Velasquez: Knee injury was ‘devastating to me’
Cain Velasquez: “Like, this is where I’m destined to be, I’m destined to fight on this card, and it just didn’t turn out that way. So it was just kind of devastating to me.”
Cain Velasquez was supposed to defend his heavyweight title this weekend in Mexico, but an unfortunate knee injury forced him to withdraw. Velasquez hadn’t spoken much about the injury and his withdrawal, but today visited the MMA Hour to express his disappointment with the whole situation:
“I felt (like my knee) was pretty loose,” Velasquez explained. “In training I felt like my body would switch one way but my leg would kinda stay in one direction. So I kinda felt like, it wasn’t stable.
“It just sucked, you know what I mean. Going through practice everyday, and just limiting (myself), not really doing the stuff that I could do as far as rolling. I tried to roll, some days I could, some days I couldn’t, and I just said, hey, I’m going to just baby it until I get two weeks out, and once I get two weeks out I’m going to try to do everything. Kick, be on the ground, it doesn’t matter, but I’m going to do what I can to make the fight.
“And when I finally realized that I can’t do it, it’s just not working for me, it just sucked. It felt like something was destined, you know what I mean. Like, this is where I’m destined to be, I’m destined to fight on this card, and it just didn’t turn out that way. So it was just kind of devastating to me.”
It has already been more than a full year since Velasquez has defended his heavyweight title, an October 2013 win over Junior Dos Santos. Velasquez coached opposite Fabricio Werdum on the inaugural season of The Ultimate Fighter Latin America and is expected to finally return to action in early 2015.