Derrick Lewis suffered a second round TKO loss against Junior dos Santos on Saturday night at UFC Fight Night 146, but his manager Bob Perez has now revealed that he also had a serious knee injury heading into the bout.
“Spoke to sources in Derrick Lewis’ camp who tell me Derrick came in w torn meniscus, ACL & MCL from a month ago,” Perez told NBC Sport’s Helen Yee. “Lewis refused to pull from fight. That’s why Bob told him to finish after the first round. It wasn’t just his stomach. Knee was giving out. What a warrior #UFCWichita.”
Perez went on to reveal that Lewis actually suffered broken ribs due to JDS’s spinning back kick in the first round, but nevertheless he was still just as concerned by how he was coping with the knee damage that had plagued him before the fight even started.
“I knew he was hurt to the belly, but I didn’t know the extent of that, because Travis [Browne] actually broke his ribs. Derrick was like, ‘I had to take a crap.’ No, two ribs were broken. So in my head, the ribs are broken again. I knew the knee was shot, I could tell by his movement that he just wasn’t there. He actually held the knee a couple times.
“So I’m like, ‘Dude, we’ve gotta finish now.’ If it would have gone into the third, I don’t think he could have even supported his weight. Backstage [after the fight], man, he was in a wheelchair. The leg was completely locked out. We really need to figure out what’s going on. No fighter is completely 100 percent, but he was definitely beaten up going into this fight.”
