IAN McCALL’S ABSENCE from the octagon is set to continue after the fighter was removed from tonight’s bill for UFC 208, which will be headlined by an inaugural women’s featherweight title bout between Holly Holm and Germaine De Randamie.
McCall, who hasn’t fought since January 2015, was due to take on Jarred Brooks in a flyweight bout in Brooklyn. However, the UFC have confirmed this evening that the 32-year-old American was transported to a local hospital with gastrointestinal issues and was pulled from the card on the doctor’s recommendation.
Without sufficient time to secure a replacement opponent for Brooks, UFC 208 will go ahead as a 10-bout card. The event originally featured 12 fights but the heavyweight meeting of Justin Willis and Marcin Tybura was dropped yesterday after Willis was deemed “unfit” to compete by the UFC.
This latest cancellation for McCall marks the fifth consecutive fight that has fallen through for the Californian, whose last win came at the expense of Brad Pickett in Dublin in July 2014. McCall was originally due to face Dubliner Neil Seery tonight but Brooks was drafted in instead when a family bereavement forced Seery to withdraw.
McCall’s spate of misfortune can be traced back to August 2015 when injury forced him out of a fight against Dustin Ortiz. He was set to return in July of last year until weight-cutting problems suffered by opponent Justin Scoggins saw their fight scratched from UFC 201 on just two days’ notice.
McCall was then booked to take on Ray Borg in September but Borg pulled out three days before the UFC 203 meeting because of illness. McCall was struck by illness on the eve of a fight against Seery in Belfast in November.