Brock Lesnar Pulls out of UFC 106

Brock Lesnar is so sick that he cannot train, and as a result he has ruled himself out of his November 21 fight at UFC 106, where he would have been defending his heavyweight title against undefeated Shane Carwin.

Lesnar has "never been this sick in his life," according to UFC president Dana White, who at the same insists he does not have the H1N1 virus.

The event had reportedly been suffering from low ticket sales, but even though dragging box office numbers have led to fighter "cancellations" on the part of other mixed martial arts organizations in the past (in order to reduce purse expenditures), there is no evidence to suggest that was the motivation behind this particular pullout.

The UFC had a pullout to deal with prior to this, as Mark Coleman, who was slated to fight Tito Ortiz, was forced to cancel. However, White went and got Forrest Griffin to take his place, which was a smart thing because it not only upgraded that fight in terms of substance and drawing power, it also elevated it to the point where it could conceivably fill in as the main event if need be.

That's quite possibly what might happen.

The UFC is faced with the prospect of putting Carwin in the Octagon with someone else, or scrapping the fight entirely. There have been some names put forward as possibilities for Carwin, although clearly he was not the draw in the fight. Cain Velasquez is coming off a big second-round TKO win at UFC 105 over Ben Rothwell. A fight between him and Carwin is actually what had been originally scheduled for UFC 105, before Carwin was booked with Lesnar. The UFC could bill it as a "battle of the up-and-comers" (or something like that) with the winner emerging as the heir apparent to the status of #1 contender, although this would be a quick turnaround for Velasquez.

Another heavyweight prospect who could be in this mix is Junior Dos Santos, the 25-year-old who scored such a big victory at UFC 103 when he forced a submission from Mirko Cro Cop. Dos Santos has only ten professional fights, and is 3-0 in the UFC, and it looms as a possibility that he will be matched with Gabriel Gonzaga at UFC 108. Gonzaga himself wouldn't be a possibility, since he was knocked out in one round by Carwin back in March.

Andrei Arlovski has been stopped in the first round in two straight fights. Frank Mir was beaten by Lesnar, and I'm not sure a rubber match with Lesnar (should be beat Carwin) would be high on the UFC's list of priorities. Minotauro Nogueira has probably earned himself an opportunity to fight for a title, based on the win over Randy Couture, but he's so experienced that I would be hesitant if I was Carwin's management to put my man in with him, if it didn't mean more and I wasn't getting a huge bump in pay.

In fact, if I was Carwin, I'd frankly be hesitant to fight at all. Why should I, if I was already booked into a title shot? Why would I consent to having to fight again to get the title shot that I had already signed for? Why wouldn't I just wait until Lesnar got well? Everyone knows that if Carwin lost to a substitute opponent, he'd have to go to the back of the line because he could never be sold against Lesnar.