UFC heavyweight Shane Carwin had been training for a return at UFC 141, but he was put on the shelf again when he started suffering some back and leg problems. A scary incident that made him think he was paralyzed for a few seconds led him to get it checked out, and it turns out he will need a second back surgery. Carwin called into lnside MMA last night and gave Bas and Kenny the scoop (transcribed by Zach Arnold of Fight Opinion):
I’ve got a disc that’s pressing into my spinal cord and it’s basically removed all the spinal fluid around the area, so the first time something really happened bad I was doing a seminar and just drilling takedowns and I got taken down and both of my legs froze up and I actually thought I was paralyzed and it lasted about 10 or 15 seconds and I wasn’t able to move. Finally, I was able to recover after that, you know, your spinal cord gets rid of that initial impact. I also noticed that when I started jumping and stuff, I’d get a tremendous amount of pain throughout my legs. So, I’m going to go in and have that done and what they’re going to do is actually drill out the bone in my spine to give that spinal cord some room in there.”
On how long it will take to recover from the surgery:
“I think I’m probably only looking at about 10 weeks with that, similar to the neck injury that I had. … This is the third time my back’s been operated on.”
And his thoughts on the temporary paralysis that day:
“It was tremendously scary. I still remember the guy looking at my eyes when it happened and they got extremely big.”
About the author
