Marvin Vettori has been forced to pull out of his fight against Ismail Naurdiev at UFC Fight Night 280 in Baku, Azerbaijan on June 27th after suffering a broken rib.
“Unfortunately I’m here to tell you that a few days ago, I got hurt on my rib,” Vettori said. “I did an MRI and it came back today showing that the rib is broken so, I won’t be fighting June 27. I was really looking forward to this fight. I moved from Florida to California for this camp. I wanted to get back to my roots, train with Beneil (Dariush), train with Julian for my boxing, train with Chase for my conditioning.
“I was feeling good, but sometimes sh*t happens and you can’t do anything about it. So yeah, now I’m just going to focus on my recovery, hopefully it doesn’t take too long, 4-6 weeks I’m good to train again. If they reschedule me with the same guy, great. If not, it doesn’t matter. Anybody is good to me. For everybody that supported me, I’m thankful for that, and I promise you that I will be back.”
The 32-year-old Vettori is a former middleweight title contender, but he’s hit upon hard times in recent years, having lost four fights in a row against the likes of Jared Cannonier, Roman Dolidze, Brendan Allen and then Brunno Ferreira.
With Vettori vs. Naurdiev out, UFC Fight Night 280 proceeds with a card that’ll be headlined by Rafael Fiziev vs. Manuel Torres, while Shara Magomedov fights Michel Pereira elsewhere on the main card.
