Powell lays out in gruesome detail what having your ballsack destroyed during training feels like.
Out of all the potential horrific injuries you can receive while fighting or even training MMA, rupturing your ballsack is definitely one of the most terrifying. There’s no shortage of cautionary tales regarding that kind of thing, but none has been relayed to us in such glorious detail as UFC lightweight Devin Powell’s story.
Powell was training jiu jitsu with fellow UFC fighter Joe Lauzon back in February when the incident occured.
“It’s a very normal jiu-jitsu situation from half guard,” he said on the latest edition of The MMA Hour (transcribed by Peter Carroll). “The leg comes and tries to cut through to pass. [Lauzon] tried to go up and straight through, but it was kind of like the testicle was sandwiched between the pelvic bone and then the knee came and just crushed it.”
“When the impact happened — there’s basically the sack and the two balls in there and they have their own little sacks — one of (the testicles) smashed. Most of the contents of the testicle exploded to the outside. They basically had to take all the contents and stuff it back inside its sack. They stitched it shut and then they had to super glue the sack shut on the outside.”
Even though Powell is covered under the UFC health insurance policy, his initial attempt to have his balls looked at resulted in rejection.
“We went to a walk-in clinic,” he said. “The amazing thing with the UFC is if you have a training injury, they’ll take care of it. But this place shooed me away. ‘You don’t have traditional insurance so you can kick rocks.’ So I went and got a few adult drinks and tried to sleep it off for a day and a half. Everybody was messaging me like, ‘Dude, you’ve got to be seen,’ and I was like ‘Yeah, right, I’m gonna limp down from my attic bed and be seen.’”
After two days of feeling like a unicorn had stabbed him through the dick, Powell finally got the injury looked at. And a week later, he’s already back to training … but with one key difference.
”I’ll never train without a cup again.”