Garbrandt Suffering From ‘Blood Clots, Pneumonia, And Mental Fog’

A bout with COVID at the end of August still has Cody Garbrandt suffering from some pretty serious illnesses.

It was hard to watch UFC 255 on Saturday night without thinking about what could have been.

The main event was originally supposed to be flyweight champ Deiveson Figueiredo vs. former bantamweight champ Cody Garbrandt. Robbie Lawler was set to take Mike Perry to school, and Jose Aldo vs. Marlon Vera sounded pretty great too. But Lawler was forced to pull out with an injury and Aldo vs. Vera was moved to December.

As for Cody Garbrandt? The initial reason for his removal back at the start of October was a torn bicep. “No Love” also revealed he had come down with COVID, which had kept him out of the gym for a month and a half, but that didn’t seem like an ongoing issue. Just another young healthy man shrugging it off.

Unfortunately now Garbrandt is revealing what sounds like more serious complications from the illness.

“Disclaimer from my last post, I was positive for COVID Aug 29th,” Garbrandt wrote in an Instagram Story. “Since then I have been battling vertigo, tore my vein in my bicep which resulted in finding out I have blood clots, pneumonia and mental fog, these are the symptoms I’ve had and been dealing with and this is the reason I pulled out of the fight. I haven’t done any media, but I’d like to address it on my own terms.”

Blood clots, pneumonia, and mental fog are all symptoms of post-COVID syndrome.

Even with all this, Cody is confident that he’ll be able to make a return to the Octagon in the first quarter of 2021.

“Alex Perez was just someone they gave Figueiredo to build up our fight more,” Garbrandt told ESPN. “I knock that guy (Figueiredo) out in the first or second round. I’ll be ready by March.”

Deiveson Figueiredo is set to make a historic 21 day turnaround to fight Brandon Moreno at UFC 256 in December. Will he (or Moreno) be willing to turn around again three months later to fight Garbrandt? Between Garbrandt getting healthy and champion schedules lining up, there’s still a lot of moving parts to Cody’s flyweight debut in flux. Which makes us all the more sad we didn’t just get to see “Figgy” versus “No Love” last night.