Rashad Evans is just glad to be allowed to compete again.
The former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) light heavyweight title holder was supposed to meet Tim Kennedy at the historic UFC 205 card inside Madison Square Garden in New York City. Evans was pulled from the event due to irregularities in his brain MRI scan.
Evans’ bout with Kennedy was rescheduled for UFC 206. That bout was once again shelved. The Ontario Commission didn’t clear “Suga” for the same reason the New York State Athletic Commission (NYSAC) didn’t.
Finally, Evans has been licensed to fight at UFC 209 against Daniel Kelly in Las Vegas, Nevada next Saturday night (March 4). Speaking with FOX Sports, Evans expressed his gratitude for being able to fight again:
“I never felt so much at the mercy of the other people in my whole life and it’s a very humbling thing. I trained so hard and I put the work in and I did everything I could do on my end but then I had to sit back and be told that I can’t fight. Then I was told that I may never fight again. It was hard to deal with. For the last 14 years or so, I’ve been a fighter for so long I kind of forgot what it’s like to not have this as my biggest form of expression of who I am.”
Before being cleared to compete, Evans feared that his professional mixed martial arts (MMA) career was coming to an end.
“For a brief second I was like it may be over and I was in denial for a long time. Even when they told me I couldn’t fight in New York, I was waiting for them to be like ‘oh we’re just kidding.’ I couldn’t believe that it was actually going down that I was not going to fight. That it was not clearing up. I was in denial for a while. Then I got the chance to fight in Toronto and then it happened in Toronto where they didn’t even give me a second look. They were like ‘New York said no so we’re saying no’. It was a helpless feeling.”
