Charles Oliveira was supposed to compete against Beneil Dariush in a fight for the prospective number-one contender spot at UFC 288, but an injury that has not been reported pushed him off the event on May 6.
Even if “do Bronx” hasn’t yet returned to training, Dariush has suggested moving the fight to UFC 289 on June 10 in Canada.
On Monday afternoon, Oliveira broke his silence about the situation on Instagram Stories, explaining that he had decided to pull out of the New Jersey card since he wouldn’t have enough time to train for it.
“I wasn’t able to train, I got injured during wrestling practice,” Oliveira said in Portuguese. “I tried to train, I tried to do everything I could but we couldn’t, so we pulled out of the fight. [Fighting at UFC 288] would be great because I would be fighting on the same night of two teammates, ‘Willycat’ [Daniel Santos] and Rolando [Bedoya], but God knows all things. We’ll continue working and stay focused.”
“I have to stay [away from training] for a few days so I can go back to training soon, and then we’ll reschedule the fight,” Oliveira added. “I’ll be back to training pretty soon. That’s it, I had a small injury and decided to pull out so I wouldn’t fight injured. We’ve made that mistake once and I didn’t want to do it again. … We’re taking one step back so we can take one, two, three steps forward soon.”
His long winning streak was ended by Islam Makhachev in October in Abu Dhabi, and the former UFC lightweight champion hoped a victory against Dariush would lead to a rematch later in the year. Oliveira has not said when he will resume training or if UFC 289 is still an option.