“I would never have committed to going under the knife unless something like this happened.”
Conor McGregor has confirmed that he was carrying an injury into last weekend’s trilogy fight against Dustin Poirier.
McGregor cut a far more positive figure on Thursday than he did in the days after breaking his leg in the main event of UFC 264 as ‘The Notorious’ vowed to heal up and make a comeback.
McGregor has been released from hospital and is awaiting the arrival of his family in Los Angeles, where the Irishman plans to begin his recovery from the surgery on his fractured tibia and fibula suffered against Poirier on Saturday night.
Conor McGregor admits he carried injury into UFC 264
In the wake of the bout, McGregor’s head coach John Kavanagh hinted at an injury to his fighter in fight camp and now McGregor has revealed that the UFC was aware of stress fractures to his leg ahead of the trilogy fight.
“I was injured going into the fight,” McGregor said on Instagram. “People are asking me when was the leg broken and at what point did the leg break.
“Ask Dana White, ask the UFC, ask Dr. Davidson, the head doctor of the UFC – they knew I had stress fractures in my leg going into that cage.
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“There was debate about pulling the thing out because I was sparring with no shin pads and I had kicked a knee a few times so I had multiple stress fractures in the shin bone, above the ankle. And I have trouble with the ankle anyway throughout the years of fucking fighting all the time.
“I was wrapping my ankle for every training session. I was even doing a lot of training sessions, when the ankle was sore, I still wouldn’t stop training. I used to just train on my back.
“That’s how I developed those ground and pound shots from the back. That’s why Dustin backed away when he was on top of me and I was landing the up-kicks and the elbows and all. It’s a horrible place to be in when you’re against someone like me because it takes so much effort to land shots from your top position and while you’re trying to do that and losing your energy, you’re getting lumped out of it by downward elbows and vicious up-kicks.
“It was a skill I developed because of my damaged leg and I had to adjust my training.”
McGregor revealed that surgery was a long time coming and that if not for his fight-ending injury against Poirier, he would have been unlikely to agree to a procedure.
Doctors are optimistic that McGregor will make a full recovery and there are plans for a fourth clash against Poirier to finally draw a line under the rivalry.
“I needed to get treatment on my leg, I needed to get treatment on my ankle and I needed to get treatment on my shinbone,” McGregor continued.
“I would never have committed to going under the knife unless something like this happened.
“So something like this has happened, I’m after going in and getting exactly what I needed and what I needed was a titanium shinbone.”
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