Devin Powell tried to ‘sleep off’ ruptured testicle for two days

UFC lightweight Devin Powell shot to viral fame last month when he revealed he had suffered a ruptured testicle during a training session with Joe Lauzon. Somehow, the Maine native tried to sleep off the gruesome injury for two days before he had assessed by medical professionals

On the latest episode of The MMA Hour, Powell explained how the injury transpired.

“[Lauzon] was trying to pass my guard and he decided his best bet would be to bring his knee up and straight down and rupture my testicle,” Powell told Ariel Helwani. “He was trying to pass my guard with a knee cut, so he thought it would be cooler to blow up my testicle than pass my guard. I’m sure if we kept going he would’ve passed my guard.”

Powell noted that there was nothing remarkable about the situation that led to the injury.

“It’s a very normal jiu-jitsu situation from half guard. 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.”

The Maine lightweight was not wearing a cup during the training session. After the impact occurred, he found it hard to stand up without supporting himself.

“[The pain] was so sensational. I thought what had happened had happened, but it’s also such a sensitive area that you always think you must have done something serious, but then a couple of hours later you’re okay. For this one, the pain lingered. I went to take a shower. I tried lying on a mat for 30 minutes and it still wasn’t feeling any better. I had to hold myself up while I was taking a shower because I couldn’t let myself not be supported,” he said.

He knew something was wrong when he felt something he describes as a “uncorn horn” jutting out from the affected area.

“I felt it and it felt like there was a unicorn horn popping out. It was leaking on the inside. I figured I should probably go see someone,” Powell recalled.

“We went to a walk-in clinic. 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’.”

After being turned away from the first clinic, it was two days later before Powell had the injury properly assessed.

“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.’”

“Alcohol helped a little bit,” he replied when asked how he dealt with the pain for two days. “I was in a tremendous amount of pain but I just tried to wait it out to see if it would get better and it wasn’t. Everybody was saying that I should be seen, so I finally listened.”

Powell gave a breakdown of what happened to his testicle when the impact took place:

“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.”

Despite the graphic nature of his injury, Powell claims he was back training a week later.

“I was back training after a week. Five days later I was back teaching classes but just not jiu-jitsu. I’m doing live wrestling and jiu-jitsu now, all the time with a cup on. I’ll never train without a cup again.”