When Tony Ferguson vs Khabib Nurmagomedov fell through for the fourth time, everyone wanted to know who was to blame.
Tony Ferguson was the primary suspect. Considering it was his knee that was blown out, a lot of folks jumped to the conclusion that he was somehow at fault. Everyone knows he trains like an animal using unorthodox techniques, so it was easy for the ignorant to point the finger of blame at ‘El Cucuy’.
It turns out that the real culprit was the cosmos, kismet, god… whatever you want to call it. He ruptured the ligament due to a freak accident while doing media obligations.
We have a few pesky cables to thank/blame for Max Holloway being booked to fight Khabib Nurmagomedov on six days’ notice.
You can see where he's coming from #UFC223 https://t.co/Sd5myskZT5
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) April 3, 2018
Shades
‘El Cucuy’ is some man to wear a pair of sunglasses. At pretty much every media event leading up to UFC 223, he was sporting the shades. Naturally enough, fans wondered if wearing shades indoors had anything to do with the trip that sank a million MMA hearts. As he explained on the MMA Hour, the shades he was wearing at the time were prescription.
“It actually happened on Thursday during my media obligations for the UFC. I was walking to say ‘hi’ to a Fox crew member and I slipped on one of those big, black cords in the production studio. It was dark, it was hard to see, but I wasn’t wearing my shades. I actually had my prescription sunglasses on.”
The steel pipe video
We’ve all seen the clip by now of Ferguson giving a tour of his self-made training facility in Big Bear. He shows a steel pipe to the camera, Eddie Bravo declines the opportunity to kick it and then WHACK! Ferguson cracks it with his shin.
Twice.
The timing of this clip’s release suggested that he did this in the build-up to UFC 223. However, as he explained to Ariel Helwani, this was taken during his camp for his interim title fight last October.
“No, man. That was from my last camp for Kevin Lee in Big Bear. I didn’t do my camp in Big Bear this year or for this fight. The timing of the release of that video is unfortunate because people think that it caused the injury. I really can’t pay too uch attention to that. This wasn’t a training injury.”
“Think about this, you can ask anybody, I train harder than anyone and have my own unique training style. There’s nothing reckless or stupid in the way I train. Especially preparing for a title fight. That video is just a bit of fun and I agree that the timing has caused a frenzy.”
We can think of a million better ways to have ‘a bit of fun’ that don’t involve kicking steel pipes.
