Yoel Romero Believes He Suffered Broken Leg in Fight Against Luke Rockhold at UFC 221
Yoel Romero was actually a one legged man in an ass kicking contest on Saturday night.
The No. 1 ranked middleweight contender earned a vicious third round knockout to finish Luke Rockhold in the UFC 221 main event but it turns out he may have competed for the majority of the fight with a broken leg.
Romero could barely stand after his knockout and had to be helped out of the Octagon and he says it’s courtesy of a pair of kicks that he checked from Rockhold in the opening round that caused the injury.
“Yes in the first round I think I took two kicks and I’m pretty sure that I broke my leg,” Romero said after the fight when speaking to FS1.
Considering the injury happened in the first round and Romero earned the knockout in the third round makes the finish that much more incredible.
.@YoelRomeroMMA confirms that he has a broken leg from kicks by @LukeRockhold after his win at #UFC221 https://t.co/35ZFJbKj5j
— FOX Sports: UFC (@UFCONFOX) February 11, 2018
Of course as amazing as Romero’s knockout was on Saturday night, it’s also impossible to ignore the fact that he failed to make weight on Friday, which is why he didn’t leave with the interim middleweight title around his waist following the win.
Romero apologized in the Octagon directly after the fight and later pointed towards the fact that he accepted this matchup on short notice after originally being scheduled to compete two weeks later near his home in Florida.
“I’m not necessarily sure what went wrong. We worked the same as we do for every [fight],” Romer said.
“After they gave me the one hour [to make weight], I came in only two pounds overweight but do you seriously think that if I had been fighting in Orlando that I would have had this issue? I happened to work really fast to get all this done for this fight, it messed up a little bit my plans for the weight cut.”
Either way it doesn’t appear that missing weight will cost Romero a title shot as he’s still expected to face middleweight champion Robert Whittaker in his next fight. That could be delayed, however, if Romero did suffer a broken leg that may keep him out of action for an extended period of time.
