Doctor explains why Conor McGregor pulling out of UFC 303 was a good idea after toe injury
24/06/2024 17:42
Orthopedic surgeon, David Abbasi, believes Conor McGregor made the right decision in pulling out of his fight with Michael Chandler.
McGregor was set to face Chandler at UFC 303 on June 29 but the fight was called off earlier this month after the Irishman suffered a broken toe in sparring.
Shortly after the news broke that the fight was off, ‘Notorious’ shared several pictures of his injury to social media, which Abbasi took a closer look at during a video uploaded to his Instagram page.
“There is an X-ray you can see there that is pointing to a dark line through the bone – that is a fracture line of the phalanx on the small toe,” Abbasi said before giving a estimate on how long it would take for McGregor to recover from his injury.
“You can see some bruising up there as well, this would take about four weeks to heal as do most bony fracture injuries in somebody younger and healthy.
“This would affect a fighter’s ability to put weight on their toes and put their weight forward.
“You could put weight backwards on the heel and some fighters have pushed through and fought with something like this but this would definitely affect someone’s explosiveness and especially kicking.
“This would definitely hurt the kicking ability on both sides because of the inability to use your forefoot.
“Push kicks, forget about it. So if this is in fact the injury I think we do have then it is a legitimate reason to delay the fight.”
McGregor is aiming for his fight with Chandler to be rescheduled quickly.
On Saturday night, McGregor was in attendance for Bellator Champions Series 3 in Dublin, Ireland to cheer on his teammate Sinead Kavanagh and took questions on his injury from the press.
In an interview with Severe MMA, McGregor insisted he will be ready to compete in two months time.
"August or September I'd love," he said when asked about his potential return date.
"You know the way it is. I'm in recovery mode. It happened three weeks ago to the day. And I'm still here rocking around in the slippers.
"They are not bad slippers, thankfully. They are cosy enough, but I can't get into a shoe yet."
McGregor went on to reveal that he had stem cells put into his foot in a desperate attempt to remain on the card but that it didn’t have the desired affect.
“They came and took it from the back and put it into my foot,” he added.
“They put it into my foot, 20 milligrams from my own back, from the bone marrow.
"Right into the break. Then there was a little bit left over, I said, 'Yeah, lob it into my shoulder. I'm feeling a bit sore'.
"My shoulder is actually feeling amazing. That stem cell is good stuff. I'm after really getting an eye-opener with that stem cell, but my f***ing toe is sore.
"I don't know if the stem cell into the toe was the right move. You know the way chicks put the filler in their face? My f***ing baby toe looks like that.”
"I don't think it's swelling anymore, it's the stem cell in my toe. I'm gonna have a swollen toe all the time now. I don't know. I'm just recovering and taking it day by day."
