The Bellator season ten welterweight tournament will begin next week at Bellator 112 and Jon “War Machine” Koppenhaver has been forced to pull out of the tournament following a back injury.
War Machine tweeted on Friday that he was out of the tournament due to an injury he suffered in a car accident this week and Bellator MMA Chairman and CEO Bjorn Rebney confirmed the news to TheMMAReport.com following Bellator 111.
“I got that call a few days back that he had been in the accident, but he did not know the extent of the injuries,” Rebney said. “Apparently it’s a slipped disc and there is nothing he can do. He can not even fell his left leg. He was texting me today and he was like ‘dude, I physically can’t feel my foot.’ So he said that I’m out. It just sucks because he had a good camp and he wanted to get back in and kind of prove the doubters wrong based on getting submitted in his last fight unexpectedly. He is out. There is nothing you can do.”
Over the last 24 hours, it has been speculated that Paul Bradley will be taking the spot of War Machine in this tournament. He even tweeted today that Bradley would be taking his place, but Rebney stated that the final decision on who will take War Machine has not been made yet.
“Those final decision have not been made yet. We may have to do some juggling because of how we set our tournaments up one through eight. But there will be some juggling going on over the next few days and we will probably make an announcements if not late tomorrow, surely Monday.”
The current welterweight tournament bracket is below and stay tuned to TheMMAReport.com to see who will be taking the spot of War Machine.
