The Time I Entered the Cage With a Broken Nose

It was the summer of 2013, and I had agreed to compete in my sixth professional fight in August, my first since November of the previous year. I began my career with three straight wins – one by decision and two by submission – but had lost my last two by decision. All of them had been in the light heavyweight division (205 pounds, 93 kg), but since I only walked around at 202 pounds and most who compete in that division walk around at 220 or more, I decided to cut weight and drop down to 185 and compete in the middleweight division. 

I’m sure that sounds a little shocking to those who aren’t involved with combat sports, but cutting weight is different than losing weight. A person who is cutting weight will be able to gain it all back, usually within 12 - 24 hours after they step off the scale at the weigh-ins. Most people who compete at middleweight are my size, so it made sense at that point in my career because my opponents weren’t going to get any smaller at that weight class, and the competition level would only continue to rise. 

I was nearing the end of a typical eight-week training camp, and things were going smoothly. It was the middle of week seven, and I had improved both my striking and takedown defense since my team and I knew that he was going to try and get me to the ground as fast as possible. Durwyn, my new coach, was a fast and formidable kickboxer who was a decorated amateur fighter but never competed at the professional level. He was almost as tall as me but much skinnier, and his technique was sharp as a knife. 

He and I were sparring kickboxing rounds during a training session one afternoon when, for some reason, he decided to throw a spinning back kick to the right side of my face. Since I don’t like getting punched or kicked in the head, I tend to do a decent job at keeping my hands up by my cheeks if they are not throwing a punch, so my boxing glove absorbed most of the impact. But that impact got passed along to my face, and the bottom part of my closed palm collided with my nose. Suddenly it began gushing blood like Niagra Falls just after Durwyn asked if I was alright. 

In what should have been an immediate “NO!”, my answer was “I don’t know, hang on,” because every athlete is in denial the first 5 - 10 seconds of an injury occurring. I went into the bathroom to stuff it full of paper towels when I looked in the mirror and noticed that my nose was no longer an equal distance to each eye but was instead much closer to my left eye than it had ever been. I didn’t know what to do, so I walked out of the bathroom and consulted the gym full of fighters-turned-medical experts.

I received some good advice from my friend Javier, who was also fighting that night. He told me that the same thing happened to him a while back and that he just put it back in place himself. It made sense the more I thought about it because we were in the United States, where a person might as well begin the process of declaring bankruptcy on the way to the emergency room, and part of the reason I was fighting in the first place was for a paycheck. I also wouldn’t have been allowed to fight again for several more months, a thought I couldn’t bear at the time. 

So, I decided to go with option B and put it back in line myself. I went back into the bathroom, looked in the mirror, let out a huge sigh, and proceeded to straighten my nose back as close to its original form as possible. It took two excruciating pulls from my right hand until I was able to breathe out of that side again, which was about 70 percent clear. Aesthetically it still favors the left to this day, but at the time it was good enough for me because the pain was starting to become a little unbearable. If I was scheduled to face someone who was a decent striker, then I would have probably called off the fight, but I was fighting a wrestler, so I decided to think about it instead.

I decided to go ahead and compete anyway and take my chances. I also saw it as a way to get free nose surgery if his fist even grazed my nose. That way, I could claim that it happened during the fight instead of by a careless coach in a sparring session. Both of my eyes were also heavily bruised from the incident, so I also had that to worry about when it came time to face my opponent at the weigh-ins. The last thing I needed was for him to know that my face was already sore going into the fight.

The reason that Cane, my previous coach, no longer wanted to train me anymore was that he had decided to step away from coaching fighters for a while, although that didn’t prevent him from checking in on me to see how training camp was going, which was frequent. The house where I was staying had a garage with enough room for a couple of small wrestling mats, and he would come over so we would drill ground technique. This practice increased once I had my nose broken and began the process of cutting 16 pounds six days from weigh-ins (the maximum weight allowed in non-title fights is one pound over the limit). One day he called me, and when I answered the phone he sounded more excited than I had ever heard anyone sound before.

“Hey, Dan, I’ve been watching videos on this guy, and I have a technique that will probably work on him! I’m going to come over because we need to work on this as much as possible before you leave for Oklahoma.”

