Reigning UFC Featherweight champion Jose Aldo has had to pull out of his UFC 176 title rematch with Chad Mendes after he picked up an injury in training.
The story was first broke by Ariel Helwani on the UFC Tonight show and later Aldo’s Nova Uniao camp confirmed that he had suffered both a shoulder and a cervical spine injury after being taken down during a training session.
It’s an unfortunate situation for Aldo who’s picked up a number of injuries over the course of his UFC career so far and had several lengthy spells out of the Octagon as a result, including over a year between fights after his first encounter with Mendes back in January of 2012 in his native Brazil, a fight which he won by KO.
News of Aldo’s injury also leaves the UFC in an unfortunate position as they are now in need of a new main event with only a month to go until the August 2nd show goes down in Los Angeles.
This wasn’t an especially strong event to begin with, but taking the Aldo Vs Mendes title fight out of the equation, the biggest fight currently left on the card is Gegard Mousasi Vs Ronaldo ‘Jacare’ Souza, while Gray Maynard returns after a layoff to fight Fabricio Camoes.
One potential option is to keep Mendes on the card and have him fight the No.2 ranked contender Cub Swanson either to establish the next in line or potentially even for the interim belt depending on how long Aldo would be out for.
However, it could be that Aldo won’t be out for long, in which case they may wish to hold Mendes back for now. Also, Swanson only just fought this past weekend, not to mention the fact that while it’s a really good fight, Mendes Vs Swanson would be a tough sell on pay-per-view.
