Las Vegas, NV — Light heavyweight Ryan Spann found out about the cancellation of his UFC Vegas 70 main event fight against Nikita Krylov pretty much when everyone else did.
Asked for his immediate reaction as he addressed reporters a short time later, Spann said simply “Yeah I’ve got one: f*ck.”
An emotional Spann revealed that he’d found out about the fight falling through “about ten minutes ago.”
“So it’s still being processed,” he added.
The UFC Vegas 70 main card broadcast kicked off with the news that Krylov had pulled out of the fight due to an undisclosed illness. It’s the second time in recent months that such a mishap has befallen a UFC main event— Derrick Lewis vs. Serghei Spivac, last November, was the first.
The promotion now hopes to keep the fight together, with the possibility of rescheduling it a few weeks out. For Spann, however, the blow hit hard. He actually found out while giving his in-competition drug test sample. That’s how last-minute the news was.
“I was peeing, I had USADA in the back, with my coach storming in and yelling for me,” Spann revealed. “It was him, Hunter [Campbell, UFC Chief Business Officer], and Sean [Shelby, matchmaker] letting me know that I wasn’t going to be able to fight.”
Spann was especially disappointed for his team, who put in plenty of hard work alongside him ahead of the fight. But he does not see his fight camp as going to waste.
“Honestly I wouldn’t call it a wasted camp, because we weren’t training for this specific fight. We’re in champ camp,” said Spann. “The plan was to go back to work Monday either way, so I guess that’s what we’re going to have to do. So it isn’t wasted. The disappointment comes from me not getting to show off some of the sh*t that we’ve been doing.”
Watch Saturday’s full UFC Vegas 70 media appearance with Ryan Spann above.
