LAS VEGAS -- UFC appears to have dodged a bullet Thursday just two days out from UFC 226 as the curse of International Fight Week continues to prove to be a very real thing. 

Light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier tripped and fell awkwardly on a speaker as he stood up from the table following the close of the UFC 226 news conference. The 39-year-old Cormier, who will challenge for Stipe Miocic's heavyweight title this weekend at T-Mobile Arena, then limped backstage.

Neither UFC nor president Dana White have commented publicly on whether Cormier (20-1, 1 NC) was injured in the fall although sources told ESPN's Brett Okamoto that the fight "is not in jeopardy" and that Cormier was upset by the situation. 

Luckily for everyone involved, Cormier appeared to be walking fine when he reappeared onto the stage minutes later at the Pearl at the Palms to face off opposite Miocic (14-2) for cameras. 

The look on White's face, which was white as a ghost, said it all immediately following Cormier's fall as the promotion continues to deal with a series of bizarre events -- both in 2018 as a whole and historically for International Fight Week -- that have robbed UFC of numerous scheduled fights at the last minute. 

Should Cormier still fight on Saturday, it would prevent UFC 226 from becoming an outright disaster, less than one day after featherweight champion Max Holloway was forced to pull out of the co-main event against Brian Ortega due to what was initially reported to be concussion-like symptoms. 

"It's a weird situation," White said. "Some people think it's concussion related and some people think it's weight cutting. According to him he feels fine but obviously he's not fine. There's no way this guy is going to fight anytime soon."

White told media members Thursday that Ortega has been offered an interim title fight on Saturday against top contender Jeremy Stephens but turned it down, preferring to wait for Holloway to return. White then motioned to Ortega's manager, Ed Soares, who was seated in the front row of the news conference and asked whether Ortega's answer of "no" could be swayed into a "maybe." Soares shook his head. 

Holloway's calendar year of tough luck has occurred in concert with that of UFC as he pulled out of a scheduled title defense in February against Frankie Edgar due to a leg injury and was also pulled from the card by doctors in April at UFC 223 when the Hawaiian attempted to make a dramatic weight cut in order to face lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov on just a few days' notice. 

The reason why Nurmagomedov was so direly in need of an opponent was because Tony Ferguson had suffered a freak knee injury when, similar to Cormier, he fell while making a media appearance. UFC 223 only took an even more bizarre turn when Conor McGregor showed up in Brooklyn, New York, unannounced and attacked a bus full of UFC fighters, including Nurmagomedov, which led to four different fights being affected due to injuries when a dolly was thrown through a window. 

If 2018 has become a cursed year for UFC, it has nothing on the lineage of the promotion putting on a big fight card in Las Vegas for the first weekend of July. Since beginning the trend in 2010, the originally scheduled main event or co-main bout has either been cancelled or amended with a replacement opponent.