(“And for my next trick, I will pull a horseshoe out of Joe Rogan’s ass and beat him over the head with it!” Photo via Getty.)
I don’t mean to jinx things, but 2014 is rapidly approaching 2012 as the year of the injury curse. So far, 2014 has been the year that put the final nail in Dominick Cruz’s coffin, saw Anderson Silva do a full-on Corey Hill, and took out Cain Velasquez for the foreseeable future. Oh yes, and let us not forget that GSP vacated his title this year, and that we won’t be seeing Anthony Pettis in action until December 27th*. No, fuck you, 2014.
Even our newly-minted, young-gun champions, Chris Weidman and Johny Hendricks, have been bitten by the injury bug recently, going down with a knee injury and torn bicep/fractured shin, respectively. Honestly, it makes one consider whether fighting for tens of thousands of hundreds of dollars is really worth spending the majority of your prime years battling injuries that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix, but I digress.
Amidst all the black clouds currently hovering over the MMA landscape, however is a silver lining. Following successful bicep surgery, Hendricks has already set a timetable for his return, telling The MMA Hour that he is hoping for a 4 to 8 week rehabilitation period before he can resume training.
Hendricks’ manager, Ted Ehrhardt, was also kind enough to post photos of Hendricks’ bicep tendon and ligament before and after surger-OH MY GOD.
Before:
After:
Hey, at least some negligent doctor didn’t burn him with a surgical lighthead, amiright? *vomits*
In slightly more uplifting news, middleweight champ Chris Weidman is expected to undergo “minor” left knee surgery to repair the torn meniscus that forced him out of his UFC 173 fight with Lyoto Machida. This is according to Weidman’s coach, Ray Longo, who informed Fox Sports that Weidman will additionally have some repairs done on his right knee to remedy some lingering issues there. Considering Weidman’s last return from surgery resulted in the greatest upset of all time, Machida might as well start readying himself for a drop to welterweight. Dude will be a monster.
“Chris really needs to be healthy for this fight,” said Longo to FOX Sports. “Whatever he was doing outside of the knee was looking good. His weight was phenomenal. He just needs to address this now. It’s something he can’t risk happening in a fight.”
Speaking of which, Carlos Condit is set to go under the knife tomorrow night to repair the torn meniscus and ACL he suffered in his fight with Tyron Woodley at UFC 171. His return date is still up in the air, although if we are to use the recovery timetable of Conor McGregor as a barometer, we could see Condit back in action by early 2015. So hooray for that.
*Of course, being that Pettis has landed a TUF coaching gig, that date will be pushed back to May of 2015 at the minimum after he inevitably injures himself again.