Pat Miletich shares positive update on Matt Hughes

UFC Hall of Famer Matt Hughes was involved in a horrific accident on June 16 when his pickup truck was struck by an oncoming train in Raymond, Illinois.

Hughes was airlifted to a nearby hospital immediately following the accident and it was later revealed that the former UFC welterweight champion of the world was in a coma.

During today’s episode of The MMA Hour, the UFC’s first ever welterweight champion, Pat Miletich, shared a positive update on his long time friend and training partner with host Ariel Helwani.

“He is surprising the doctors,” Miletich said (as transcribed by MMAFighting). “He’s making great leaps and he’s no longer in a coma, and he’s improving. It’s going to be a long road. Any type of head trauma at that level, there’s going to be some rehab.”

Pat Miletich would go on to reveal some details from the brutal accident, explaining that Hughes was stuck on a hill and unable to cross the train tracks in time.

“The [train] engineer said, Matt had stopped on the gravel road,” Miletich said. “It’s a hill, goes up, it’s a real quick hill that goes up to the railroad tracks. He had stopped, then tried to get across it in time. The train was going almost 50 MPH.”

“When you’re out in the country, there’s no crossing guards, there’s no lights,” Miletich continued. “It’s almost like, he saw it, then tried to beat it. What I would say is that, you’re on a gravel road out in country on a hill and you’re trying to punch it and get over, you’re going to swing tires, he didn’t get across in time and got clipped on the passenger side.”

Miletich added the following information,

“Nobody is allowed to visit him besides family,” Miletich said. “That’s it right now. They don’t want to overload him, they want his energy to go to healing and not to anything else. I’m 100 percent sure he’s going to make a full recovery.”