One of the biggest of several letdowns from UFC 149 just a few weeks ago was the debut of former Bellator middleweight champion Hector Lombard. His turgid co-main event fight with Tim Boetsch was pretty much the tipping point of frustration for the Calgary crowd and the PPV audience, and Boetsch took the split decision victory to derail Lombard’s UFC-driven hype. Boetsch pulled off the upset despite suffering a broken foot in the 2nd round, and everyone was left wondering why Lombard fought so poorly and passively. According to Lombard, he sustained two major injuries during training (via MMA Weekly):
“I want to let all my fans know. I fought my last fight injured. I wasnt 100% sure but I went to the doctors, I have a fracture sternum with a torn cartilage,” Lombard wrote on his Facebook page on Wednesday.
“I got this injury in training for my fight with Tim Boetsch. I have to be out of training for 6 weeks, I should never have fought like that, but I didn’t want to let my fans and the UFC down.”
Lombard is the 2nd fighter to say he fought injured on the already injury-riddled UFC 149 card. Cheick Kongo said in his post-fight interview with Ariel Helwani that he was nursing a shoulder injury before facing off against Shawn Jordan in another awful fight.
Unfortunately for Lombard, Dana White was none too pleased with his showing injury or no injury, and he nearly committed career suicide by losing in terribly boring fashion in one of the marquee fights of the evening. Unless he returns to making highlight reel knockouts similar to his Bellator days, Lombard will probably have to move to the back of the line as far as title contention is concerned.
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