Yoel Romero Unveils Serious Injury Suffered At UFC 221
Yoel Romero may have come away with a huge knockout victory over Luke Rockhold (watch highlights here) in the main event of last night’s (Sat., Feb. 10, 2018) UFC 221 from Perth Australia, but it wasn’t without some damage of his own.
After the fight, which he won with a brutal third-round finish of the former champion, Romero discussed the injury he sustained in the fight with FOX Sports 1’s Megan Olivi.
According to “The Soldier of God,” he broke his leg after taking two hard kicks from Rockhold in the opening round:
“Yeah, so in the first round, I think I took two kicks and I’m pretty sure that it broke my leg.”
Romero felt he was well-prepared for the fight despite missing weight, noting that his cardio was on point after he faded in the later rounds of his previous fight with current champ Robert Whittaker.
He was in such good shape despite missing weight, he said, that he could have had an even better win with a few small changes:
“Oh, I felt really good. We trained really hard for this fight. We trained very good for this fight. We had 6-7 round sparrings; I had no worries whatsoever in terms of cardio. If we would have small, minor changes, we would have had a better result.”
Romero will now move on to presumably face Whittaker in a rematch for the title in his next bout, and indeed Dana White “confirmed” the bout after UFC 221, but this news certainly complicates that fight.
The saving grace may be the fact that Whittaker may not be able to fight for several months himself after recovering from several significant strange and concerning ailments.
After the two met up at last summer’s UFC 213 with Whittaker emerging victorious in a close, hard-fought fight, there’s nowhere else to go after Romero’s scary knockout over Rockhold, but injury issues and in Romero’s case, weight-cutting questions, still remain enough to cloud the UFC middleweight title picture for at least a couple more months.
Will it ever find a semblance of continuity?
.@YoelRomeroMMA confirms that he has a broken leg from kicks by @LukeRockhold after his win at #UFC221 https://t.co/35ZFJbKj5j
— FOX Sports: UFC (@UFCONFOX) February 11, 2018
