FACEBOOK TWITTER RSS APP PODCAST MMA News : UFC UFC NEWS: Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira has "severe" staph infection (again), bout with Velasquez at UFC 108 off

Nov 15, 2009 - 11:38:32 AM

By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

Just when it seemed that the UFC 108 card finally had it's main event, and in fact it had been officially announced by the UFC, the card has taken yet another blow to the top spot on the card.

At the post UFC 105 press conference, UFC President Dana White revealed that Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira has "staph infection, bad, to the point now it's in his bloodstream, and he's probably going to have to be hospitalized and intravenously given the antibiotics."

This means his bout with fellow heavyweight Title contender Cain Velasquez is now off of the UFC 108 card for sure, and they are back to scrambling for a new event for the January 2nd card.

For those keeping score at home, this was the fourth possible headliner for this card to fall through. The three previously attempted main events were all Title bouts, and all have been postponed for various reasons.

First it was Anderson Silva against Vitor Belfort, postponed due to Silva's recovery from elbow surgery. Then Lyoto Machida and Mauricio "Shogun" Rua were the hopeful encounter in a rematch of their UFC 104 bout, but Machida needed hand surgery and wouldn't be available for the event. Finally, Brock Lesnar and Shane Carwin were tentatively moved to that date after Lesnar's illness forced them off of next weekend's UFC 106 event, but now Lesnar's taken a turn for the worse and it's unknown even if he'll be able to return to the fight game at all.

The 108 card is still really good overall, though there is no clear headliner in the bunch. Rashad Evans will face off against Thiago Silva in a major light heavyweight bout with Title implications, and Junior Dos Santos will go head to head with Gabriel Gonzaga, but neither of those fights is considered "headline worthy" at this point. The UFC is currently trying to figure out what fight they'll put together for this main event.

Link to MMAJunkie.com report

Penick's Analysis: This is just a continued series of unfortunate events going down for the UFC this year. The number of injuries and illnesses postponing fights has been ridiculous, but they've still managed to salvage the majority of these events to put together some very good business during the year. One thing that has been benefiting them in that respect has been better spacing between events this fall, including the addition of multiple free events and putting prelim fights on Spike TV. They've got to hope that with all that's been delayed here at the end of this year that they'll be set up nicely in the spring and summer of 2010 with healthy Champions returning and other fighters getting back into action. We as fans will be hoping for the same.

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