Adrian Yanez is officially out of UFC 334. The bantamweight confirmed Monday morning that he won’t face Juan Diaz at Madison Square Garden on November 14. He did it by posting a photo of himself lying in a hospital bed to his Instagram Story, Bloody Elbow reported.
Word of his exit first surfaced Sunday, when Bloody Elbow reported that Yanez had fallen off the card headlined by Ciryl Gane vs. Josh Hokit. Monday’s post turned that report into a confirmation from the man himself, and he delivered it with a crying-laughing emoji attached.
“Starting off the week strong,” Yanez wrote. He added, “Humor is my way of coping.”
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Then came the part that stings for anyone who’s watched him build a following. “Really wanted to fight at MSG, the history there and I wanted to be a part of it.”
He signed off with a promise: “I’ll be back soon tho. Lord willing.”
What put the 32-year-old in the hospital hasn’t been disclosed. Yanez didn’t say in his post, and the reporting so far doesn’t either, so anything beyond the fact of the hospitalization is guesswork right now.
Where this leaves Diaz and the card
Juan Diaz is expected to stay on the card against an opponent the UFC hasn’t named yet. Once he’s rebooked, the event goes back to 12 fights, and on paper it’s a stacked night in New York.
Gane vs. Hokit sits on top. Kayla Harrison vs. Amanda Nunes is the title fight underneath it, and Bloody Elbow reported that Harrison is already deep into a 35-pound weight cut with a month to go. The rest of the lineup runs through Caio Borralho vs. Yousri Belgaroui, Uros Medic vs. Kevin Holland, Stephen Thompson vs. Charles Radtke, Drew Dober vs. Chris Duncan and Jim Miller vs. Terrance McKinney. Bilal Hasan vs. Luis Gurule, Donte Johnson vs. Baisangur Susurkaev, Macy Chiasson vs. Bia Mesquita and Nazim Sadykhov vs. Jefferson Nascimento fill out the remaining spots.
That’s a lot of action, but losing Yanez still takes a bite out of the undercard. Fan favorites at bantamweight are the guys who turn a prelim slot into the fight people text each other about, and he clearly wanted the Garden badly. I respect how he handled it, too. He gave fans a picture, a joke and a plain statement that he’s coming back, which beats a vague “injury” line from a manager.
The pressure now shifts to the matchmakers. Diaz did nothing wrong here, and he deserves a real opponent in a real fight, with less than four weeks left before the November 14 walkouts.
