After a savage knockout loss to Alistair Overeem on saturday night at UFC 209, Mark Hunt’s evening appeared to get even worse when he informed his fans on Instagram that he’d broken his shinbone.
“Thank u for all the support u probably already know I got knocked out ,” Hunt wrote from a Las Vegas hospital a few hours after the fight. “The old warhorse is still alive jus a broken tibia I be back .”
Hunt’s shin had been seen bleeding prefusely during the fight after Overeem checked one of his leg kicks, but there wasn’t any indication at that stage that he’d broken it.
A few hours after his announcement though, Hunt’s own camp revealed that the damage wasn’t as serious as they’d originally feared and though it was very sore, his shinebone hadn’t been broken.
That’s good news for the 42-year-old, though the fact that he was knocked out cold by Overeem’s vicious knees will still be a source of concern for the veteran, who has prided himself on his legendary chin over the years.
There’s been signs in the past few years that he’s not able to withstand punishment quite as well as he used to though, having also suffered back-to-back TKO losses against both Fabricio Werdum and Stipe Miocic just a few fights ago, as a KO loss to Junior dos Santos a year prior to that.
Hunt is still also known for his own ferocious punching power, however, having defeated the likes of Frank Mir, Antonio Silva and Roy Nelson by strikes in the past two and a half years, so that’s likely to be enough to convince him that he’s still got what it takes to compete in the heavyweight ranks for the time being.
