UFC 133: Phil Davis' injury wasn't enough to keep him out of fight against Rashad Evans

His boss telling him he needed to rest and heal up, however, was.

Despite his knee injury being the catalyst for all the recent madness surrounding the UFC 133 event on Aug. 6 in Philadelphia, Phil Davis hasn't gotten a lot of play amongst media outlets in the past few days. 

That changed today when UFC President Dana White detailed exactly what led to his withdrawal from his scheduled main event fight against Rashad Evans, namely the fact that it wasn't Davis' choice.

No, it was White himself who made the call to put "Mr. Wonderful" on the sidelines due to a "strain or a sprain," to his knee.

This has the rising contender and uber-prospect feeling melancholy but it made no sense to his bossman to throw him into the fire when he wasn't at 100-percent.

"The reality is the kid is hurt," White said on a special conference call. "He's a young guy, he's undefeated, he can't even train in kickboxing for the next couple weeks. He can wrestle to some extent, but ... why would I want to do that to a young, up-and-coming kid? To do that to a young guy who is up and coming, who is undefeated, made no sense."

Surely an understandable position, no? After all, it wasn't like anyone was shedding crocodile tears when news broke that Davis was out and Tito Ortiz or Lyoto Machida might be in, anyway. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Still, it wasn't easy to convince Davis to drop out of the fight.

"Let me tell you this, Phil Davis 100-percent still wanted this fight," White said. "I'm like, 'There's no way, kid. Who is to say you can't kickbox for two and a half weeks,' and in two weeks he starts full training again and totally blows it out and gets hurt? Now he's going to be out for God knows how long and we just lost the main event a week before the fight."

Of course White, the leader of the largest fight promotion in the world today, has the bigger picture in mind at all times and essentially made an executive decision in the best interests of all involved.

An interesting factor in all this, and one largely forgotten, is the fact that Zuffa, the parent company of UFC, extended medical insurance to cover injuries suffered in training.

This led to some speculation that fighters would take advantage of the new system and a rash of injuries would suddenly pop out left and right.

While that's been the case to some extent, it's reassuring to hear that Davis, despite his injury and knowing full well he's covered, wanted to push forward nonetheless.

That's probably why we're hearing such heaping praise from White, who also said that once Davis returns, which shouldn't be long considering surgery will not be necessary, he'll be paired up against another top contender and at the very least, a top 10 guy in the light heavyweight division.

That should cheer him up, right?