Mike Florio suffered a terrible leg injury in his recent bout with Jim Elmer for Tuff-N-Uff. The injury occurred when Elmer executed a take down. The images of the injury were captured by Tracy Lee, and can be seen here on MMAJunkie.com. Tracy also posted a couple of the pictures on Twitter (Warning: very graphic content.)
Florio apparently suffered a compound fracture dislocation of the left ankle, and underwent surgical repair on Saturday. The Tuff-N-Uff organization issued an update via Twitter.
Given the gruesome nature of this injury, I suspect that the 4-6 weeks cited in this tweet refers to the minimum amount of time before he can bear weight on the leg. His rehabilitation will obviously take much, much longer before he is ready to return to the cage. Furthermore, I think there is at least the possibility of injury to his knee as well. The pictures of the take down show his lower left leg in a position of external (outside) rotation while his foot is planted, just before the fracture occurred, with Elmer’s full weight bearing down on him. This could have caused injury to one of the menisci of the knee, or possibly the medial collateral ligament. However, the fact that the force of the take down ultimately was dispersed at the ankle may have saved the knee from injury. That would be a small consolation in light of the serious nature of the fracture.
This was Florio’s second bout for the Tuff-N-Uff organization.