Featherweight contender Josh Emmett amazingly beat fellow contender Shane Burgos over three rounds at UFC on ESPN 11 despite the fact he suffered a list of catastrophic injuries early in the fight including a torn ACL. Just 15 seconds were on the clock when Emmett hyperextended his leg and he immediately knew something was terribly wrong.
“I had everything dialed in,” Emmett told MMA Fighting. “Biggest fight of my career to date. It was on ESPN. Everyone around the world was watching it and the first 15 seconds, I stepped wrong. I did it to myself. I hyperextended my knee. I’ve never experienced anything like that. I just had no stability. I can’t even describe the pain. It hurt like hell.”
“Every time I would step on it, it would buckle,” Emmett said. “It would give out. I think most people would have quit or I think they would have looked for a way out. I worked too hard for that. I was just like screw this.
“Fourteen and a half more minutes, I just had to bite down on the mouthpiece and adjust my game plan, basically everything right there, just bite down and throw bombs and just throw the kitchen sink at him.”
Emmett was initially critical of his performance post-fight but has since cut him self some slack, he now happier with how the fight played out, he explained.
“I’m definitely happy with the outcome. I was just tough on myself because I was going to show so much more of my game. I’m always going in there and just striking. I was going to mix up a lot of things. I was going to go in there and completely out class him and make it look easy.
“I suffered that [knee injury] and I just had to slug it out. I was more just pissed about the knee honestly but it was a great accomplishment over a tough opponent.”
“Instead of me just going in there and knocking him out, I am glad the way it went down,” Emmett said. “Because I just had to battle through that [injury] and we put on a great performance. Everyone’s talking about it.”
Who should Josh Emmett face next once his knee injury heals?