Former UFC middleweight champion Chris Weidman will have to undergo another surgery on the broken leg he suffered in a fight against Uriah Hall back in March.
Following promising progress on his recovery including some golf outings and light sparring at his gym in South Carolina, Weidman revealed that one particular bone in his leg is not healing as expected and that’s going to force him to go under the knife again.
“I’m actually getting another surgery, I just found out,” Weidman said when speaking to MMA Today on Sirius XM on Wednesday. “I’m getting another surgery, most likely on Aug. 11. They’re going to have to plate the fibula bone because I guess it’s considered a non-union so the bones aren’t healing the way it’s supposed to, which kind of sucks.
“But I did expect setbacks and some issues with this type of traumatic injury. I’ve been through a lot. At the end of the day, I’m a positive person to begin with. Not that I don’t have moments of negativity and just laziness, lack of motivation but I’m usually a glass half-full type of person. So I think that helps.”
While this news is unfortunate, it’s not exactly unexpected.
Weidman told MMA Fighting back in June that for all the tremendous strides he had already taken in his recovery, there was still the possibility that he could be forced into another surgery.
As he explained at the time, the fibula bone was still completely broken but because it’s not weight bearing, he could still stand on his leg without the use of crutches.
“My fibula bone is still completely broken,” Weidman said at the time. “It’s displaced. The goal is it starts getting closer and closer and mends together. Then my tibia bone is completely fractured so I’m relying on that rod that is going through the middle of it to deal with the weight bearing.
“There’s a butterfly fracture that fragmented off that causes inflammation. It’s annoying. He might — hopefully he doesn’t, but he might — have to do a quick surgery to get that out if it doesn’t heal with the tibia bone.”
From the day he left the surgery, Weidman understood that there would be plenty of ups and downs during his recovery as he looked to bounce back from an incredibly traumatic injury.
Long term, Weidman has said he absolutely plans on fighting again but he knows there’s going to be a lot of time spent rehabilitating his broken leg and this latest surgery is just another example of that.
Despite the setback, the New York native isn’t allowing the situation to bring him down, especially when he thinks about his own situation when compared to others who have suffered through so much more.
“If I ever feel bad for myself it’s very easy to look at someone else who has it worse and realize you have nothing to complain about and you can’t feel sorry for yourself,” Weidman said. “The second guest I had my podcast was a guy named Omar ‘Crispy’ Avila, he is a war veteran who got blown up by an IED (improvised explosive device), he lost his leg, he got burned, 75 percent of his body had third and fourth-degree burns and he had 104 surgeries.
