Brad Pickett fractures spine, will fight at UFC 204 regardless
After Mike Tyson’s KO victory over Clifford Etienne in 2003, ‘Iron Mike’ infamously stated that he broke his back during training.
Brad Pickett could be delivering a very similar interview after UFC 204, where he’s scheduled to fight Iuri Alcântara in Manchester, England. Pickett, who was initially slated to fight at ‘UFC Hamburg’ on September 3rd, however a back injury forced him out of the fight.
The injury in question? A fractured spine. Pickett elaborated on the situation on his ‘One Punch Podcast’:
“I say it’s a new injury but it’s not. It sounds really bad but I fractured my spine,” Pickett said. “Normally you’d assume that I’d be bedridden and paralyzed, which obviously can happen [but it wasn’t that serious].
“The injury occurred when I was first meant to be making my UFC debut against Miguel Torres and I was training and I hurt my lower back wrestling. It was so bad, I ruptured my L5-S1 disc and I had to pull out of that fight. Demetrious Johnson stepped in, beat him and went on to get a title shot against Dominick Cruz.”
“Every now and again it flairs up and I get some lower back pain, so I have to ease off my training,” Pickett said. “What I do normally do is take a rest for a few days, and normally it settles down and I can train again, but this time it just wasn’t going away so I went and saw a back specialist in America who did X-rays and an MRI and stuff. He said because I have nothing between my L5 and S1 discs, it’s like vertebrate going on vertebrate, and over time I’d irritated it and got a small fracture in my spine.”
This article appeared first on BJPENN.COM
Previous Post
Topics:
Brad Pickett
