Las Vegas, NV – Not hell nor high water…..or getting hit by a car could stop UFC middleweight Dusko Todorovic from accepting a winning a fight in the octagon.
Todorovic defeated Maki Pitolo via TKO in the featured prelim slot of UFC Vegas 44 on Saturday night.
What nobody knew before the fight was that Todorovic was still suffering a leg injury from getting hit by a car just months before the fight.
“It was a delicate situation. By the end of July I got hit by a car. The guy ran over me while I was crossing, going over the crossing. So he messed up my left leg pretty good. I knew that call was going to come so I was thinking at that time of trying to prepare for a possible bout you know. So when the contract came I was still not training properly or anything. I couldn’t use my foot the right way. There was definitely lots of set backs during this camp and difficulties all regarding that injury,” Todorovic said.
“I didn’t want to talk with anyone about it. I didn’t let even my family know. Just my girl knows so yeah it was pretty crazy.”
During the fight you couldn’t really tell that Todorovic was compromised but he knew the leg wasn’t 100% and any leg kick could make it worse.
“I was prepared to go with my conditioning and I believe I could have go on for 15 minutes but obviously if I took a badly placed kick or something on that foot or maybe even if someone attacked a submission on it I couldn’t do what I would normally do. So in that term it would be bad for me.”
As for what is next for Todorovic healing his leg is on top of his list of priorities.
“I want to stay active but I need to take care of this because it’s not a light injury. Specially after car hit me and so it’s still pretty fresh, you know, it was July. The wound itself closed up maybe a month and a half ago. So it’s still pretty fresh. I would like to heal it properly so I can prepare for a fight and go with my A game in the next bout.”
Watch the full UFC Vegas 44 post-fight press conference with Dusko Todorovic above.
