Parisyan-Yoshida bout scrapped
The Ultimate Fighting Championship on Friday announced that the scheduled bout between Karo Parisyan and Yoshiyuki Yoshida for Saturday night's UFC 88 in Atlanta has been scrapped.
Little information is known, as the fight was little more than 24 hours away from the bell. The UFC, however, did indicate that a last-minute back injury has forced Parisyan to withdraw.
With such little time left before the fights, no opponent will be called upon as a replacement and the bout will be scrapped entirely. Yoshida will not fight.
UFC 88 will go on as scheduled, minus the Parisyan versus Yoshida bout, with a full slate of nine bouts. It was unclear at the time of publication which bout on the preliminary card would be moved up to replace the Parisyan/Yoshida bout on the pay-per-view broadcast.
Parisyan and Yoshida were present at Thursday's pre-fight press conference. At the time, Parisyan gave no indication of an injury telling MMAWeekly.com that "everything is going good" and he was looking forward to the fight with little wait left to cut.
He did say, "When you come off of a loss, it's very hard to get back at your physical state... but I'm doing okay... a lot of anger built up for me from my last fight, so I'm working everything out on Yoshida, man."
Leading up to this bout, Parisyan had been vocal about his struggles with panic attacks, having one as recently as a month ago when he went traveled to Albuquerque to train at Greg Jackson's camp.
He said that doctors had prescribed Xanax to help him cope with the attacks, but he told MMAWeekly.com recently, "It's the toughest sport in the world. You've got to be able to cope with anything that comes in your path if you want to make it to the top."
There was no indication at the time of publication that Parisyan's struggles with panic attacks had anything to do with his withdrawal from the UFC 88 bout with Yoshida.
Both Parisyan and Yoshida spoke with MMAWeekly.com prior to Parisyan's withdrawal about their planned bout at UFC 88 in Atlanta. Check out their UFC 88 video interviews by clicking on the links below:
