Injuries and withdrawals are a simple fact of the fight game, about as certain as death and taxes if you’re fighting at a high level.
So it was no surprise when Rafael Fiziev was forced out of his UFC Rio main event fight with Charles Oliveira, which arrives this Saturday at the Farmasi Arena in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
What was a surprise, to Brazil’s own Oliveira (35-11, 1NC), anyway, was who stepped up and who didn’t, after a flurry of callouts in the wake of Fiziev’s injury.
“I wasn’t disappointed or anything like that. It’s just a fact that, what happens in the process. You get these guys coming out of fights, something happens, they go online, they go on social media and say ‘hey, I’m ready, I can be the next guy, I can be up there to face him, fight him,'” Oliveira noted during Wednesday’s UFC Rio media day.
In the end, it was Mateusz Gamrot calling for and getting the fight, but his was far from the only name. “But then when the time comes, they never show up, they don’t take the fight,” Oliveira added. “So I’m not disappointed, I’m just surprised by the people who do that. Somebody like Jon Jones is fighting, [and someone] says ‘hey, I’m here’ or something and the guy doesn’t show up.”
As for Gamrot, “I wanted to fight as quickly as possible, and that was the name that showed up. It could be anyone, but I just wanted to be a fighter in Brazil,” noted Oliveira, getting a rare home fight, his first since 2020, in what turned out to be an empty arena thanks to COVID. “I’m not disappointed, just surprised by the attitude of some people. I’m not like that. I never do stuff like that.”
Gamrot went on a bit tear on social media calling for the fight, a move that wasn’t lost on Charles Oliveira. “I see everything. He does that, but everybody does that. Reporters do that, fans do that, and I see everything, but I’ve been here for 15 years. I’ve seen this before,” stated Oliveira, the UFC submissions record holder with 16. “It doesn’t effect me. What does matter is how much work I put into this fight, how prepared I am going to [be], the show I’m going to give the Brazilian audience on Saturday, and how forward and in his face I’ll be on Saturday night.”
Watch the full UFC Rio media day appearance by Charles Oliveira above.
