Orion Cosce is healthy and eager to make his UFC debut.
The mixed martial arts world really hasn’t heard from UFC welterweight Orion Cosce since he had to pull out of his octagon debut against Nicholas Dalby at UFC 255. When he was scratched from the card, it was an undisclosed injury, but now he can talk about it. Kind of.
“It’s hard to explain because I don’t really understand myself,” Cosce said in an interview with Cageside Press. “I was just training for the fight, getting ready because you know, Nicholas Dalby, he’s a tough competitor. I remember I felt something pull during a training session in my back, and I was like, you know what, I’ve better take the rest of the day off. I felt fine, but then I went to bed, and like 30 minutes later, I woke up in the worst pain I’ve ever felt since I was in high school when I had a dislocated hip with sciatica.”
“I didn’t sleep for like four days,” Cosce continued. “I think the longest I’d sleep at a time would be like one hour to two hours, and then I’d be awake because of how much pain I was in. But I was completely numb all the way down from my neck, all the way through my arm.”
After Cosce got some massage therapy and chiropractic work done, he eventually went and got an MRI.
“It turned out, there’s like a lot more stuff that I was dealing with. And they said it was like years and years’ worth of stuff that I was dealing with at this point. I got a shoulder MRI and they said a suspected labral tear, but they weren’t sure.”
The doctors recommended he take steroidal shots, Vicodin and Norco but the welterweight didn’t want to get dependant on them and decided to do his own physical therapy.
“I started doing more light, active stuff, you know, worked through the pain. And, uh, yeah, just kept training and kept training.”
I feel stronger. I feel fast. I feel way better now than I did, even when I was like training for the fight.
“I’m lifting more now. I’m, I’m faster than I was. And my endurance is actually pretty on par with what it was compared to,” Cosce added. “So I, you know, I think it was more so my body just pretty much said fuck off because I was training too much.”
Cosce hasn’t fought since earning a contract on season four of Dana White’s Contender Series. But he is ready to get back in the octagon as soon as April, and he has some names.
“I want to get four or five before the end of the year,” Cosce said. “I’m hoping maybe mid or late-April. I would love to fight Dalby but you know, Dalby did win. So, you know, if I come into the UFC, there’s no reason for him to fight me. He doesn’t have to say yes.”
“I can find somebody else, maybe another up and comer, or maybe somebody else like a Rodriguez or Perry, or force Mickey Gall to take fights because he’s scared to get kicked out of the UFC. If he loses one more, he’s probably going to be out. You know, it’s just one of those things. I’m down to fight whoever.”
Catch the rest of the interview above, where Orion Cosce talks about his brother’s first loss, the welterweight division, Mortal Kombat, and more.
