Saturday afternoon, UFC women’s bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes was hospitalized prior to her UFC 213 main event title defense against Valentina Shevchenko. Ultimately, Nunes was pulled from the card, despite UFC President Dana White revealing after the fact that Nunes was actually cleared to fight.
Following the announcement of Nunes being pulled from the fight, UFC women’s strawweight champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk began to campaign for the UFC to put her in for Nunes against Shevchenko. Shevchenko was quick to respond, accepting Jedrejczyk’s challenge, and even going as far as to campaign for the fight to be for the inaugural flyweight title.
With that being said, NAC director Bob Bennet spoke to FloCombat to reveal why Jedrzejczyk will not be fighting on just 8 hours notice:
“I’d been in communication for the past two days with the UFC regarding Amanda Nunes’ health. They had been monitoring her condition and today we were told that she would be removed from the card, per the UFC’s request,” Mr. Bennett told us.
advertisement – continue reading below“The UFC did not request a replacement for Nunes and with the time left before the event there would not have been enough time for us to have the necessary medical work done to make one happen. For example, female fighters have pregnancy tests done 10 days before the fight. That’s in our rules and required. That hasn’t been done for Joanna Jedrzejczyk for this event.”
Stay tuned for updates on this situation as they continue to emerge.
This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 7/8/2017.