Las Vegas, NV – UFC Vegas 74 took a late hit when Jared Gordon was pulled from his fight against Jim Miller the day before weigh-ins, but at the post-fight scrum president Dana White let loose on the lightweight and why he was pulled.
“Yeah when you come in here on press day, and you announce that you had a concussion six weeks ago, and you healed yourself from the concussion…you’re done. We’re not going to let you fight,” White told reporters at his post-fight scrum on Saturday.
“He should have told us six weeks ago. You should have showed at least the company and your opponent some respect and at least did that six weeks ago.”
Gordon (19-6) went into media day on Wednesday to talk about the matchup with Miller. There he revealed that he had suffered a concussion against Bobby Green that he had treated himself. A day later he was pulled off the card.
“I had a minor concussion, but I got over the symptoms fairly quickly,” Gordon had told reporters on Wednesday.
“I did everything I could to recover. Supplements, I was in a hyperbaric chamber for the last six weeks. At this point in my career sometimes you’ve got to risk it a little bit to get what you want. I think a little bit of risk is not too bad. I’m risking it anyway going in there, even if I didn’t have that outcome six weeks ago.”
White wasn’t impressed in the least and let loose on Gordon on Saturday night.
“You’re not a f*cking doctor. You didn’t cure yourself from a concussion. Was he self-diagnosed or did he go to a doctor and did a doctor diagnose him with a concussion? You have to be honest when you get injuries,” White said.
“And of course the minute we hear about it…no fight is worth keeping on if it’s going to risk somebody’s health, safety, longevity, whatever it might be. We will pull you out in 2.5 seconds.”
White did shield his matchmakers from any wrongdoing by pointing out that they didn’t know Gordon had a concussion.
“No he’s not at fault if we know we’ve got a healthy guy that’s going into a fight. Like I say all the time with this thing, with Slap, we spend the money to make sure that we have healthy guys competing,” said White.
“We’ve dealt with this in the past. Guys have come in media week and said crazy sh*t about what happened in their training camp and stuff like that. And we yank them. It’s absolutely consistent with what we’ve always done.”
