UFC light heavyweight contender Jimmy Crute provided an update on his injured leg from the Anthony Smith fight at UFC 261.
Crute appeared to be in serious pain due to a leg injury and unable to walk properly at the end of the first round with Smith. After attempting to put pressure on the leg, his knee buckled and the cage-side doctor called a stop to the fight as Crute lost via injury TKO. A few days after the fight and Crute has now provided an update on the injury he suffered. According to the Aussie, there is the belief he suffered a knee injury in the fight.
“I think I did a bit of damage to my LCL, I think that’s what they said it looked like when I fell. But it’s just gutting because I didn’t get the opportunity to go out on my own terms. The perineal nerve just gets better by itself, but I feel like I’ve done ligament damage. I’ve blown an ACL, so I sort of know what the ligament damage feels like. But yeah, I’ve got to get a scan. I can’t get a scan until I get out of hotel quarantine, so yeah, it’s frustrating. I’m stuck in here, I don’t know what’s wrong with my knee, I don’t know how long I have to have off. But yeah, we’ll have to wait and see,” Crute told Submission Radio (transcript via Jesse Holland of MMAMania.com).
Crute admitted that one of the kicks that Smith threw at him hurt the nerves in his legs, but he says that he regained the feeling in his leg not long after the fight was stopped.
“He hit me with this leg kick that hit me in the perineal nerve and just took out my whole bottom leg. Like, I couldn’t feel. Literally, it just felt like my leg had been dipped in fire, and then it went numb and I couldn’t feel anything in my leg. And then I kept rolling my ankle. But as soon as that happened, I just thought, oh well, I guess we’ll just have to grapple now. I knew the feeling in my leg would come back. With that nerve damage, it only lasts for about a minute or two. So, I knew that if I just grounded him, hopefully by the end of the round I could get some feeling back in my leg and we could go for the second. It took a little bit longer to get the feeling back. I think I literally started walking again normally like 20 seconds after they called the fight. So, it was really frustrating,” Crute said.
What do you think is next for Jimmy Crute after losing to Anthony Smith at UFC 261?