Stitches are causing some serious headaches for the UFC coming into their big Abu Dhabi pay-per-view on October 21st.
Paulo Costa recently revealed that he had surgery on his elbow three weeks ago due to bursitis. The injury got infected with staph, and there’s a good chance the stitches from the operation won’t have healed in time to let him face Khamzat Chimaev at UFC 294. The UFC will make a decision soon, but it’s not looking good.
Then there’s Charles Oliveira, who had to pull out of his lightweight title fight with Islam Makhachev after getting headbutted in practice. His team had a local doctor stitch him up instead of going to a proper plastic surgeon, and now he won’t be able to compete. Featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski has agreed to replace him.
But get this: Volkanovski also has some serious looking stitches above his left eye. A video from October 5th of “The Great” by a lake shows Volk hesitant to jump into the water because of his fresh sew-up job.
“Get in there,” the cameraman tells him.
“I got stitches, man!” Volkanovski replies as he sits on the dock watching his City Kickboxing teammates swim.
“Look at that, toughest guy on the planet, pound-for-pound,” someone jokes. “Islam would! Guaranteed Islam would! Maybe the judges were right, eh?”
The teasing gets an annoyed Alex up to the edge of the water but he hesitates a moment.
“I’m telling ya, Iike, I just…” he says before shaking his head and going for it, doing a frog dive into the water.
Let’s hope he cleaned that wound well after that! Can you imagine the UFC having to cancel their replacement main event over some lakeside tomfoolery?
Fortunately, not all cuts are created equal. The stitches above Volkanovski’s eye do look substantial, and they are in a bad spot. Any time a wound starts to enter into the brow and eye socket area, it’s not great. Hopefully the stitches aren’t too fresh, and the cut wasn’t too deep.
Charles Oliveira’s gnarly cut was never going to be ready for UFC 294. This cut? Worth paying attention to. It’ll probably re-open during the fight. Could even be an issue in the fight. But will it stop the fight from happening? We doubt it.
This story originally appeared on MMA Mania
