined with his win over former two-division Pride FC champion Dan Henderson, put him in the running for a possible bout with champion Jon Jones.
The bout is a huge blow to the UFC 170 card. While it features a strong headline in a title bout between Ronda Rousey and Sara McMann, Evans vs. Cormier was a very, very strong co-main event and was a critical bout for the 205-pound division.
UFC 170 has seen numerous exciting fights cancelled. A tilt between former Strikeforce champ Gilbert Melendez and rising Russian KhabibNurmagomedov was axed due to a contract dispute between Melendez and the UFC.
Additionally, a highly anticipated match between RustamKhabilov and Rafael dos Anjos was nixed last week due to an injury to Khabilov (dos Anjos is now set to face Nurmagomedov at UFC on Fox 11).
It is likely that the welterweight bout between Rory MacDonald and Demian Maia will be elevated to co-main event status.
Details are still breaking, so stay here for updates as they become available.
Update 1:Iole reached out to UFC co-owner Lorenzo Fertitta and reported the following:
Just spoke to @lorenzofertitta. Rashad doesn’t need surgery. Needs four weeks of rehab.
Update 2: Brett Okamoto from ESPN is reporting that the Evans-Cormier matchup is still planned, but will be moved according to Evans’ timetable for return:
UFC’s Lorenzo Fertitta says Rashad‘s progress will be monitored and the fight will be rebooked, likely to either 172 or 173 in Vegas.
A former Olympian with a silver medal in wrestling is only a surface description of UFC women’s bantamweight contender Sara McMann.
From a bird’s eye view, it’s easy to appreciate the prolific grappling credentials that were attained …
A former Olympian with a silver medal in wrestling is only a surface description of UFC women’s bantamweight contender Sara McMann.
From a bird’s eye view, it’s easy to appreciate the prolific grappling credentials that were attained by one of MMA’s most gifted athletes.
But McMann, a graduate out of Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania, attributes the brunt of her success to her older brother Jason, an instant role model who helped sow the seeds for her wrestling future.
Growing up, life was everything you’d expect from an older sibling who was enrolled in wrestling with only his baby sister to use as his personal grappling dummy. Nothing says “I love you” more than a double-leg takedown.
After serving her weekly grappling duties, McMann would travel with her brother on the weekends to his wrestling meets.
Not long after that, she was adorning the traditional singlet herself and stepping onto the mat. The personal grappling dummy soon turned into a fierce competitor and one of the top wrestlers in the nation, winning the USGWA High School National Championship in 1998.
Despite all of her early success, McMann still clung to her big brother Jason.
“My oldest brother was everything to me,” she told ESPN.com’s Sherry Skalko.
True happiness is contained in fleeting moments that we often take for granted but hold onto for a lifetime. McMann was forced to come to grips with this truth on January 22, 1999, when her brother Jason mysteriously vanished.
Pennsylvania law enforcement worked around the clock, exhausting every lead. Hours turned to days, days turned to weeks, and weeks turned to months with no clue of his whereabouts. McMann, who was wrestling at Minnesota-Morris at the time, made the decision to transfer to Lock Haven University and move back to her home state of Pennsylvania to be closer to her family.
It wasn’t long after she returned home that McMann’s worst fear was realized. In April, her family was notified that Jason’s body had been found about 20 miles outside of Lock Haven in Logan Township.
She told Skalko, “It was probably a good three years before I came to terms with it…My grades dipped because of a lack of focus, but I worked really hard in wrestling just to exhaust myself and run myself ragged to the point I couldn’t think.”
Several years later, there was finally a break in the case when a witness came forward and identified Fabian Smart, a former Lock Haven football player, as Jason’s murderer. In October 2007, Smart was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
During an interview with Fox Sports, McMann tried to put into words the crippling pain of having a loved one taken from her: “Emotionally, it’s the equivalent of losing a limb. You never have that limb back. You’re never the same person.”
She honored Jason’s memory by continuing her wrestling career and graduating from college. By the time 2004 rolled around, things were finally starting to look up.
She earned a spot on the United States Olympic wrestling team, and she had a prominent beau in her life.
Three-time Arizona State NCAA All-American wrestler Steve Blackford, McMann’s fiance, celebrated with McMann in Athens when she became the first American woman to win an Olympic silver medal in wrestling. The couple planned to move in together immediately after the Olympics, but as fate would have it, tragedy struck again.
McMann was driving her Jeep along a Colorado highway when her vehicle ran off the road and turned over into an embankment. Blackford was ejected from the car and pronounced dead at the scene, leaving McMann as the lone survivor of the accident.
Within a span of five years, two of the people she had cared most for in this world were taken from her in a blink of an eye. It’s tough imagining any individual not succumbing to pain and self-pity under such tragic circumstances.
McMann’s life had been a fight before she ever stepped foot into the Octagon. She got knocked down once, and just when she thought she finally found her footing, she got knocked down again. It was an endless cycle of sadness that would cause the average person to break.
But McMann isn’t the average person.
It wasn’t long after Blackford’s death that she was back on the wrestling mat and doing what she loved to do. There was no wallowing in sorrow or self-pity for this Olympian, who completely revamped the way she looked at life. She told Fox Sports:
I think it helps me define the life I want to live and what I want, just being exposed to mortality. It also helps me prioritize, McMann told Fox Sports. Part of the lack of desire for money and fame is the desire to spend as much time with my family as possible, creating the memories that really matter to you. People on their death bed don’t say I wish I had more money and fame.
In 2011, she made the decision to trade in her singlet for a pair of four-ounce gloves and enter the world of mixed martial arts. Her wrestling background has already helped her amass a 7-0 professional record and secure a title shot against UFC champ Ronda Rousey in the main event of UFC 170 on February 22.
Despite everything McMann has been through in her life, she will be greeted with another opportunity to go for the gold—to reach up and grab that proverbial brass ring.
“Life goes on. It has to, right? Humans are extremely adaptable,” she said to Fox Sports.
Stories of heartache and pain often go unrecognized behind the brightest of smiles, and beneath her radiant smile, McMann proved that it is possible to find triumph in a world overcome by tragedy.
It’s not looking good for Rashad Evans following his knee injury, at least according to “Dr. Dana White.”