While there weren’t any fight announcements or UFC cuts yesterday, something pretty interesting happened. Prior to his scheduled appearance on Ariel Helwani’s MMA Hour podcast, upcoming UFC Fight Night 77 headliner Vitor Belfort pulled out due to questions he would be forced to answer.
Mr. @vitorbelfort will not be on the show today after all. His rep asked me about an 1 ago to not ask certain qs. I said I couldn’t do that…
— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) October 26, 2015
… so they pulled him from the show. Disappointing, considering he was booked on Wednesday and they give this ultimatum now. Ah well. … — Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) October 26, 2015
What questions, you ask? Well about a month ago, a major report came out via Deadspin’s Josh Gross which had some pretty harsh revelations about the Ultimate Fighting Championship accidentally e-mailing a report of a Belfort drug test to 29 fighters and managers which had resulted in elevated testosterone levels prior to Belfort’s UFC 152 title fight against Jon Jones in Canada. The promotion attempted to quickly do some damage control by asking them to delete the e-mail, and they followed up with legal threats. If you haven’t read the article, go ahead and do it now. Belfort has a trilogy fight next week (November 7, 2015) against Dan Henderson and he has yet to address the Deadspin report, refusing to offer comment to anyone who has requested one. Helwani almost certainly was going to ask about it and that forced Belfort’s decision to bail on the interview. Fight week starts next Monday, and I doubt Belfort can dodge questions about his UFC 152 drug test for much longer but he’s not doing himself any favors by avoiding it right now.