Middleweight fighter Chris Weidman suffered a serious fracture in his right leg at UFC 261 last night, after delivering a kick which was blocked by his opponent Uriah Hall just seconds into the first round. Somewhat ironically, the injury is very similar to that sustained by Anderson Silva during one of Weidman’s earlier fights.
In a new video on his YouTube channel, physical medicine and rehab expert Dr. Brian Sutterer talks viewers through the stomach-turning footage from the fight, explaining that the fracture occurred when Weidman’s tibia made contact with Hall’s tibial plateau, an area just underneath the kneecap. As neither Hall’s knee nor Weidman’s tibia had any muscle tissue, Sutterer says the impact was a “bone-on-bone” mechanism.
“It’s just rigid,” he says, “like kicking a concrete wall.”
“The number one thing the medical team is going to do in the arena is stabilize the fracture, put a splint around it because you don’t want those bones to move around any more than they already are,” Sutterer continues. “Management is then typically surgery with an intramedullary rod, where they put a metal rod down through the center of the tibia to get that fracture back together. Of course then when the fibula is fractured as well, sometimes you have to put a plate there, so this is going to be a pretty big operation.”
As for how the injury will impact Weidman’s career, Sutterer says this will depend on a variety of factors, including infection, complications during surgery, and possible nerve damage.
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