Now this is getting a bit ridiculous.
Last minute injuries have begun to take their toll on the sport of mixed martial arts. The UFC was forced to cancel their first event ever at UFC 151 due to Dan Henderson’s eleventh hour injury earlier this month. UFC 153, which is scheduled to take place in Brazilon October 13th, was totally ravaged due to injuries sustained by featherweight champion Jose Aldo and UFC star Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson.
Strikeforce showed that it was not immune to the rampant injury bug either as news broke out last week that Frank Mir was forced to pull out of his heavyweight headline against Daniel Cormier on November 3rd.
Unfortunately for fans, the plague is not over yet as Strikeforce just released a statement indicating that Gilbert Melendez is also hurt and will not be able to defend his title on Saturday, September 29th in Sacramento.
The organization posted this press release earlier today:
STRIKEFORCE® announced this evening that its event planned for Saturday, Sept. 29 at Power Balance Pavilion inSacramento,Calif.has been cancelled. STRIKEFORCE lightweight champion Gilbert Melendez, who was set to defend his title against Pat Healy, sustained an injury in training that forced his withdrawal from the card.
Without the Melendez-Healy title bout, SHOWTIME®, which determines which fights are televised on the premium network, decided that it would not air Saturday’s scheduled event.
“When SHOWTIME informed us that it would not be airing the event, we made the difficult decision to cancel Saturday’s card inSacramento,” STRIKEFORCE CEO Scott Coker said. “Without a television partner, we simply could not move forward with this event. We wish Gilbert a speedy recovery and will work diligently and quickly to reschedule the fighters affected by this news on upcoming cards.”
This string of injuries is undoubtedly the worst that the sport has ever seen andt remains to be seen whether or not injuries and the subsequent cancellations or subpar replacement events will impact the sports popularity going forward.
What do you think? Are you getting sick of the injuries?
