{"id":832317,"date":"2025-03-07T13:12:02","date_gmt":"2025-03-07T19:12:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/07\/brandon-royval-opens-up-on-troubling-reason-for-ufc-fight-night-253-withdrawal\/"},"modified":"2025-03-07T13:12:02","modified_gmt":"2025-03-07T19:12:02","slug":"brandon-royval-opens-up-on-troubling-reason-for-ufc-fight-night-253-withdrawal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/07\/brandon-royval-opens-up-on-troubling-reason-for-ufc-fight-night-253-withdrawal\/","title":{"rendered":"Brandon Royval opens up on troubling reason for UFC Fight Night 253 withdrawal"},"content":{"rendered":"
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February 11, 2025 9:20 pm ET<\/span>\n\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/header>\n

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Former UFC title challenger Brandon Royval<\/a> had to put his health first when deciding not to compete again.<\/p>\n

Last week, Royval (17-7 MMA, 7-3 UFC) announced<\/a> that he had to pull out of his UFC Fight Night 253 flyweight headliner against Manel Kape (20-7 MMA, 6-3 UFC) on March 1 at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

Royval now has opened up on why he withdrew, revealing that back-to-back concussions forced him to take a step back.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe a couple months back, I had a concussion,\u201d Royval said on his YouTube channel<\/a>. \u201cNothing too crazy. I was just playing it safe, playing it smart. A couple weeks later, when I was recovered, I accepted this fight, which was awesome. Fight Manel Kape. I respect his skills, I respect him as a striker and all that. I was training hard for this fight, and being a little reckless and being kind of in the zone for camp, I got another concussion. This one was severely worse.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been over a week at this point, and I\u2019m still dealing with the repercussions of it and the symptoms of a bad concussion. And because of that reason and because of the reasoning of adding a weight cut, Manel Kape being a good striker, and this being a predominantly striking match that we felt this would be the safest move. Take some time, recover, recover the right way this time, and fight at a later date. Fight when I can fully train, fully take a punch, and give you guys the best of my ability.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kape will now face Asu Almabayev instead. After falling short against flyweight champion Alexandre Pantoja at UFC 296, Royval rebounded with back-to-back main event wins over Brandon Moreno and formerly unbeaten Tatsuro Taira.<\/p>\n

For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie\u2019s event hub for\u00a0UFC Fight Night 253<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Be sure to visit the MMA Junkie Instagram<\/a> page and YouTube<\/a> channel to discuss this and more content with fans of mixed martial arts.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

February 11, 2025 9:20 pm ET Former UFC title challenger Brandon Royval had to put his health first when deciding not to compete again. Last week, Royval (17-7 MMA, 7-3 UFC) announced that he had to pull out of his UFC Fight Night 253 flyweight headliner against Manel Kape (20-7 MMA, 6-3 UFC) on March<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":832318,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1227,121775],"tags":[7344,142284],"class_list":{"0":"post-832317","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brandon","8":"category-royval","9":"tag-brandon","10":"tag-royval"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=832317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/832318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=832317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=832317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=832317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}