UNCASVILLE, Conn. — Bellator 249 was thrown a late curveball on Thursday night when co-headliner Patricky Freire was pulled from his fight.

Freire (23-9 MMA, 14-7 BMMA) was slated to fight Jaleel Willis in the co-feature lightweight bout at Mohegan Sun Arena, but word broke toward the end of the evening’s preliminary card that Freire was not cleared by the physician for the Mohegan Tribal Athletic Commission over what was termed an undisclosed medical issue.

Bellator officials told MMA Junkie that both competitors will still be compensated for their fight.

The dropout means that a scheduled heavyweight preliminary bout between Steve Mowry and Shawn Teed will bump up to the main card, which will be headlined by Cris Cyborg’s featherweight title defense against Arlene Blencowe.

Mohegan Sun commission head Mike Mazzulli makes a statement on @PatrickyPitbull‘s removal from tonight’s #Bellator249 co-main event vs. Jaleel Willis.

Full story: https://t.co/ivqZCU0mWb pic.twitter.com/w6pYZlJLC8

— MMA Junkie (@MMAjunkie) October 16, 2020

“Patricky Freire was removed from the card this evening for an illness unrelated to COVID and/or weight cut,” commission head Mike Mazzulli said. “For the safety of the fight we felt it was necessary to remove him. He’s doing well, but he will not be fighting tonight.”

UPDATE: Freire posted about his situation on Instagram:

View this post on Instagram

(Texto em português no meio do post) Hi everyone, I know you were all looking forward to see my brother fight, but me and our trainers decided to cancel it after noticing he was unwell. Patricky is suffering from a crisis of labyrinthitis (strong type of vertigo). I caught him in his room a bit dizzy right when we were going to leave to the arena. He wanted to fight and didn’t want to tell us. We gave him the benefit of the doubt, but he didn’t get better when we got to the locker room and we cancelled the fight. He was seen by 2 commission doctors, has been medicated and is medically well now, but devastated with the cancellation. He’s had this before, but never on fight week or even fight day. Unfortunately this happened now. He’ll go see more doctors and when we’re sure it’s under control we’ll talk about his next fight. Fala galera, eu sei que todos queriam ver meu irmão lutar, mas eu e nossos treinadores decidimos cancelar a luta após notar que ele não estava bem. Patricky está sofrendo de uma crise de labirintite. Eu o encontrei no quarto um pouco tonto quando íamos sair pra arena. Ele queria lutar e não quis contar pra gente. Nós demos a ele o benefício da dúvida, mas ele não melhorou quando chegamos no vestiário e cancelamos a luta. Ele foi visto por 2 médicos da comissão, foi medicado, e está fisicamente bem, mas muito triste com o cancelamento. Ele já teve isso antes, mas nunca em semana de luta. Infelizmente aconteceu agora. Ele verá mais médicos e quando tivermos certeza que está tudo sob controle falaremos sobre a próxima luta.

A post shared by Patricio Freire Official (@patriciopitbull) on Oct 15, 2020 at 6:53pm PDT