Chris Weidman: ‘One-in-a-million’ injury has been keeping me on the sidelines

Early this month, it was reported that Chris Weidman would be undergoing another surgery on his injured thumb after the rehabilitation process of the first one did not go well. As of this posting, there is no official word on when the former UFC middleweight champion would be making his Octagon return.

During his appearance on Monday’s episode of the MMA Hour, Weidman spoke in detail about his condition, which apparently turned out to be a very rare injury.

“After the fight, I ended up going to the doctor and I found that I needed to get surgery, so I got the surgery,” Weidman said (via MMA Fighting). “They took a tendon out of my wrist and used that to create a new ligament from my thumb. And they told me it was going to be kind of a quick recovery.”

“It ended up being eight months until I realized that, I guess, during the trauma of the surgery, the bones — when they drilled through the bones, it’s a very one-in-a-million chance, the blood supply didn’t come back to the bones, so the bones were like falling apart.”

“They crushed all the cartilage between the joint, and it was pretty painful for the last eight months as I was trying to train and get through it.”

Weidman explained that surgeons had to use his hip bone to create a new joint, which he says worked well for him. Once his hand is finally healed, only then will he get back to thinking about his next fight date and opponent, but he is expecting to return before the year ends.

“I was in so much pain for eight months. Every morning I would wake up and try to be hopeful and tell myself it’s feeling better, and then it just wasn’t feeling better,” Weidman said. “So I’m just happy that there’s a reason for why I was going through all of that pain. There’s no more confusion and I know exactly what’s going on, and I know there’s a light at the end of the tunnel now and it’s not too far away, so we’re good.”

“The fact that I was out as long as I was is insane, and the chance of that ever happening is extremely, extremely small, like I said,” he added. “The surgeons I went to, even for second opinions, they said they’d never seen it before as a doctor, so I got unlucky. And it’s feeling great. I’m very positive and I’ll be back and better than ever.”

Weidman last saw action in July 2017, where he defeated Kelvin Gastelum via third-round submission in his hometown of Long Island, New York.