Matt Mitrione isn’t coming off his best weekend.
Mitrione went from preparing for the biggest fight of his professional mixed martial arts (MMA) career, to laying on a hospital bed. The former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) heavyweight was set to go one-on-one with MMA icon Fedor Emelianenko.
It was not meant to be as Mitrione was pulled off the Bellator 172 card due to kidney stones. Mitrione recently appeared on MMAFighting.com‘s “The MMA Hour” to talk about the cancellation and his health:
“It’s really difficult, man. I’m an athlete, I’ve relied on my body my entire life, and for something like this to happen at literally the worst possible time, just hurts my heart. Man, it’s really, really difficult to handle. And the fact that I literally did everything I possibly could, Bellator did everything they possibly could to extend my time frame, trying to help out, and it just got to a point where it wasn’t going to work — man, there’s nothing I could do about it at all.”
Mitrione said he didn’t feel something was off until the day before the event. He said the feeling only got worse as time progressed.
“It really started to kick in on Friday, and I didn’t know if I got sick all of a sudden, just what the problem was, but it kept magnifying and amplifying. It got to the point where I was absolutely miserable. At weigh-ins, I had to put on a show and be like, ‘hey, I look good,’ because I don’t want Fedor to see this puking, doubled-over-in-agony kind of guy. It just was really difficult, and then it just kept getting worse. On Saturday, Bellator was like, ‘look dude, we have to go to the hospital, this thing isn’t right, something’s going on.’ We went to the hospital, told them what’s going on. They said, ‘look, it’s probably kidney stones.’ They hooked me to my IVs to try to flush it out, and then they gave me a CT scan to see what was really going on, and that’s when they saw the stone. The stone hadn’t even passed.”
Bellator is planning to reschedule the bout between Mitrione and Emelianenko for May or June.
