2022 – A Year Plagued with Injuries

After watching the disappointing conclusion to Kattar vs. Allen, it had me thinking about how rough of a year it’s been for fight fans and fighters alike losing such great bouts to injuries. Just a week before Calvin blew his knee out, you had TJ Dillashaw’s shoulder pop out of socket during his title fight with Aljamain Sterling.

The year was off to a good start but then Aleksandar Rakic’s knee gave out in a similar fashion against Jan Blachowicz and it just snowballed from there. In July alone you had 2 main events reach unsatisfying conclusions by Brian Ortega’s shoulder popping out when fighting Yair Rodriguez and then right after that Tom Aspinall’s knee giving out just seconds into his main event bout against Curtis Blaydes. It seems that the pattern is falling into either the shoulder or the knee or god forbid a broken Tibia/Fibula like you saw with Weidman last year. And everyone can’t attempt the absolute savagery we saw at Bellator 286 when Aaron Pico had his corner yank on his arm in between rounds trying to pull it back into place. After watching that, nobody can doubt the boy is as mentally tough as a man can be.

It’s an incredibly explosive and violent sport however and this string of injuries I believe, speaks to how grueling the training is to be at the elite level. You must undergo intense preparation to be able to compete but take it too far and it could spell disaster when dancing under those lights. I love this sport with all of my heart and I can only hope that we can get through the rest of the year without any more catastrophes. We have plenty of amazing cards coming up and it would be an absolute shame if any of the fights had to end due to injury.

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