Anthony Smith’s return to the Octagon has taken a detour. The former title challenger needed hand surgery following his win over Alexander Gustafsson. Unfortunately, it did not heal properly and he had another hand surgery.
“[The first surgery] went well initially but a week and a half ago I had another [surgery]. The first one wasn’t successful so we had to do another one about 10 days ago. I’m back on the horse starting over again and trying to stay positive,” Smith said to MMA Fighting.
“The bone, the first metacarpal was completely snapped and displaced. Part of the bone had started peeling back because I kept throwing it during the fight. So they went in and put a plate on it, fixed a lot of the scar tissue and stuff like that. They fixed all that. I don’t know exactly what happened but the bone displaced again and that broke the plate so they had to go in and replace the plate, put in a new one. Take bone graft from my leg so I got two holes drilled in my leg. So it’s been a mess. I was out about four months from the beginning so we kind of restarted that four months a week and a half ago.”
When he will return now is to be seen. He says he won’t be able to punch for four months but knows he has to be smart about his recovery. He doesn’t plan on rushing anything but is still hopeful for a 2020 return.
“We’re looking at January, February, we’ll get the machine fired back up again,” Smith concluded.
