Dana White says Anderson Silva was ‘violently ill,' explains dropout from UFC 198

The injury bug hit UFC 198 in a major way on Tuesday, as former UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva withdrew from his pay-per-view bout against Uriah Hall just days out from fight night after experiencing problems with his gall bladder.

Silva ultimately underwent surgery to remove his gall bladder, and on Wednesday morning UFC president Dana White appeared on The Kevin & Bean Show to explain the chain of events that led to Silva's illness.

"So what's crazy is, we have a show called UFC Embedded, and it's on YouTube that you can go watch leading up to the fight. It shows you day-by-day, real-time what's happening with all the fighters," White said. "We literally put one yesterday with Anderson that's awesome. Him training and how pumped he is to be fighting in Curitiba, him hometown.

"Then late in the afternoon yesterday, we get the call he's violently ill, he's throwing up and everything else. So we send him to a hospital. Then they release him, they he gets home and he's just so sick, we send him to another hospital. A totally different hospital. Ends up, this morning at 7:30, he went in for surgery. He had a problem with his gall bladder. I don't know if they removed it or what they did, but he was in surgery for almost two hours. It's crazy."

The UFC attempted to find a replacement opponent for Hall, however the two sides were unable to come to terms and Hall was pulled from the card as well, forcing a welterweight match-up between Warlley Alves and Bryan Barberena to be bumped up onto the pay-per-view main card.

UFC 198 takes place May 14 at the Arena da Baixada soccer stadium in Curitiba, Brazil.

Even with Silva's exit, the card's top-to-bottom lineup remains a stacked one, although White knows that nothing is guaranteed until the fighters are in the cage on Saturday night.

"This business is nuts," White said. "The injuries, the last thing, I have so many disruptors that just disrupt my day and take me away from what I'm supposed to be working on."