Rory MacDonald's trainer details injury, says MacDonald returns soon to train for B.J. Penn bout

By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

Saturday's UFC 152 event was supposed to feature a welterweight bout between Rory MacDonald and B.J. Penn, a fight which has since been rescheduled for December's UFC on Fox 5 event. MacDonald suffered a serious cut over his eye in training last month, and though Penn wanted to push the fight back just a little bit, there was a very real reason MacDonald needed more time.

According to his trainer Firas Zahabi, in an interview with Sherdog.com, MacDonald still hasn't been cleared to return to sparring due to the injury.

"He's not able to spar for another two weeks,? Zahabi said earlier this month. "That's what they're telling me right now. His cut is still very pink. He's not even able to do jiu-jitsu. He can just do technique at this point."

The injury occurred during a sparring session as MacDonald was preparing for Saturday's event, and Zahabi said he knew immediately that MacDonald would need to pull out of the fight.

"He was sparring, looking really good, really peaking in his training, being very dominant in practice,? Zahabi said. ?I was really happy with him, and unfortunately somebody in our sparring session threw a backfist, which we're actually not allowed to throw in sparring. It caught Rory a bit by surprise. The reason why we don't throw spinning backfists is because you can land with the forearm when you throw it, and that's kind of what happened. He hit him kind of with the wrist and glove, kind of the forearm, and cut Rory. Rory, he didn't really feel the strike. It wasn't a big strike. He was able to take his partner down, but then we saw some blood. Then I looked at Rory and I saw this huge cut. ? I knew right then and there the fight was going to be cancelled."

"The surgeon had to stitch the inside, the muscle, then the outside and then there's an eyebrow also. There's three layers of stitches they had to do."

Though the fight ultimately stayed together, MacDonald didn't want to pull out of the matchup for Sept. 22 for fear of losing the fight with Penn. Zahabi and MacDonald's managers had to convince him that it was a necessity, and he ultimately made the only decision he could.

"Rory actually really wanted to continue with the fight," Zahabi said. "He didn't want to take no for an answer. He didn't want to even consider not doing the fight. I actually had to calm him down a little bit and bring in his managers and all sit down and kind of have a rational, mature discussion about it. ? It's part of the game. It sucks to have your fight pulled out from under you so close to the fight, but it's part of the game. He's growing and he's maturing and he understands that now."

Penick's Analysis: The pictures of that cut were nasty enough, and getting three layers of stitches doesn't allow one to fight a month later. Considering he's not supposed to have contact with it still, his only choice was pulling out and pushing back to November at the earliest. It's good for him that Penn went along with a later date, and actually it works out well for both fighters, and the UFC, to have that fight be a part of a stacked card in Seattle on Fox. That's a great feature fight to have on network television, and even though it did hurt the UFC 152 card in the short term, ultimately that card was plenty strong, and the Penn-MacDonald matchup will have a better outlet.

Source: http://www.mmatorch.com/artman2/publish/UFC_2/article_14426.shtml

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