Complete leg breaks are, thankfully, a rare occurrence in MMA. However, even the handful we’ve seen feel like far too many.
And the chances of such a traumatic injury happening twice with the same fighter in the cage feels so small, that the fact that’s what happened last night at UFC 261 is especially cruel.
Years after Chris Weidman witnessed Anderson Silva break his leg on a checked leg kick, the identical thing happened to Weidman when his own kick was checked by Uriah Hall. The horrific injury ended the fight and saw a distraught Weidman removed from the cage on a stretcher.
Now our thoughts turn to Weidman’s well-being and health, both in the short and long term (regardless of whether that means a return to competition).
Dr. David Abbasi, an orthopedic surgeon and ringside physician, hopped onto his computer last night to give a detailed breakdown of what happened in the cage. He also explained what measures surgeons will take to repair Weidman’s leg as well what kind of road to recovery Weidman can expect.
You can view the video below:
Weidman’s fight with Hall was ruled a TKO loss, which is really not important given what happened. Weidman headed into the fight coming off a win over Omari Akhmedov. Prior to that Weidman suffered back-to-back KO losses to Dominick Reyes and Ronaldo Souza.
Weidman became the UFC middleweight champion back in 2013 when he knocked out Anderson Silva to end The Spider’s storied title reign. Weidman defended that title in a rematch with Silva a few months later, winning by TKO (thanks to Silva’s leg breaking). He then defended versus Lyoto Machida and Vitor Belfort. He lost his belt in 2015 with a loss to Luke Rockhold.
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