In one final outburst of senseless violence, the UFC 149 Injury Curse claimed multiple victims on fight night, before receding back to the haunted ground that spawned it. We already mentioned that Tim Boetsch broke his foot during the second round of his fight against Hector Lombard, and yesterday Urijah Faber confirmed that he broke a rib during his main event meeting with Renan Barao. The California Kid tweeted out the x-ray above, writing “Congrats 2 @RenanBaraoUFC. He’s a tough dude. Broke my rib in the 1st with a great knee. Thank u 4 all the support.”
So if you were wondering why Boetsch wasn’t quite as active as you expected him to be on Saturday, or why Faber consistently looked a half-step behind his Brazilian opponent, blame the broken bones. And if you were wondering why Cheick Kongo‘s bout with Shawn Jordan turned out to be a hopelessly dull clinching-competition, there’s a similar explanation for that too…
(Props: MMAFighting.com)
In his post-fight interview with Ariel Helwani, Kongo admits to entering the fight with two injured shoulders that gave him about a 7 or 8 on a scale of 1-10, pain-wise. (So maybe that’s why he didn’t do his traditional “chest thump thing” before the fight. It’s not your fault, Anthony.) When Helwani asks him if he wishes he’d pulled out of the fight, Kongo agrees and says “I just tried to be there just for the fans” — which is admirable, in theory.
Though Kongo apologized for his performance, he did have something to say to the Calgary fans who booed the fight: ”They don’t know what’s going on, what’s happened. Everybody thinks the fight is really easy to do…if they got to fight in the same condition like I am today, honestly, they [would] cry or just pass out.”