Top-ranked welterweight Sean Brady was forced to withdrawal from the Nov. 7 UFC Vegas 124 main event due to a staph infection on his left knee, he revealed in an interview with SteadyPicks. Gabriel Bonfim was also pulled from the event with no replacement.
Brady said his knee was swollen after riding a bicycle in the gym a couple of weeks before the fight, and come night time, “I couldn’t walk”. Brady he decided to go to a hospital the next morning to have his knee checked by doctors, and that’s when exams indicated an infection.
“I knew right away from dealing with my arm and my leg,” Brady said. “The feeling that you get, it’s just different. It’s just a different pain. I could barely walk.”
“They start drawing blood, doing everything,” he continued. “They put me on IV antibiotics to wait. They they do think that they tap your knee to get the fluid out so they can see what kind of infection it is. The problem is, sometimes it takes a while to find out, they have to wait for the bacteria to grow. It takes two days for it to grow, so I had to obviously stay in the hospital for three days.”
Brady tried to “stay optimistic” and hope for a quick release from hospital so he could still face Bonfim at the Meta APEX on Nov. 7, but “it just wasn’t getting better.”
“The fear is that I’ll get it drained, and they’ll just keep filling back up,” Brady said. “I can’t fight in two weeks. I can’t fight in two weeks. It’s just not a not an option.”
Johnny Walker vs. Waldo Cortes-Acosta was ultimately booked as the new main event for UFC Vegas 124. Bonfim remains unsure whether he gets a new date and opponent, and Brady revealed he tried postponing the match for other UFC cards before the end of the year.
“This will clear up in a couple of weeks, and that’s what sucks,” Brady said. “I was trying to ask them, is there any spots on the Dec. 12 card? Is there any way I can get on that? ‘It’s full.’ I was trying to just be like, I just need a couple more weeks just to let this shit clear up and then I still want to fight.”
Brady was informed by the promotion that UFC’s upcoming events on Nov. 21, Dec. 5 and Dec. 12 — scheduled for Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Las Vegas, respectively — are “full,” and he’s currently aiming for the Jan. 16 Fight Night event in Texas.
“They don’t have another card until the Dallas card,” Brady said. “Which is what I’m hoping to get on whether I get a new opponent, whether they find Bonfim someone, or if they just push it. That’s what I want.”
“And I feel for Bonfim too,” he continued. “It sucks, man, because I’ve been there where guys have pulled out, you’re two weeks out and then you don’t know if you’re fighting, you’re looking for a new opponent. I know he was putting in the training camp. And that’s what sucks.”
