Drakkar Klose takes a minute to recover after being poked in the eye by David Teymur during UFC 218 (Imago)
Injuries picked up by Drakkar Klose in face off against Jeremy Stephens led to their fight being cancelled.
Drakkar Klose was set to take on Jeremy Stephens in the co-main event at UFC Fight Night : Whittaker vs Gastelum.
However, things turned awry during the face-off as an intense and sudden shove from Stephens caused cervical injuries to Klose, resulting in the fight being cancelled.
Klose then later revealed in a statement on Twitter that he had immediately felt his hand go numb and neck tighten up, after being pushed by Stephens. He went on to say that he had woken up with a terrible headache next morning accompanied by nausea and vomiting.
This is what Klose’s statement read, which was shared by famed reporter Ariel Helwani of ESPN MMA:
Helwani then tweeted what Klose’s team had to say about his CT scan results.
He tweeted:
“Per Drakkar Klose’s team, they just got their CT scan results back: He suffered a cervical sprain of the neck and a concussion as a result of the push. No sign of dehydration or anything that could come from a bad weight cut. The neck sprain is in essence extreme whiplash.”
And a while later, Helwani posted the image of the CT scan result:
That was pretty unfortunate. And, Andrei Arlovski vs Chase Sherman went ahead as the co-main event instead.
Both Stephens and Klose hadn’t fought in quite a while. While Klose was coming off a knockout loss against Beneil Dariush, way back at UFC 248 in March 2020, Stephens was coming off a KO loss too, against Calvin Kattar at UFC 249.
Stephens will definitely be regretting his shoving off of Drakkar Klose. He doesn’t have a single win in his last 5 fights, with his last win coming against Josh Emmett way back in February 2018.
The Lil Heathen could have turned his fortunes around with a win against Klose, especially during such a time, as the UFC is actively releasing fighters from their roster.
He could have stayed a bit patient at the face offs, as he later revealed that he pushed Klose because he didn’t like the way Klose was aggressively coming at him.
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