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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
More details have come out on the nature of Cain Velasquez's knee injury, which has taken him out of next month's UFC 180 event in Mexico City.
According to Velasquez's trainer Javier Mendez, via a report from MMAFighting.com, Velasquez had already suffered a slightly torn meniscus in his right knee that he was planning to fight through, but during some sprawling drills last week, he suffered a sprained MCL.
He's now going to get surgery on the torn meniscus tomorrow in San Jose, Calif., while he'll need to rehab the sprain. In all, the injuries are expected to push his return date back to March.
As he hasn't fought in the last year, the latest injury delay has led to the UFC booking an Interim Title bout between Mark Hunt and Fabricio Werdum on the UFC 180 card, which comes to pay-per-view on Nov. 15.
Penick's Analysis: Velasquez's injury makes for the ninth UFC pay-per-view main event to change due to injury this year, which is just an absolutely astonishing number. Additionally, even if it hasn't kept them out of a scheduled fight, every current UFC Champion except for Demetrious "Mighty Mouse" Johnson has suffered an injury in the last year and a half, with Velasquez now on his second. It's further evidence the UFC needs to look at lessening the frequency of pay-per-views in order to more adequately stack them up, because this card next month is now simply in line with a Fox Sports 1 event, not pay-per-view. This was a crushing injury for the UFC, and again, it's just a major blow to the organization's first attempt at breaking into Mexico.
[Cain Velasquez art by Grant Gould (c) MMATorch.com]
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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