The best and worst from UFC 234: Adesanya vs. Silva

#1 Worst: Whittaker’s run of bad luck continues

Robert Whittaker's run of bad luck continued with a freak injury that sidelined him last night

Last February, Robert Whittaker was scheduled to make a defence of his UFC Middleweight crown in Australia against top contender Luke Rockhold. Instead, he was forced out of the fight due to a weird health issue (a bad staph infection) and missed out on the home country defence. The UFC tried to give him another chance at it pretty much exactly a year later, but somehow history ended up repeating itself.

This time Whittaker almost made it, even weighing in and looking healthy on Friday, but was forced out literally hours before the show due to a truly freak injury – an abdominal hernia that required immediate surgery. It was unbelievably bad luck for ‘The Reaper’, and quite hard to fathom to be honest. It’ll go down as perhaps the most unlucky injury in UFC history.

Thankfully it sounds like Whittaker will be back within 4 weeks, but unless the UFC re-books his fight with Kelvin Gastelum quickly (maybe at UFC 236, which doesn’t have a main event right now and goes down on 04/13) the whole Middleweight division could end up tied up for some time, which would be a nightmare scenario. This was a horrible situation for the UFC and for Whittaker, and was easily the worst part about UFC 234.