It was certainly a disheartening moment for UFC welterweight Duane ‘Bang’ Ludwig (21-14) on Saturday night when he injured his knee minutes into his bout with Che Mills in Nottingham, England as part of the UFC on FUEL TV 5 card.
Not only was Ludwig forced to throw in the towel, but it was also his third straight loss in a row, following a knockout defeat at the hands of Dan Hardy and a technical submission loss to Josh Neer.
Ludwig still doesn’t know how bad the injury is and will undergo an MRI today to determine the extent of the damage.
‘Bang’ took a few moments to speak with Stephie Daniels of BloodyElbow.com about the current state of his injury and what exactly happened against Mills.
Stephie Daniels: First off, how are you feeling and how is the knee?
Duane Ludwig: The knee is jacked up. It’s swollen up pretty bad. It looks like a big ball right now. I go for an MRI tomorrow at 2:30, so I’m just laying around, relaxing.
Stephie Daniels: What exactly happened in the fight to cause the injury, and when did it happen? Were you already injured going into the fight?Duane Ludwig: I was not injured at all going into this fight. It was when we first tied up, and he did the outside trip. I felt my knee pop. It snapped right away, and I kind of yelped on the way down. When I was trying to get guard, I could just feel my knee moving around. There wasn’t much I could do other than roll around and try to minimalize the pain. I tried to get him a couple times, but I could feel my knee sliding a lot more than it was, so I was like. ‘F*ck, I gotta figure this out’, and I finally just decided that I couldn’t do anything, so I pulled the plug. It happened in the first 10 seconds of the fight.