Michael Chandler recorded a spectacular front kick KO victory over Tony Ferguson at UFC 274 on Saturday night, but the lightweight star has now revealed that he actually suffered a dislocated finger backstage just 30 minutes before the fight.
“I dislocated my [ring] finger about 20, 30 minutes before the fight blocking a kick,” Chandler revealed on The Pat McAfee Show. “So I got to get that looked at.
“My buddy Marques, a great training partner of mine. He was throwing kicks — I had this great idea. Warm up was already done. I’m going out in about 10, 20 minutes and I’m like, ‘Hey, throw some left high kicks at me. I want to block them and go to the body shot’. And he threw a normal kick like he’s done a thousand times at me, and it ended up going fingernail, all the way back. Bent it all the way back.”
For Chandler there was no turning back though and so he adopted a ‘the show must go on’ mentality and went on to claim one of the biggest victories of his career.
“I’m like at this point, boys, at this point, we keep the adrenaline going. I said, ‘This ain’t a hand, it’s a hammer and we got to go. We got to go!’”
