As Fabricio Werdum and Mark Hunt exchange heavy leather at UFC 180 on Saturday night for a chance to claim the interim Heavyweight title, champion and pound-for-pound stalwart Cain Velasquez will be watching from the other side of the cage.
Velasquez, who was excited to headline the UFC's first foray into Mexico, fell victim to the second major knee injury of his career, and was forced out of Saturday's clash with Werdum.
Hunt, fresh off a brutal knockout victory over Roy Nelson in September, replaced Velasquez in the main event.
In an interview on The MMA Hour, Velasquez admitted that he was willing to fight with a torn meniscus, but had to pull out when he ruptured his MCL.
I felt (like my knee) was pretty loose. In training I felt like my body would switch one way but my leg would kinda stay in one direction. So I kinda felt like, it wasn't stable.
It just sucked, you know what I mean. Going through practice everyday, and just limiting (myself), not really doing the stuff that I could do as far as rolling. I tried to roll, some days I could, some days I couldn't, and I just said, hey, I'm going to just baby it until I get two weeks out, and once I get two weeks out I'm going to try to do everything. Kick, be on the ground, it doesn't matter, but I'm going to do what I can to make the fight.
And when I finally realized that I can't do it, it's just not working for me, it just sucked. It felt like something was destined, you know what I mean. Like, this is where I'm destined to be, I'm destined to fight on this card, and it just didn't turn out that way. So it was just kind of devastating to me.
Velasquez, who will face the winner of Werdum/Hunt once he's cleared to fight, thinks Werdum has more tools in his belt than Hunt.
"I think Mark Hunt just has that knockout power, and that's pretty much it," Velasquez said. "I think Werdum, with his length, also if it goes to wrestling, if it goes on the ground, Werdum has it. I think on the feet, with the power that Hunt has, I think he has a good chance of winning it there. But I think that's pretty much it."
