Chris Weidman did everything possible to ensure he was ready to return at full strength after suffering a gruesome broken leg in 2021, which included a compound fracture.
More than two years and four surgeries later, the former UFC middleweight champion felt like he was back to his old self, but it wasn’t until he set foot in the octagon this past August that a harsh realization set in. Despite all his preparation, training, and rehabilitation, Weidman couldn’t account for what unfolded once he actually started trading strikes with Brad Tavares.
“There were some surprises in there for sure,” Weidman told MMA Fighting. “We weren’t worried about leg kicks at all, which is stupid as hell. You come off breaking your leg in half and you’re not worried about leg kicks? I get it. Coaches and us, I never really struggled with leg kicks before in fights, and we just didn’t think it was a real issue that I had to worry about. So when I got in there, I was more thinking that he was going to try to come to brawl, move around, and then really look to get inside the pocket with boxing, and that’s when I would try to go into my takedowns.
“I was thinking I was keeping the range with Tavares, front kicks, me kicking more from the outside. He comes inside, instead of me exchanging in these punching exchanges from the inside with boxing, I was going to be looking for takedowns.”
The leg kicks from Tavares were bad enough, but then Weidman was unable to pull the trigger and fire back at him, which he knew was a key element to stave off the attacks and also get past his own mental blocks fighting for the first time after such a devastating injury.
To make matters worse, Weidman suffered a hairline fracture on the opposite leg to the one that was previously broken, and that pretty much doomed him.
“I was surprised I was so hesitant to throw my right leg,” Weidman said. “Because usually when you’re getting kicked, you’ve got to kick back. My brain wouldn’t let my body just throw that damn kick. I actually tried. I tried so hard to throw it in the second round and it was like I babied it, I didn’t go all out. That was a tough one to get over.
“By the time I tried taking him down, my other leg was already broken, my good leg, because he fractured it, gave me a hairline fracture on my leg,” Weidman said. “Probably in the first round or the beginning of the second, it’s hard to really tell.
