A leading sports orthopedic surgeon and UFC ringside physician has cast doubt on Conor McGregor’s claims that he was injured going into his bout with Dustin Poirier.
Conor has gone on a social media offensive in recent days, claiming that the broken tibia he suffered at UFC 264 was the result of stress fractures in his leg sustained prior to the fight. The “Notorious” has asserted that the UFC and its “head doctor” were aware of the injury and that he almost pulled out of the bout as a result.
It’s not the first time Conor has made vociferous, pre-fight injury claims. Following his loss to Khabib Nurmagomedov in 2018, McGregor infamously stated that his “foot swelled like a balloon” thanks to an injury sustained leading into the fight.
Conor McGregor’s MRI Image Analysed By Dr David Abbassi
Hoping to add further weight to his claims, Thursday, Conor tweeted a photo of what appears to be a doctor looking at an MRI image of his leg. At face value, the image seems to lend medical authority to his claims.
However, Dr David Abbassi, a ringside physician for the UFC, Bellator, and ONE Championship disagrees. The self-styled “Orthopedic Sports Surgeon to the Pros” has tweeted his analysis of the image, which he says fails to show the stress fractures claimed by Conor McGregor.
“The problem is when you zoom in on that MRI, which I did, there’s no evidence of any stress fracture to the lower leg, where he did in fact have a fracture. It does look like there’s a little bit of signal at the ankle joint, which is lower than where he sustained that fracture and some tinnitus,” said Dr. Abbassi in his analysis posted to Twitter.
Dr. Abbassi, who regularly posts his breakdowns of MMA injuries to social media, also noted a number of other glaring inconsistencies with the MRI which further refute Conor’s claims.
“From this one image, you should absolutely be able to see any evidence of stress fracture or stress reaction of the lower leg. That being said, if doctors were concerned about that and looking for a stress fracture of the area that he fractured, of his lower tibia, this would not even have been the study that we would have ordered. We would have ordered an MRI of his leg. This is an MRI of his ankle, which also kind of doesn’t support that.”
What do you think? Did Conor McGregor really go into his UFC 264 bout with stress fractures in his leg?
