Just hours before UFC 234 on Saturday, the promotion announced that middleweight champion Robert Whittaker was forced to withdraw from his main event title fight against Kelvin Gastelum "due to a severe abdominal injury requiring emergency surgery."
UFC President Dana White further elaborated on the severity of Whittaker's injury during the UFC 234 preliminary card broadcast (via
MMA Fighting).
“He’s in the recovery room with his wife and his family. This is one of those freak accidents where the doctor said he’d literally never seen this type of injury in a young person. This usually only happens to old people. His bowel and his intestines poked through the hole and it didn’t happen yesterday after the [weigh-ins]. They think he had this problem and it’s been going in and out"
“And it’s one of those situations had it popped out during the fight, it could have been fatal for him. So this is really serious, we don’t know exactly what happened with the doctor. Hopefully they popped it back in and sewed it up and if that’s the case, he’ll be four weeks. This was a freak, freak injury, less than one percent — our doctor here at the UFC, who’s been doing this for 30 years, has never seen it ever in his career and not in a young person. It’s usually in much older people.”
With the timetable for Whittaker's return still in question, White was noncommittal on whether UFC would introduce an interim middleweight belt. Kelvin Gastelum, who was getting his first UFC title opportunity, offered Whittaker well-wishes on social media following the disappointing news.
As a result of this last-minute withdrawal, the three-round middleweight bout between Anderson Silva and Israel Adesanya was upgraded to the new main event. The lightweight matchup between Lando Vannata and Marcos Mariano was elevated to the co-main event.