(What, this??No, it’s not sparring; it’s physiotherapy.)

When Marcus Aurelio dropped out of SHINE Fights’ lightweight grand prix with an elbow injury less than a day after it was announced that all fighters who competed on the unsanctioned card would receive between 60 and 90-day suspensions that would be enforced by all of the membership bodies governed by the Association of Boxing Commissions (ABC), a lot of MMA fans and pundits (including this one) called bullshit.

It appears we were all right.

Less than two weeks after pulling out of SHINE’s 155-pound single-night tournament, Aurelio says his arm has has recovered enough to let Shinya Aoki try to rip it off Saturday night at DREAM 16 in Nagoya, Japan.

"I was doing everything right, so my arm is back," Aurelio told MMAjunkie.



The problem is, Aurelio is under exclusive contract with SHINE and has not received permission to fight for DREAM, which is a stipulation of his contract with the upstart promotion.

According to SHINE COO, Jason Chambers, Aurelio’s camp hasn’t contacted him to get the okay to fight in Japan, or to convince him that the widely accepted theory that the Brazilian faked the injury is untrue.

"After the [Sept. 10] event, I haven’t had a chance to discuss that yet. Contractually, when he signed for our tournament, he has the ability to fight anywhere, as long as its with our approval. We have to discuss whether or not this elbow injury was something that was facilitated to pull out of the tournament or whether it’s a legitimate elbow injury. My personal feeling is that if he is genuinely injured and he couldn’t fight, then that’s fine. If he has this injury as a way to get out of doing the tournament because he wants a different situation, I’m not OK with that ethically or contractually."

Note to Marcus: Say the injury was real and that a little glucosamine, some ibuprofen and an ice bath made you right as rain.

I wish all of my bosses over the years were as accepting of my word and outlandish excuses. It would have been much easier to take my birthday off every year if they had been.