Gordon Ryan is out of his highly anticipated WNO match against Felipe Pena. His spot will be replaced by Nicky Rodriguez.
FloGrappling was the first to announce the news. Ryan then posted a lengthy, 2-part explanation of what happened:
This is one of the tougher decisions I’ve ever had to make, but it’s the right one.
Last Wednesday, after hard rounds for my peak, I got home and developed severe body aches and a migraine.
I slept almost straight from Wednesday afternoon until Friday night, running a 100-102.5 fever while not being able to eat anything and sweating with the chills.On Saturday, my body came back online and I was able to do regular, low intensity things like a normal person and wasn’t bed ridden anymore.
My fever subsided but I still had a fuzzy head, headache, and body aches. I also started having severe diarrhea on Saturday but figured since my fever was gone I was getting better.
However, despite slowly adding in a light training session or two, Ryan is still far from being alright:
On top of this, I spent the whole week not being able to eat and the last 5 days with severe diarrhea every 30 minutes…
I’ve also been taking 1 IV bag a day for the last 4 days to try to keep up with the loss of fluids but I’m still so severely dehydrated now that my legs are cramping from walking up a flight of stairs.
Ryan and his coach, John Danaher, both decided that the professional thing to do was to pull out of the match:
I have messaged Pena directly to relay this as well as my apologies.
I know how much time he put into this and I fully expected to have the best Pena ever out there to compete against and giving him (or anyone) this version of me isn’t an option.
Gordon apologized to the fans, too:
To the fans as well, I am very sorry. I made the mistake of facing Pena sick in our 1st match and I swore to never do that again.
I have competed (2019 ADCC) with food poisoning (and a broken hand) that I came down with the day before hand but this one has been eating at me for a week and I simply have nothing left for a hard match at the moment.
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However, Pena doesn’t seem to have accepted Gordon’s version of events.
He pointed out to a dinner that Ryan shared about a couple of nights before the match cancellation announcement:
I fought our last fight the day one of my best friends died to save the event with the condition that Saturday’s fight would happen.
Nobody who has a stomach problem to the point of not doing such an important fight goes out to dinner with friends and after is training in a garage?!
Interesting that the problem is only to fight so… You are a coward.
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The post BREAKING: Gordon Ryan Out Of Felipe Pena Match appeared first on Bjj Eastern Europe.