Conor McGregor’s Knee Injury Revealed (HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED)

Conor McGregor’s long-awaited return to the Octagon ended in devastating fashion tonight when his knee buckled during the opening moments of his UFC 329 rematch against Max Holloway.

What’s up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, athleanx. com. So, I have to say I’m pretty devastated. I was watching the Conor McGregor fight like a lot of you probably were and were anticipating his return after all this time and a devastating injury took place. And I want to just get right into it here.

As a physical therapist, I’ve seen this a lot. I know the mechanism, but I think it would be interesting to quickly show you guys how this type of thing happens. This is not due to a lack of training. This is not due to a lack of preparation. If anything, this is probably due to a over-enthusiasm from Conor in terms of finally returning and the adrenaline pumping to maybe even attempt a move like this right off the bat.

So, he tried this spinning roundhouse kick to start the fight literally coming right out of his corner attempting to do this kick to Max Holloway. The the landing here is the injury. Essentially, as soon as he lands here, that right knee ACL blows out. Right? Now he tries to continue fighting.

As always, Conor’s got balls. He continued to try to fight. Could barely stand up, fell off his feet three more times or two more times and couldn’t continue eventually. But, I want you guys to watch this again. All right?

So, I want to point out the mechanism here. So, when he jumps, obviously it’s a very rotational kick, right? You’re rotating with a lot of force, a lot of power. When the foot hits the ground right here, it becomes essentially stuck, right? Stuck in this position here.

It can’t move anymore. As soon as it hits the ground, it could spin a little bit, but it really can’t move. But, the hips are still spinning with a lot of force. Not to mention the fact that whenever a foot does hit the ground, especially from a jump like that, the ground reaction forces are many times your body weight. So, it’s not just a body weight of 170.

Here’s a body weight of 170 times many more factors into that that basically causes huge amount of torque that starts to continue to spin the femur on a fixed tibia, right? The tibia is now in contact with the ground and now the the femur continues to rotate. That’s one of the number one mechanisms for the ACL tearing. The second thing, and they go together, is the fact that all that force that he was jumping with and landing with, there’s a lot of anterior displacement in that direction. And when you do that, the tibia’s job, the ACL’s job is to hold that tibia and prevent it from moving forward on the femur.

It’s preventing this motion, but gets even worse than that because if you look at how he lands here, he lands on a flexed knee, slightly flexed knee. Right here you can see the flexion of the knee. That’s just going to make the situation even worse because the quadriceps are now going to engage and pull on that tibia again through the connection of the patellar tendon, which is going to yank on that tibia even more to pull it forward. It’s a it’s basically all three components, that rotation, the anterior translation, and again the contraction of the quad, that will instantly tear that. And this happens in milliseconds.

There’s nothing you can do about it. There’s another angle right here. This is a good angle. And you see him come down, watch the foot. The foot now is in contact with the ground and fixed.

Now, all the rotation is still happening though from that kick. You can even see as Holloway starts to move out to the side there, Conor’s almost trying to track him with the leg still, still trying to make contact, so still rotating. And again, that foot’s not going anywhere. The femur itself, the upper leg is going to continue to rotate. That lower leg’s not going anywhere again.

And now you get that torque and that internal rotation, and again that anterior translation of the tibia. You can literally see it popping here. You can see a shift right there. It’s kind of kind of getting blocked by his hand, but you can see the shift right there in the knee right there. And of course, now it’s it’s it’s done.

Has nothing to do with the leg that was injured. If anything, uh I did hear Joe Rogan say something about him almost wanting to prove that that leg was good, right? The leg that has the metal rod in it now can throw a kick, can exert damage, can do what it’s supposed to do, right? But and again, probably the adrenaline at the moment. It was a huge return.

I was pumped to watch the fight. I love the UFC. Um just devastating, you know, anytime I see an athlete who works really, really hard to come back against all odds. He was a long shot in this fight for sure, but uh because Max Holloway is a badass who is is going to you know, obviously be hard to beat no matter who you are, but we coming off of a 5-year layoff, it’s going to be very difficult to beat someone like that. But a lot of people were pulling for McGregor and it’s just tragic to see this happen again.

By the way, this is the third ACL, third time he’s blown his ACL. He did it against Holloway the first time, but was able to make his um way through that fight with groundwork and and still getting a win, but um it’s just it just sucks. So, anyway, the mechanism is is so obvious to see and um you know, there’s nothing that he could have done that would have prevented it other than the overenthusiastic attempt to maybe make this kick and requiring a very specific landing. Uh it just is what it is. So, if you guys are um watching the fight, you were disappointed.

I am, too, but again, I always say, keep in perspective. These guys are athletes. They train really, really hard. They do not want this to happen. This is the worst-case scenario for any competitive athlete, especially someone as competitive as as um Conor McGregor.

It just is what it is. All right, guys. See you soon.