UFC’s Mike Goldberg: Illness, not drug problem, caused UFC 155 absence

The ugly rumors flew all over the internet when UFC announcer Mike Goldberg had to sit out UFC 155. Ariel Helwani was able to get the real story a few days after the event by talking to Goldberg’s near and dear: a nasty combination of illness and the interactions of his asthma medication with the drugs he was prescribed to fight off the infection.

Now that Goldberg is returning to the UFC booth for this Saturday’s UFC on Fox 6: Johnson vs. Dodson, he guested on today’s MMA Hour and nailed the coffin on the ugly rumors.

First up, Helwani asked him point blank if he had a drug problem, “I absolutely do not” was Goldberg’s answer. Then he explained what happened to cause him to miss UFC 155:

“I ended up coming home from Brazil with a virus, an upper respiratory infection, I ended up being hospitalized a couple times for it, just because they were making sure they could get my lungs open,” Goldberg said. “And just the complications of, I’m an asthmatic, I have been since high school, the complications with trying to get proper medications to get this virus out of my body, I’m not the first guy to come back from Brazil not feeling 100 percent, it just kind of spiraled.

“I’ve had throat infections, chest infections I’ve had a head cold, during the 800 NHL games I called, in the 200 or so UFCs or so I’ve done since 1997. So yeah, I’m a prideful guy, I consider myself a fighter as far as my broadcast spot, I want to be in my seat at cageside during UFC 155, but it broke my heart that I wasn’t able to do so. I was kicking and screaming because I wanted to call the fights, I wanted to call the [Junior dos Santos vs. Cain Velasquez] rematch, I wanted to be there for a big show just like every big show I want to be there.

“To put it simply, it was the perfect storm, my immune system was never really able to get back in balance, and then complications came, my voice started to go, and I wasn’t able to get the pre-production done, and I wasn’t able to voice it 100 percent, and I wasn’t able to get it together for UFC 155,” said Goldberg.

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