Former women\u2019s bantamweight champion Raquel Pennington has been forced out of her scheduled matchup against Norma Dumont at Noche UFC 3 scheduled on Sept. 13 in San Antonio.<\/p>\n
Pennington revealed the unfortunate news in a post on Instagram late Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis one\u2019s hard to say\u2026I\u2019ve been with the UFC for 12 years, 26 fights, and I\u2019ve never had to pull out of a fight,\u201d Pennington wrote. \u201cMost of you know I\u2019ve been dealing with a neck injury for a while now. My last fight camp, I had a procedure in September just to get through it and step in that Octagon the beginning of October. This camp\u2026 it\u2019s just been one thing after another.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a competitor through and through, but I also have to take care of my health if I want to keep doing this the right way. So yeah\u2026 I\u2019m gutted to say I have to withdraw from this fight. Apologies to the fans, UFC and my opponent Norma Dumont. I\u2019ll be back, and I still would love to share that Octagon with Norma when the time\u2019s right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pennington didn\u2019t explain the exact injury she suffered or how long she\u2019s expected to remain out of action.<\/p>\n
The news comes with Pennington already out of action for nearly a year with her most recent appearance coming in October 2024 when she lost a close decision to Julianna Pena in a fight that cost her the UFC women\u2019s bantamweight title.<\/p>\n
Prior to that setback, Pennington had rattled off six straight wins including her victory over Mayra Bueno Silva to claim the vacant title after Amanda Nunes retired.<\/p>\n
Now it appears Pennington will have to wait until an even later date to make her return to action.<\/p>\n
As for Dumont, it\u2019s also tough news for her as she was seeking the biggest opportunity of her career with a chance to potentially earn a title shot of her own with a win. Dumont has won five fights in a row with an 8-1 resume in her past nine outings as she continued to climb the rankings.<\/p>\n
With Pennington out, Dumont has to hope the UFC can find her a suitable replacement as she\u2019s also been out of action for nearly a year.<\/p>\n
The upcoming Noche UFC 3 card is headlined by a featherweight showdown as one-time title challenger Diego Lopes takes on rising star Jean Silva in a five-round fight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former women\u2019s bantamweight champion Raquel Pennington has been forced out of her scheduled matchup against Norma Dumont at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":{"0":"post-49957","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}