Garry Releases Statement After UFC 296 Withdrawal

Garry is speaking up after a bout of pneumonia has cancelled his fight against Vicente Luque at UFC 296.

UFC 296 lost it’s pay-per-view opener on Wednesday night when Dana White announced that Ian Garry was out of his fight against Vicente Luque. The reason? A flu that developed into full blown pneumonia.

Now Garry is speaking on the subject himself.

In a statement given to MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani, “The Future” vented his frustration with the situation.

“I have pneumonia,” he said. “They tried everything to help me. In the end, UFC doctor said there’s no chance I can fight. The UFC doctor made the call. This annoys me more than anyone. I want to fight. It’s my favorite thing to do.”

Helwani added “[For what it’s worth], he sounds quite bad.”

There are always going to be folks who question fighters when they’re forced to pull out of a fight. Garry’s bound to get even more scrutiny because he showed up to Las Vegas under the cloud of controversy. His opponent Vicente Luque is a teammate at Kill Cliff FC, and several other gym members have come out and said some not-so-nice things about Garry.

And then there’s Sean Strickland rallying a mob of haters against Garry’s wife.

With Garry waging war on multiple fronts, there was a real chance we were about to see him get verbally wrecked at the UFC 296 pre-fight press conference. Conspiracy types would say he tapped out at the prospect. We’d say pneumonia — verified by UFC doctors and Dana White — is a pretty legit reason to withdraw.