UFC's Rory MacDonald suffered neck and back strain in training, out three to four weeks

By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

UFC 158 suffered an unfortunate hit on Monday night when Rory MacDonald was forced out of the March event in Montreal with an injury. According to his manager, Lex McMahon of Alchemist MMA, the injury will keep him out of training for a few weeks of rehab, but he hopes to get back to action soon.

"Unfortunately late last week during a training session, Rory suffered a severe neck and back strain," McMahon said in an interview with MMAFighting.com. "Rory is in a great deal of pain and has a very limited range of motion in his neck. Rory consulted a doctor and was advised that he will need to take three to four weeks off from training while he rehabs the injury."

"Rory is very upset that he will not be able to face Carlos Condit at UFC 158 but is looking forward to getting back to training as soon as possible and fighting the UFC's top competition."

MacDonald was hoping to exact revenge on Condit, who handed him his first and only loss in June of 2010. Unfortunately, he'll have to watch as Condit takes on Johny Hendricks instead on March 16 instead.

Penick's Analysis: It's a really awful setback for MacDonald, and the second time he's suffered a detrimental injury in camp in the last six months. When he suffered his cut late last summer, he vowed to change things up to avoid that happening again. This time, he must have tweaked something, though without details on the incident it's hard to say what caused it. Hopefully he'll be able to heal up quick, but anything with the neck and back needs to be taken seriously, so the most important thing is for him to get healthy regardless of how long that takes.

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Source: http://www.mmatorch.com/artman2/publish/UFC_2/article_15973.shtml

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