After recent news broke that Vergil Ortiz has withdrawn from this weekend’s scheduled fight against Michael McKinson, Ortiz took to social media to explain to the public exactly what caused this unfortunate turn of events.
“First and foremost I am very sorry and disappointed to not be fighting this Saturday,” Ortiz wrote. “Camp was going great, I was doing good in sparring and training in general. But for the last 2 weeks I didn’t feel like myself. I just felt like my body was deteriorating and I didn’t know why and it was frustrating. Being the fighter that I am I tried toughing it out, but when it’s your own body fighting against you there’s little you can do.
“Luckily my dad was able to tell I was right and took me to the doctor. We ran some test and the doctor concluded that I had Rhabdomyloysis. I was hospitalized yesterday and had to stay overnight. It could’ve been a lot worse and I’m thankful that we caught it on time. I am very sorry if I left you guys down believe me if there was a hair of a chance of me fighting, I would be.”
While I’m not a medical doctor myself nor familiar with this diagnosis, a quick WebMD search reveals that Rhabdomyloysis is a quite serious condition caused by either direct or indirect muscle injury that causes the death of their fibers and the consequent release of their contents into an individual’s bloodstream. This can lead to damage to the kidneys with a worst case scenario of death — yet if found and treated promptly it usually doesn’t have severe or lasting consequences.
Rhabdomloysis can be a result of a wide-ranging number of factors from long-lasting muscle compression, physical trauma, drug usage, to extreme muscle strain, so while I won’t even pretend to know the exact root cause, I’d imagine the latter being the most likely given what we know at this time. Either way we extend our best wishes and a speedy recovery to Ortiz.