A few weeks out from what was supposed to be arguably the biggest fight of Dustin Poirier’s career, he’ll be sitting on the sideline.

But at least, he said today, being out won’t require surgery. Poirier (24-5 MMA, 16-4 UFC) was supposed to fight Nate Diaz (19-11 MMA, 14-9 UFC) at UFC 230 next month at Madison Square Garden in New York. But a hip injury flared up and forced Poirier to pull out of the fight.

Tonight, Poirier tweeted that he’ll have stem cell injections in his hip next week, and after a reasonably short recovery period he’ll be back to training. (Of course, what that means for a potential rebooking with the elusive Diaz, only time will tell.)

“So here’s what’s up for everybody asking,” Poirier wrote on Twitter. “I do not have to have surgery!! I’m going to stay in LA and get stem cell injections in my hip on Monday. From that point I will have a 3 week recovery. After that I will be able to go back to training 100%.”

Poirier recently told MMAjunkie his fight with Diaz had the potential to be the UFC 230 main event. At the time, the card had no headliner. Eventually, the UFC pulled together a heavyweight title fight between champ Daniel Cormier and Derrick Lewis on short notice.

But at one point, Poirier-Diaz was on the way to a possible headlining spot – before, Poirier said, Diaz started telling the UFC he wanted it to be at a weight other than 155 pounds.

“He kind of negotiated ourselves out of the main event,” Poirier told MMAjunkie. “The UFC offered us the main event, and he kept pushing for a different weight. (The UFC) said, ‘We’ll give you the main event, but it has to be at 155,’ and he kept pushing, and they had to go a different route.”

Diaz said he and Poirier would fight for the inaugural 165-pound title, a weight class the UFC doesn’t currently offer. UFC President Dana White quickly denied that was the case.

Poirier told MMAjunkie earlier this week his hip injury has been there before, but was worse this time around and left him with no choice but to get it checked out. He found he had multiple tears of the labrum in his hip.

“It’s been bothering me, but it’s progressively gotten worse over the training camps and over the years,” he said.

His best option from a downtime standpoint was for the stem cell injections, and that’s what a second opinion confirmed he could have – greatly decreasing his recovery time compared to surgery.

For more on UFC 230, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.