Rodolfo Vieira and Armen Petrosyan won’t be fighting in Brazil on Saturday.
Prior to the beginning of the main card broadcast of UFC Sao Paulo, it was announced that Petrosyan has been forced out of his scheduled middleweight bout with Vieira due to an illness.
According to Petrosyan’s management, he may have caught a virus backstage.
Unfortunately our client Armen Petrosyan caught a virus or something back stage and has to pull out of his fight tonight in UFC São Paulo. UFC said they will look to get him back in right away as soon as he is cleared.
— Brian Butler-Au (@BrianButler_Au) November 5, 2023
“Unfortunately our client Armen Petrosyan caught a virus backstage or something and has to pull out of his fight tonight in UFC Sao Paulo,” manager Brian Butler-Au wrote on social media. “UFC said they will look to get him back in right away as soon as he is cleared.”
It is not yet known if matchmakers will attempt to rebook Vieira vs. Petrosyan for a later date.
A 165-pound catchweight bout between Elves Brener and Kaynan Kruschewsky originally scheduled to close out the preliminaries now kicks off the main card.
Vieira entered Saturday’s event with a 4-2 record inside the octagon, looking to get a win streak going after a submission of Cody Brundage this past April. The Brazilian jiu-jitsu ace has secured eight of his nine career wins by way of submission.
Petrosyan sports a 3-1 UFC record and is coming off of back-to-back decision wins over Christian Leroy Duncan and AJ Dobson.
This story originally appeared on MMA fighting