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Chris Weidman Discusses the Injury That’s Kept Him Sidelined

April 26, 2018 | Posted by Jeffrey Harris

During a recent interview with The MMA Hour this week (via MMAFighting.com), former UFC middleweight champion Chris Weidman discussed an injury issue that’s been keeping him sidelined. Below are some highlights.

Chris Weidman on his current injury after the Kelvin Gastelum fight: “After the fight, I ended up going to the doctor and I found that I needed to get surgery, so I got the surgery. They took a tendon out of my wrist and used that to create a new ligament from my thumb. And they told me it was going to be kind of a quick recovery. It ended up being eight months until I realized that, I guess, during the trauma of the surgery, the bones — when they drilled through the bones, it’s a very one-in-a-million chance, the blood supply didn’t come back to the bones, so the bones were like falling apart. They crushed all the cartilage between the joint, and it was pretty painful for the last eight months as I was trying to train and get through it.”

Weidman on another hip issue and how his current rehab: “At least now I found out there was a problem. … They took my hip bone and they created a new joint, and it’s feeling pretty good. They’re telling me six-to-eight weeks of recovery, so it’s way better than eight months. When I take this [cast] off, I kinda move my thumb around a little bit, it just feels so much better. I was in so much pain for eight months. Every morning I would wake up and try to be hopeful and tell myself it’s feeling better, and then it just wasn’t feeling better. So I’m just happy that there’s a reason for why I was going through all of that pain. There’s no more confusion and I know exactly what’s going on, and I know there’s a light at the end of the tunnel now and it’s not too far away, so we’re good.”

Weidman on his rare injury: “The fact that I was out as long as I was is insane, and the chance of that ever happening is extremely, extremely small, like I said. The surgeons I went to, even for second opinions, they said they’d never seen it before as a doctor, so I got unlucky. And it’s feeling great. I’m very positive and I’ll be back and better than ever.”

article topics :

Chris Weidman, UFC, Jeffrey Harris