No. 1-ranked flyweight contender, Brandon Royval, withdrew from his Manel Kape main event, previously scheduled for the UFC Vegas 103 card on Sat., March 1, 2025 inside the promotion’s APEX facility in Las Vegas, Nevada.
So what happened?
“Maybe a couple months back, I had a concussion,” Royval said on YouTube. “Nothing too crazy; I was just playing it safe, playing it smart. A couple weeks later, when I recovered, I accepted this fight, which was awesome. [I wanted to] fight Manel Kape. I respect his skills, I respect him as a striker and all that. I was training hard for this fight, and being a little reckless and being kind of in the zone for camp, I got another concussion. This one was severely worse.”
UFC Vegas 103 will now be headlined by Manel Kape vs. Asu Almabayev.
“It’s been over a week at this point, and I’m still dealing with the repercussions of it and the symptoms of a bad concussion,” Royval continued. “And because of that reason and because of the reasoning of adding a weight cut, Manel Kape being a good striker, and this being a predominantly striking match that we felt this would be the safest move. Take some time, recover, recover the right way this time, and fight at a later date. Fight when I can fully train, fully take a punch, and give you guys the best of my ability.”
The red-hot Royval (17-7) is coming off back-to-back victories over Brandon Moreno and Tatsuro Taira, pushing “Raw Dawg” to 5-1 across his last six. Whether or not he gets the winner of Kape vs. Almabayev later this year remains to be seen.
