Felder details lung puncture

In the closing moments of his unanimous decision win over James Vick on Sunday night in Phoenix, Paul Felder’s lung was punctured when he took a knee to the ribs, the lung then collapsed, and The Irish Dragon was forced to undergo surgery at a local Phoenix hospital on Wednesday afternoon.

Felder appeared recently on Luke Thomas’s of The MMA Hour and detailed what happened.

As soon as he hit me, I was like, holy s***, that was a hard knee, said Felder and transcribed by Marc Raimondi for MMA Fighting. And I knew it was like 20 seconds left, I was looking at the clock. I thought I was ahead. I was like, ‘Man, just don’t let this dude knock you out, just don’t let this dude knock you out.’ Literally, all I was thinking.

I knew I busted my ribs is what I thought. I thought I did some cartilage damage or maybe had like a little fracture.

Then things got worse. Post-fight, Felder got increasingly short of breath until finally, a UFC doctor directed him to go to the hospital, where a partially collapsed lung due to puncture was diagnosed.

That’s when things got a little scary, said Felder. That’s when I realized I wasn’t going home the next morning.

The injury was due to a bubble in his lung, a not rare condition, that only becomes dangerous if there is, for example, a car accident, or a Paul Vick knee. For two days doctors tried to drain air around the lungs with tubes in his chest, but that failed to cause the lung to reinflate, so they cut through the muscle and bone in his chest and stapled the puncture closed and pinned the lung to the interior of his chest.

It’s the most pain I’ve been in in a really, really, really long time, Felder said. One shudders to think what could have hurt more.

Felder is out of the hospital, and is cleared to finally fly home on Wednesday. He can start cardio in a couple of weeks, and believes he will be back in training sooner than he would be for a knee tear.