UFC President Dana White Still Unsure What Happened To Max Holloway
On Wednesday night UFC 226 card saw a huge blow when UFC featherweight champion Max Holloway forced to pull out of his scheduled title defense against Brian Ortega because of concussion-like symptoms.
White also had a word with UFC vice president of health and performance Jeff Novitzky; he’s isn’t sure either what went wrong with ‘Blessed.’ (Via MMAFighting)
“It’s a weird situation,” White said at a press conference for UFC 226 on Thursday. “I was talking to Jeff Novitzky in the back and there’s a couple of different — some people think it’s concussion-related and some people think it’s weight cut-related, so they haven’t really got down to the bottom of what it is. But according to him he feels fine but obviously he’s not fine. So we’re going to continue to try to figure out what’s wrong with Max Holloway.
“In the meantime, there’s no way that this guy is going to fight anytime soon.”
It’s been a rough year for Holloway as this withdrawal marked the third time Hawaiian pulled out of the scheduled fight. Back in March Holloway out of UFC 222 card against Frankie Edgar due to a leg injury. Then he stepped in for short notice fight against Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC 223, but Commission ruled he’s medically unfit to compete due to unsafe weight cut.
White said, Jeremey Stephens, stepped in as a replacement and started cutting weight, hoping Brian Ortega would take his fight, but that didn’t work out.
“Literally, Jeremy Stephens will not stop blowing me up, he wants this fight so bad, he said he’ll take it on short notice,” White said. “He’s cutting weight already with the hopes that Ortega will accept the fight. Ortega has turned down the fight, so I don’t know. We’ll see what happens.”
Now, concussion-like symptoms cost him another potential fight. White ready to go any length so Holloway can get all the medical attention that he needs.
“We’re running him through every test there is. … He needs to go to the Mayo Clinic or one of these types of places and do a full — yes, we will take care of Max Holloway and he’ll go through every type of testing there is until we can figure out what’s wrong with him,” White said.
“We’ve done everything you could possibly try to do to make these guys healthier, to give them a safer place to train, eat the right foods, we have a restaurant at the PI where they can eat for free and we’ve done everything that we can possibly do to try and limit this.”
Holloway, 26, won the title with a victory over Jose Aldo back in 2017 and then went on to defend it against Aldo on Dec. 2, currently riding on 12 straight.
