Dana White Already Has A New Date For Nunes vs. Shevchenko II

It looks like fight fans will have to wait a bit longer to see UFC women’s bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes defend her title against No. 1-ranked Valentina Shevchenko.

Earlier today (Sat. July 8, 2017) it was announced that the scheduled UFC 213 pay-per-view (PPV) main event between the two had been called off after “The Lioness” was hospitalized both yesterday and today. With her removal, the bout was scrapped and the scheduled co-main event between Yoel Romero and Robert Whittaker was promoted to the headliner.

UFC President Dana White joined SportsCenter to detail what exactly happened that let to Nunes’ pull out (quotes via MMA Fighting):

“Yesterday, she started to not feel good,” White said of Nunes. “We took her to the hospital and Dr. Davidson, whose our doctor here in Las Vegas, is fantastic, and handles all the fighters, did an evaluation on her and she was medically cleared to fight.

“So she [Nunes] did the weigh-ins yesterday – she made weight – she weighed in at ceremonial weigh-ins and squared off with Shevchenko, and then, went home last night. This morning she called again and said she didn’t feel good, so they brought her back in and started doing test on her and she said she didn’t want to fight. She was medically cleared to fight, she was checked and everything and was fine but she said she didn’t feel right.”

White claims the UFC will be taking care of Shevchenko after losing out on a huge title fight that would have been the biggest of her career, and stated he’ll try and make the fight again for UFC 215 this September:

“She’s devastated, obviously,” White said of Shevchenko. “Not only go through a full camp but you come, the whole prep, cut the weight, you weigh in, and you go through everything, and the day of the fight, the fight is pulled out from you. So it’s very tough, but obviously, we’re going to take care of her and we’re going to look to make this fight again hopefully in Edmonton. We have a fight coming up in Edmonton, which I believe is in September, we’ll try to make the fight then.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sfpaZT2kYQ