Emmett details injuries from Stephens fight
Josh Emmett: “They kept telling me how lucky I was — that I could see, for one, and that I could control my eye without it popping out.”
Mixed martial arts is built on moments so intense they make you go, “Holy f@$%ing $#!@.”
Like this one immediately below, as Jeremy Stephens stopped Josh Emmett in the main event of UFC Fight Night 30 on February 24, 2018, at Amway Center in Orlando, Florida. Two elbows appeared to land illegally, as did a knee.
And then things got really bad.
The unfortunate truth about the sport is that those moments can come at a high price, as Emmett detailed during a recent appearance on Ariel Helwani’s The MMA Hour. Emmett was treated at a local hospital; he thought he was suffering from a single orbital fracture. At his wife’s suggestion, the Team Alpha Male fighter got a second opinion when he returned to Sacramento, California.
The hospital in Orlando didn’t misdiagnose me, they just didn’t catch a lot of things, said Emmett, as transcribed by Peter Carroll for MMA Fighting. They just said I had a tripod fracture, so I assumed that was it. I went home and I think it was the second day that I was home in Sacramento — I was still on all the pain pills and stuff — and my wife just knew there was something wrong.
They did another CT scan because the Orlando regional hospital would not send the CT scan to them or to my doctor. They did the scan and they admitted me right away. I needed emergency surgery. They took me in an ambulance to perform another surgery.
My lateral orbital was fractured, my orbital wall, my maxillary sinus — that’s like my cheek — it was completely encaved. I had my nasal bone fractured and my zygomatic arch was broken as well, with a few other fractures in the face. It was impinging the main muscle in my eye, which was disturbing the movement of my eye. Also, the nerve in my face was being compressed. So still even now from the left side [of my face] over, it’s still completely numb. I have no feeling in my cheek or upper lip and I had just suffered a severe concussion.
I had a team of doctors. I had a plastic surgeon, I had an ear, nose and throat specialist, and I had an ophthalmologist — and just from the images that they saw, they were really concerned. Even breaking the bones on the orbital floor and the lateral orbital the bone could’ve punctured the eye or it could have been protruding, like popping out of my socket.
When they saw me and they could see I could move my eye, they were pretty surprised. They kept telling me how lucky I was — that I could see, for one, and that I could control my eye without it popping out.
Emmett underwent surgery and spent five days in the hospital, and will resume light training next month. His love for the sport remains.
I’m still all on this,” he said. “I’m too close to where I want to be to give it all up. I have a lot of things I can do. I have a lot of connections in the Sacramento area. I can go and get a good job right now, but this is my passion and I’m going to continue to fight as long as I can. This is definitely the worst injury that I’ve suffered, but there is no quit in me.”
Emmett bears no ill will towards his fellow fighter Stephens, but things the fight should have been stopped by referee Dan Miragliotta after the knee to what appeared to be a grounded fighter.
[The knee] was illegal,” said Stephens. “Did it change the outcome, who knows? I feel like if the referee had stopped the fight when the knee was thrown, then I wouldn’t have suffered the injury that I did. That’s the only upsetting thing for me. If he had stopped the fight after the knee, of course. It was those two elbows after the knee that did the damage and broke my face.