UFC light heavyweight contender Anthony Smith will be sidelined until early 2020 as he recovers from a second surgery on the broken hand he suffered in June against Alexander Gustafsson.
Although Smith
submitted Gustafsson at UFC Fight Night 153, he suffered a broken hand that required surgery. He was initially expecting to be out for four months; however, he revealed to MMA Fighting on Tuesday that he was forced to undergo a second 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 explained.
“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," he detailed.
"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.”
The timeline puts Smith's return to the Octagon somewhere in early 2020, but the No. 3 ranked UFC light heavyweight will approach his rehab with caution.
“I need to be smart about my recovery and make sure I’m not doing anything I shouldn’t be doing and pushing it when it’s not ready. Fortunately, I put myself in a position where I can sit as long as I need but you know me, I’m not going to sit any longer than I have to. That’s for damn sure," he said.
Smith expects to return to the Octagon in early 2020.
“Four months until I can punch again,” Smith said.
“We’re looking at January, February, we’ll get the machine fired back up again.”