Matt Hughes’ long-time friend and fellow UFC hall-of-famer Pat Miletich has given an update on the star’s condition over five weeks after the pick-up truck he was driving was hit by a passing train, leaving him in a coma.
The good news is that according to Miletich, the former welterweight champion is no longer in a coma, but it seems as if there’s still a long fight ahead of him.
“He is surprising the doctors,” Miletich said on ‘The MMA Hour’ show this week. “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.”
Miletich also revealed how Hughes had managed to get into a position to be struck by the train in the first place.
“The [train] engineer said, Matt had stopped on the gravel road. 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. 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.”
Despite no longer being in a coma, an indication of how long Hughes still has to go on his recovery can be seen from the fact that no-one other than his family is allowed at his bedside for the time being.
“Nobody is allowed to visit him besides family. 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,” Miletich added.
