Max Holloway Forced Out Of UFC 226 Co-Main Event

This Saturday’s UFC 226 has lost one of its most awaited fights.

UFC featherweight champion Max Holloway has been forced out of his title bout against Brian Ortega in the co-main event of this weekend’s (Sat., July 7, 2018) pay-per-view from T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, according to a report from ESPN this evening.

In a statement to MMA Fighting from Holloway’s manager Brian Butler-Au, his team detailed that the champion had been experiencing concussion-like symptoms and was taken to a hospital on Monday night. He felt better on Tuesday and still wanted to compete, but then got worse today and was pulled from the fight.

Read the full statement from Holloway’s management below:

Max’s team and UFC staff noticed Max was not normal since late last week. This became obvious to many watching his interviews and public appearances the past few days.

He was showing concussion like symptoms before he even started his weight cut and was rushed to the ER on Monday where they admitted him over night. Initial scans seemed okay and he was released Tuesday afternoon but symptoms still continued.

Max fought with his team to continue with the fight. He showed some improvement over the next day but was still showing obvious symptoms. After open workouts he crashed and was very hard to wake up, when he did he had flashing vision and slurred speech.

Ortega’s team said they had not yet been contacted by the UFC for a replacement fight, but would most likely not be interested unless it was a title bout.

This is the third time Holloway has pulled out of a fight in 2018 after he withdrew from his scheduled title defense against Frankie Edgar at UFC 222 in March and was deemed medically unfit to make weight on short notice for his last-minute lightweight title match-up with Khabib Nurmagomedov at April’s UFC 223.

UFC 226 will move forward with its high-profile heavyweight super fight between champion Stipe Miocic and light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier.