UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez just can’t seem to get any luck injury wise with it now emerging that his latest knee issue has turned out to be worse than was originally anticipated.
Velasquez had originally been dealing with a slight tear to his miniscus during fight camp, but had intended to compete against Fabricio Werdum at UFC 180 with it anyway. However, a slip during a sprawling drill last week resulted in an MCL tear that forced him out of the fight and required surgery.
Velasquez went under the knife just a couple of days ago and according to his coach Javier Mendez it was at that stage that doctor’s discovered that the damage was worse than they’d realized.
“The surgery went well, but there was more damage than anticipated, which didn’t make sense to me because he’s so freaking tough,” Mendez told Ariel Helwani on the MMA Hour show. “If Cain says ‘oww’ it must be a lot worse than he’s making it out to be, because that guy can take pain like I’ve never seen. So when it turned out that his MCL was worse, they put two anchors on it, it turns out he’ll be out a little longer than anticipated.”
It’s now hoped that Velasquez could potentially be back by the Spring of next year, by which point it’ll have been the best part of 18 months since he last fought to a convincing unanimous decision victory in his rematch with Junior dos Santos.
In the mean time, his intended opponent Werdum will now fight Mark Hunt for the interim heavyweight title at UFC 180 in just a few weeks time. Hopefully, if Velasquez can steer clear of any further injury set-backs, then he’ll be able to face the winner of that to unify the belts again in 2015.
