Aspen Ladd has detailed her knee injury, which prevented her from competing at UFC on ESPN 12.
Ladd was scheduled to take on Sara McMann this Saturday night (June 27). The bout would’ve taken place inside the UFC APEX in Las Vegas, Nevada. News broke that Ladd tore her ACL and MCL during training and will obviously have to be sidelined for a while.
Aspen Ladd Talks Knee Injury
Speaking to MMAJunkie, Ladd discussed what led to her knee injury just ahead of the planned 135-pound scrap against McMann.
“It was my last hard day of training, last sparring session,” recalled Ladd. “It was a wrestling-type situation and then just my foot got caught and the rest of my body turned, heard a loud pop. That was a week before I got diagnosed with what it was. So during that week, I had still planned to fight. Don’t get me wrong, it hurt, but it was like, ‘Eh, my weight is really good, it just hurts, I can work through this,’ and that was the plan.”
Ladd says her immediate focus is on how to handle her injury to receive the best possible treatment. After that, she plans to return to the Octagon as soon as possible. Ladd also admitted that she’d be open to a featherweight bout upon her return. We’ve seen Ladd have difficulty cutting weight even when she makes the bantamweight limit.
Back in Dec. 2019, Ladd scored a TKO victory over Yana Kunitskaya. It was a much-needed performance after her quick TKO loss to Germaine de Randamie. Ladd will have to wait a little longer before she can capitalize on her win and attempt to make it two in a row.
