Bellator 268’s Lance Gibson Jr. fought through considerable adversity in his last outing.
Gibson (4-0) returns to the Bellator cage for the third time this weekend, after facing injury in his last fight, thought he didn’t let on. “Fearless” fought Marcus Surin at Bellator 257 in April and won a unanimous decision.
Gibson didn’t let the media know, but he injured his toe in the first minute of his fight with Surin, which hindered his performance.
“40 seconds into that fight, I dislocated one of my toes on the cage. Not many people know, I’m kind of letting it out now, but if you look at my Instagram, I put out very subtly,” Gibson told Cageside Press in an interview. “So, I was in the clinch, and I had an underhook, and I pressed off, and my toe got caught in between the canvas and the padding on the bottom of the cage, and it popped out. So I fought with a dislocated toe, obviously the entire fifteen minutes.”
Gibson also revealed that after the fight, doctors misdiagnosed his toe injury. When he got home, another trip to the doctor led to being told his toe was dislocated. There was too much fluid for them to pop it back in, so he had to hop around on a dislocated toe for 16 days.
“It was a fiasco and hurt like hell,” Gibson laughed.
On top of the dislocated toe, Gibson was poked in the eye and was compromised.
“I got poked in the eye in that fight too. My vision was completely glazed over, which impaired me, but I got the job done, and I fought through some adversity in that aspect, obviously physical adversity, and got the job done,” Gibson said.
The unanimous decision snapped his 100% finish rate, but Gibson isn’t too worried about it.
“Just because my streak of finishing people got snapped doesn’t mean that I can’t finish everybody else from now on,” Gibson said. The 26-year old fighter plans on finishing his opponent Raymond Pina at Bellator 268 this Saturday.
“I think it’s an awesome match-up, and I’m excited to get in there. He’s a good fighter. He’s got good wrestling, and he’s been able to get pretty much everybody down, but I believe I’m a different fighter than anybody he’s fought. I’ve got devastating submissions that I haven’t been able to Showcase yet. I got lots of moves that I can’t wait to show.”
“I’m ready to finish this fight, wherever it goes and however long it takes.”
Lance Gibson Jr. fights Raymond Pina at Bellator 268 on Saturday, October 16, 2021. The preliminary card will be available on YouTube, PlutoTV, and right here on Cageside Press.
