LAS VEGAS – Cody Garbrandt entered UFC 285 compromised, he said.
The former UFC bantamweight champion revealed following his win over Trevin Jones that he suffered a neck injury that almost prevented him from making his long-awaited return to the octagon. Garbrandt (13-5 MMA, 8-5 UFC) defeated Jones (13-10 MMA, 1-4 UFC) by unanimous decision to close out the preliminary card Saturday and said he did so under difficult circumstances.
“I had a lot of things going on in the last 16 months. Even just prior to last week and this morning, there were so many things that were just trying to block and not let me get to the octagon,” Garbrandt told reporters at the UFC 285 post-fight press conference. “I ended up injuring my neck and had to have a nerve block put in my neck last week.
“My last takedown in my warmup this morning, I ended up slamming on my neck and ended up losing all full range of motion on my left arm. I was like, ‘You know, there’s never going to be an ideal situation, just like in life. There’s never going to be an ideal situation.’ I was just excited and believed in myself.”
Garbrandt said that the neck injury not only affected his training camp and his warmup the day of the fight, but it also bothered him during the fight itself. The 31-year-old had to battle plenty of adversity.
“In one of the takedowns I got, I ended up, for about two minutes of the round, I kept looking at the clock because I had a really bad stinger,” Garbrandt said. “He almost got me in a guillotine and fought out of it and the arm was completely dead.
“Like I said, there’s never an ideal situation. You have another trained killer trying to take your head off to get his money, and who knows what he’s facing, what he’s got going on in his life. I’m just forever grateful that we didn’t come out with any serious injuries.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 285.
