Dr. David Abbasi explained what happened to Chris Wediman at UFC 261 and that the former champion can move on.
Fortunately, complete leg fractures are rare in MMA. However, even the handful we’ve seen seems too big.
And the likelihood of such an injury happening twice to the same fighter in the cage is so small that what happened last night is particularly brutal.
Years after Chris Weidman witnessed Anderson Silva break his leg after kicking the cage, the same thing happened to Weidman when his own kick was stopped by Uriah Hall. The horrific injury ended in a fight, and a distraught Weidman was taken out of the cage on a stretcher.
Our thoughts now turn to Weidman’s well-being and health in both the short and long term (whether or not this means a return to competition).
Dr. David Abbasi, an orthopedic surgeon and ringside physician, tapped into his computer last night to give a detailed account of what happened in the cage. He also explained what steps surgeons will take to restore Weidman’s leg, as well as what path to recovery Weidman can expect.
You can watch the video below:
Weidman’s fight with Hall was declared a loss by technical knockout, which is not really important, given what happened. Weidman entered the fight, defeating Omari Akhmedov. Before that, Weidman suffered a knockout defeat from Dominick Reyes and Ronaldo Sousa.
Weidman became the UFC middleweight champion back in 2013, when he knocked out Anderson Silva and put an end to the legendary Spider championship. A few months later, Weidman defended the title in a rematch with Silva, winning by technical knockout (thanks to a broken leg of Silva). He then defended against Lyoto Machida and Vitor Belfort. He lost the belt in 2015, losing to Luke Rockhold.