UFC heavyweight champion Fabricio Werdum drew a lot of heat for pulling out of his scheduled title defense for UFC 196 next month, not long after challenger Cain Velasquez begged off due to an injury as well.

If you missed it, Werdum drew criticism for the timing of his pull out when the UFC named Stipe Miocic to replace the injured Velasquez.

Miocic’s manager, Greg Kalikas, lambasted the move by Werdum. Seeing them as too coincidental, Kalikas believed that Werdum was avoiding a match with Miocic and should be stripped of his title.

“If you’re the champion and you’re healthy enough to fight, and you refuse to fight because you don’t like the matchup against any specific opponent, you should be stripped,” Kalikas says via MMAjunkie.

Werdum came out in the open to issue a statement from the backlash, defending his decision and saying that his decision was based on his health and that he opted to forego the fight to work himself back to 100%.

In his statement, he goes on to explain that deciding to pass on fighting Velasquez, Miocic or whoever the UFC pits against him was for the best. He stresses that he does indeed have a back injury and regrets not being able to defend his title.

He singles out the criticism he has been getting as well via MMAfighting.com.

“I’m criticized without suffering a defeat, and I imagined how it would be if I had fought for the fans, for the promotion, for anything and suffered a defeat. But I didn’t suffer a defeat”.

Without question, Werdum was hit hard by the backlash and says that admitting he wasn’t 100% ready was better than gambling on a possible loss and then coming up with excuses in the end since he did claim he was not healthy.

“I imagine (when) Anderson Silva (lost), when Jon Jones had issues with the justice and drugs, when Ronda (Rousey) lost and everyone went all over her. I didn’t even fight, and people were all over me, criticizing me,” says Werdum.

Right now, Miocic and Kalikas find themselves waiting on what the UFC decides on the pull out of Werdum. An idea would be to have an interim fight that Kalikas says is something that Miocic will certainly not be happy about.

Miocic got the push after impressively finishing off Andrei Arlovski back in January at UFC 195. After the win, Miocic went ballistic and let UFC president Dana White know that he wants his title shot.

All that could have been granted against Werdum if not for the untimely injury that forced the Brazilian to pull out from the UFC 196 main event.