Brad Pickett fractures spine, will fight at UFC 204 regardless

By bjpenndotcom - August 25, 2016

After Mike Tyson’s KO victory over Clifford Etienne in 2003, ‘Iron Mike’ infamously stated that he broke his back during training.

Brad Pickett could be delivering a very similar interview after UFC 204, where he’s scheduled to fight Iuri Alcântara in Manchester, England. Pickett, who was initially slated to fight at ‘UFC Hamburg’ on September 3rd, however a back injury forced him out of the fight.

The injury in question? A fractured spine. Pickett elaborated on the situation on his ‘One Punch Podcast’:

“I say it’s a new injury but it’s not. It sounds really bad but I fractured my spine,” Pickett said. “Normally you’d assume that I’d be bedridden and paralyzed, which obviously can happen [but it wasn’t that serious].

“The injury occurred when I was first meant to be making my UFC debut against Miguel Torres and I was training and I hurt my lower back wrestling. It was so bad, I ruptured my L5-S1 disc and I had to pull out of that fight. Demetrious Johnson stepped in, beat him and went on to get a title shot against Dominick Cruz.”

“Every now and again it flairs up and I get some lower back pain, so I have to ease off my training,” Pickett said. “What I do normally do is take a rest for a few days, and normally it settles down and I can train again, but this time it just wasn’t going away so I went and saw a back specialist in America who did X-rays and an MRI and stuff. He said because I have nothing between my L5 and S1 discs, it’s like vertebrate going on vertebrate, and over time I’d irritated it and got a small fracture in my spine.”