MMA is a very unforgiving sport. There is a serious risk of injury every time a fighter steps inside the cage, whether it be from head trauma, a broken bone, torn ligaments, dislocated joints…I think the picture is clear now. An armbar submission is simply a hyperextension of the elbow, which can be administered from numerous positions. With enough pressure, the arm will snap like a dead twig in December. Cane noticed there was a tendency for my future opponent to expose his arm a certain way when he held the top position on the ground, and we drilled a way to bait him into doing it so I could catch his arm and finish the fight.

It was a good technique, so I was eager to continue practicing it, but in my mind, the odds of it actually happening were low. The weight cut was going fine until the day of the weigh-ins when I woke up weighing 193 pounds instead of the expected 191. It’s amazing the amount of water weight that can get lost in a sauna, but when you are fighting in a casino in northern Oklahoma, you have to improvise. Javier and I both had sauna suits, and we ended up jumping rope and doing jumping jacks in the sun outside so we could sweat as much as possible. Turning on the shower as hot as it can get and shadowboxing outside the bathtub was another good way we worked up a sweat, and Epsom salt baths were taken to lose the remaining pound or two if needed. It helped Javier, but I was still around 187 pounds.

Luckily my black eyes had subsided the day before. My nose was still incredibly tender, but at least there weren’t any marks on my face giving it away. At the weigh-ins, I stepped on the scale, which read 186.4 pounds. The guy reading the scale apparently believed in rounding down because “186 pounds” was the official announcement. I look over to see my opponent busy putting his clothes back on and talking to his team, so I quickly hop off to turn around and do the face-off picture for the cameras.

The next day I felt great. My body weight was back to normal and I was able to get some good-quality rest. My nose was still very much broken, though, so I still had that minor inconvenience to worry about. Later that afternoon, when we arrived at the casino, we were subjected to a series of rigorous physical tests by the doctors, including strenuous exercises like duck walking ten feet and touching my fingers to my nose (we would often joke about the low standards Oklahoma had regarding their medical regulations). I was careful when I had to demonstrate my superb motor skills by touching my nose, and told the doctors that everything was fine.

A lot of things can go through a fighter’s head as he is making his way down the aisle in front of a crowd and into the cage or ring. As I began walking up the steps to the cage, my usual thought was a self-reassuring “Welp, I signed up to do this crazy shit, and now it’s here” to try and calm the nerves a bit. My opponent entered the cage and ran a warm-up lap, fist-bumping me as he passed by. The announcer introduced us, the bell rang, and we squared off in the middle of the cage. He was quick with his head movement and worked to push the pace. I tried to time a left hook to his head as he was coming up, but I missed. He said something to me that I couldn't understand, then threw a leg kick and quickly shot for a successful takedown.

We ended up against the cage in front of his cornermen in what is known as the half-guard position, where my left leg was in between his legs as I was on my back while my right leg was on the outside of him. At one point, his shoulder bumped me in the nose, immediately causing it to bleed a little. “Great,” I thought. “We’ve barely gotten started, and it’s already bleeding.” I could hear his corner giving him instructions, and I managed to get my left leg free and wrap my legs around him, securing an offensive position known as the guard. From there, I wrapped my right arm over his left arm and waited until he used his right arm to pry against my chest so he could raise himself and punch me. When the timing was right, I swung my left leg over his head, creating a fulcrum out of his elbow and my hips, and began arching my back.

I could feel his elbow crunching over my athletic cup about the time he began screaming, and the referee quickly interfered and stopped the fight. A strong feeling of relief suddenly rushed over me. I had gambled and won. I made some money, improved my record to 4 - 2, didn’t take any damage, and recorded the fastest fight of my career at 59 seconds. After any competition, both fighters have to be evaluated by a physician after the fight regardless of the outcome or number of punches landed. It was at that point when I wished that he would've landed at least one punch because that way I could blame a broken nose on the fight and get it evaluated on the promotion's dime. Instead, I came clean and told them that I had lied to them earlier just so I could fight. They told me to just take it easy over the next few months until it was completely healed. That time I happily heeded their advice and was able to fight again in five months.

The fight will make a.lot more sense after watching this video that my opponent posted