Brock Lesnar vs. Junior dos Santos, a high-profile summer UFC fight which had been the hype focus of the current “Ultimate Fighter” season, will no longer be happening, thanks to the unfortunate return of Lesnar’s diverticulitis.<\/p>\n
White confirmed that the illness, which kept Lesnar out of action for an extended period of time in 2009 and 2010 and even hinted at threatening his career, has returned, forcing UFC to substitute Shane Carwin into the bout.<\/p>\n
\u201cFormer UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar has diverticulitis again,\u201d said White. \u201cHe spent all day yesterday over at the Mayo Clinic and he\u2019s gone through a bumper to bumper of tests. This thing acted up on him again, he\u2019s got some serious choices to make in the next couple of weeks on whether to fight this thing or take the surgery.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the illness will sideline Lesnar and keep him out of the immediate title picture–it now appears either Dos Santos or Carwin will clinch an Octagon date with Heavyweight Champion Cain Velasquez–the wrestler-turned-UFC champ is confident his career is not over.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019ll tell you one thing: I\u2019m not retiring. This isn\u2019t the end of my fight career. I have a strong faith that there\u2019s a solution to every problem. I just gotta find the right solution to fix this problem. I love this sport and I love what I do. This isn\u2019t the end of Brock Lesnar.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lesnar also issued an extended statement to UFC.com:<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to thank the UFC and Mr. White, and I want to apologize to Junior dos Santos and Spike TV…This is an unfortunate situation for me. I dodged a bullet about two years ago with diverticulitis by not having the surgery. But diverticulitis is an illness that never goes away. It\u2019s something that I\u2019ve dealt with since my first occurrence and have been battling with it. I\u2019ve been able to maintain it to a point where it\u2019s tolerable, and I was able to go through two training camps. I\u2019ve been dealing with some symptoms over the last three months, and during the course of this training camp, I felt another infection and got a CT scan done on my stomach, where there was visible inflation. It didn\u2019t allow me to train to my full capabilities, and I was forced to make a decision to go back down to the doctor this week to figure out how far this thing was along. It\u2019s not as serious as last time. It just didn\u2019t allow me to train the way I needed to train for a number one contender\u2019s bout. I am forced with the decision to either have surgery or to deal with this for the rest of my life. So I\u2019m fighting a different fight here. It was a hard decision (to pull out of the fight), I\u2019m choked up about it, but there\u2019s nothing I can do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"adace-sponsor":[],"yoast_head":"\n