Mohammad Fakhreddine has pulled out of his highly anticipated main event matchup with Thiago Vieira at Brave: The Beginning which is set to take place at Khalifa Sports City.
He had just entered the final stages of his preparation with just under a week remaining before the fight of his life.
The final stages of training for Fakhreddine involves an intense weight-cut where he must shed a large amount of his body fat, thus he will do sprint training and this is where his injury took place.
He said: “It’s such a shame I had to pull out of this fight. This has never happened, before I fought with a broken wrist and a broken rib, but now it’s different, I blew my knee while I was running for my weight cut. It was the last hard running and I was doing sprints. As I was taking off my knee popped and as much as a hate this I am glad it happened now and not during the fight. I will get the surgery done and I’ll be back stronger and more focused than ever with bad intentions, to claim what’s mine.”
There is no doubt that Fakhreddine will be a main event in a future card in Brave, but for now he will have to sit and watch others take the limelight.
His replacement will be announced shortly and whoever that is will face the almighty task of stepping in on very short notice to fight the undefeated Brazilian “Monstro” from Sao Paolo.
Vieira has won all of his fights inside the distance and fights aggressively, using his Muay Thai skills to throw chopping kicks to the legs and body to set up his punches.
He will still have an opportunity to fight on this prestigious card in Bahrain, but the main event will now be the battle between Rami Aziz and Abdul kareem Al-Selwady, which has been moved to the top of Brave’s premier show.