As someone who has trained jiu-jitsu, kickboxing, wrestling, and mixed martial arts for the past 20 years, I have had my fair share of injuries. I’ve broken multiple bones in both feet, I’ve had a boxer’s fracture in my hand, completely tore my LCL in two pieces, concussions, and degenerative issues that warranted cortisol shots in all my major joints and two in my neck.
All injuries come with pain, but for me the worst injuries I’ve dealt with are to the ribs, including broken bones and worse, torn cartilage/muscle. Most injuries can be dealt with acutely and alleviating the pain is simple with proper care. But an injury to the ribs can cause all kinds of pain and issues like you’ve never experienced. When I broke my hand, it hurt. I had it casted and then no pain for six weeks while I recovered. When I tore cartilage in my ribs, a month of pain. Why? Because you can’t breathe without aggravating the injury. And with a serious rib injury, every breath hurts. It’s not the actual injury that causes the most pain (as was the case when I broke a rib but years later didn’t remember ever doing so), it’s the pain that lingers for months.
Thinking about my own injuries has made me appreciate some of the things I’ve seen personally or read about in our great sport. To hear an athlete reveal he went into a fight with a broken rib, broke a rib in a fight, etc is unnerving when you know what that athlete had to fight through just to compete and even, sometimes, still win. Here are four instances of incredible toughness dealing with what I think is the worst injury:
1) In November of 2017, Anthony Pettis fought future title challenger Dustin Poirier. Early in the third round Poirier worked his way to the back of Pettis and secured a body triangle. The hold itself can be severely uncomfortable, but is not often something that elicits a submission especially at a high level, so when Pettis tapped out, some fans were confused. However after the fight, Pettis’ coach revealed that Poirier had locked the body triangle higher up than the waistband and actually broke one of Pettis’ ribs. Knowing the facts and the amount of excruciating pain it must have caused, it’s easy to see why Pettis was forced to submit.
2) Chael Sonnen is a long-time WEC and UFC veteran and former title challenger. Each time an athlete fights, they step on a scale. As a lot of fans have noticed, Chael Sonnen has a peculiar protrusion from his rib cage. It’s a calcification on the end of his rib, caused when it was broken by Terry Martin in a bout prior to both of their UFC careers. Martin broke Sonnen’s rib early in the fight, but Sonnen marched out and eventually lost when his corner threw in the towel. The ‘American Gangsta’ was too tough to quit on his own and wears the result to this day:
3) Sometimes a well-placed strike to the rib cage can cause severe injuries even without breaking a rib. This was the case when UFC lightweights Paul Felder and James Vick squared off. Felder won a unanimous decision, but late in the third round Vick landed a knee to Felder’s rib cage that pushed the rib away from the muscle and cartilage and into his lung causing a puncture. Felder finished the fight, his injuries were treated at the hospital, and his career continued. The ever tough Felder didn’t seem the least bit phased:
https://twitter.com/felderpaul/status/1097536406480547840
4) Winning a fight is always tough. Dislocating your rib in the second round of a UFC fight against a submission specialist and winning is indescribably tough. But that’s exactly what Jack Hermansson faced when he dislocated his rib near the end of the second round in his UFC fight versus Thales Leites. In the fight you can see Hermansson visibly in pain as the injury occurs:
Hermansson continued the fights and actually stopped Leits with strikes in the third round.
All this talk of ribs, has got me hungry. I thought the best way to celebrate the toughness of fighting through injury, was to go ahead and make some tender (not tough) smoked ribs on my Traeger! Ribs are a bit like art, so you’ll have to experiment with spice rubs and BBQs sauces to get a combination you like. I like to smoke my ribs dry and add BBQ sauce to eat, but you can experiment with baking on the sauce as well.
Ingredients
-(2) Racks of Pork back (baby back) ribs
-Spice Rub (your choice)
-Apple Cider Vinegar
-BBQ sauce(s) (your choice)
Steps
-Remove your ribs from the refrigerator and let come to room temperature.
-If your butcher has not, remove the thin silver skin from the bone side of the ribs. Carefully inspect, as I almost thought my ribs didn’t have it.
-Coat in your favorite rub. This time I chose Lillie Q’s ‘Carolina Dirt’ rub.
-Place ribs, bone side down in your pre-heated pellet smoker at 225 degrees. If available, turn on ‘Super Smoke’.
-Mix 1 part apple cider vinegar with 3 parts water and a dash of Worcestershire sauce to spray onto meat every 30-45 minutes throughout cooking.
-Smoke ribs until a meat thermometer reaches 195 degrees in the thickest part of meat. (Roughly 3 hrs). Let the meat rest for 5 minutes, cut up between the bones, and serve with BBQ sauce and any sides you want!
