Bo Nickal says a physical problem he has been carrying for a long time is the reason his middleweight fight with Joe Pyfer got pushed back. He also admits he didn’t see the matchup coming when the UFC offered it.
Nickal laid out the injury explanation in an interview covered by MiddleEasy on Monday. Ariel Helwani flagged a second part of the same conversation on X. According to Helwani, Nickal said he was surprised the UFC put Pyfer in front of him but took the fight gladly, and there’s something about the matchup he particularly likes. Neither report spells out what the injury is. Neither says exactly which stylistic detail has Nickal so pleased. So we know he’s hurt, or was, and we know he’s happy. That’s the extent of it for now.
How we got here
The fight was originally slotted for UFC 335. Nickal himself announced last Friday that it was off that card and would instead headline a UFC Cleveland event in February, as Spinnin Backfist relayed on X. Pyfer fired back the same day. Nickal’s comments this week are his first real accounting of why the date moved, and MiddleEasy reports he also responded to personal remarks Pyfer had made about him. The content of those remarks hasn’t been detailed in the reporting so far, so I’m not going to guess at it.
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Nickal’s last appearance was a stoppage of Kyle Daukaus this past summer at UFC Freedom 250, the card held at the White House. Daukaus was booked against Marc-Andre Barriault at UFC Edmonton on Oct. 17, still trying to shake off the Nickal loss.
Pyfer, meanwhile, has been keeping busy with his mouth and on the wrestling mats. He sits at No. 17 in the inaugural RAF crossover pound-for-pound rankings released Monday. That list is topped by Colby Covington and also features Henry Cejudo, Arman Tsarukyan and Khamzat Chimaev. Over the weekend Pyfer also weighed in on Nassourdine Imavov trailing Sean Strickland around. He called the antics a bit ridiculous, and he had a blunt message for Imavov on Strickland’s behalf: “brother, he’s not afraid of you. He already beat you.” Pyfer doesn’t do subtle, which is part of why this booking works.
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What’s next
The target now is February in Cleveland, with Nickal vs. Pyfer as the main event. That’s a long runway for two guys who clearly don’t mind talking. It’s also plenty of time for Nickal’s body to cooperate, or not. A “long-running” physical problem is the kind of phrase that makes matchmakers keep a backup on speed dial.
My take: I respect a fighter who says out loud that he was surprised by the offer and signed anyway. Most guys pretend they called the shot. Nickal admitting the booking caught him off guard, then saying he likes the stylistic picture, is about as straight an answer as you get on fight week, months early. Now he has to show up healthy in February and tell us what he meant with his hands. I’d also like to see Pyfer get the first clean shot at whatever he said that got under Nickal’s skin, because a headliner with real grievance on both sides beats a headliner built on a cryptic emoji every time.
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