Rockhold opens up on Velasquez’s back injury

Recently it was announced that former UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez had pulled out of his UFC 196 main event scrap with Fabricio Werdum as a result of a back injury.

Shortly after, it was announced that Stipe Miocic had filled in for Velasquez. Following that announcement Fabricio Werdum withdrew from the bout, leaving UFC 196 without a main event.

On The MMA Hour, Luke Rockhold opened up about the nature of Velasquez’s injury:

“He’s had a bad back for a while now. He’s been trying to fight through it and it’s been progressively getting worse. He hasn’t been able to spar and train much. He’s been working around it, doing the best he could, but you can’t go into a fight without really training. I think he just decided to pull the plug last minute. It needed to be done. He basically got no bushings in his lower discs.”

“It’s been an unfortunate string of injuries, of course, with Cain. He’s never had great camps going forward. I haven’t talked to him. I know the situation, I know where he’s been every day. It is what it is at this point. He can’t go in there, he needs to go up and show up and get his title back and be healthy to do it. You just kind of wait, wait for the time, when the time’s right.”

For Velasquez the injury is yet another one in a long string of injuries that has forced Velasquez out of several fights in the past.