Exactly 24 hours after finding out he had been pulled from UFC 205, “Suga” Rashad Evans emerged from his hotel room around five o’clock on Wednesday night for the first time. The former light heavyweight champion had been holed up in the room all day, with his friend Tyrone Spong, a professional boxer, keeping him company. The two sat side by side, on their phones, in silence for most of the day.
“I didn’t really wanna talk to anybody,” he told me, in his first one-on-one, in person interview since receiving the news. “Today was my day to kinda lick my wounds and feel sorry for myself, but I’m over that now.