Chris Weidman avoids serious knee injury but still suffered leg fracture at UFC 292

Chris Weidman avoided any serious knee injuries in his fight with Brad Tavares at UFC 292, but he didn’t escape fully unscathed.

The former middleweight champion made his return in August following a two-year layoff, which came after he snapped his leg in a gruesome injury during a 2021 fight with Uriah Hall. Weidman ultimately lost a unanimous decision in his return, as Tavares targeted both of his legs with a series of vicious kicks over three rounds.

UFC president Dana White hinted that Weidman may have suffered another major injury during the fight and begged him to “please, please retire.” That doesn’t sound like that’s in Weidman’s plans, however, although the former champ will still need some time to recover from a new fracture in his left leg after breaking his right leg two years ago.

“There was no ligament tears at all,” Weidman revealed on his Sirius XM show. “So ACL, LCL, MCL, PCL, all those ‘Ls’ that you do not want to tear because that’s like six months to a year of recovery. The ligaments are good.

“What did happen to me though, I have a fracture in my left leg. So he broke my leg with one of those leg kicks. I ended up switching to southpaw and figuring it out. But I’m pretty sure that’s when my leg broke, fractured it. It’s on the tibula head, right below my knee is where it broke. Upper tibia bone is what’s fractured. Recovery wise, it’s not bad at all. Four weeks. Four-week recovery, that’s it.”

With four weeks of recovery time needed for the fracture in his left leg, Weidman will likely have to wait until October to return to training, although there’s no word yet on when he might compete again.

Beyond his broken leg, Weidman has endured a multitude of surgeries — including four on his right leg — during his career, but the 39-year-old veteran is still plotting another comeback once this latest injury is healed.