Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0CaEv9b-7c
the jurgen experience undisputed the undisputed champ ladies and gentlemen it feels amazing god how good does that feel for you oh top of the world liberating after all that [ __ ] you had to take from people for so long how many months was it 13 months before i could get back in there teen months of people talking [ __ ] yeah it's a long time it's a long time like but how sweet must it have been when they raise your hand and you got the w and still it was kind of a mind [ __ ] a little bit because it was a split decision which i was like wait i i mean like going back now i can see why people were saying that but in my head i thought i had that thing locked up easy dead to rights and uh i was really confident going into the uh scorecards and then when that happened i was like you got to be kidding me they're really trying to take this away from me after 13 months i worked this hard but um you got it yeah that was a weird split decision i mean it was a very good fight but you definitely won the fight i watched it again today actually i haven't i've watched it one time with people normally after the fight within i usually watch it that night and i usually watch it a couple of times and i analyze it and i break it down take notes wins losses because that's how you grow but for this one i just wanted to break and just get away from the sport a little bit and it's kind of decompressed because like i said man 13 months is a long time to just have people just chirping at you and you can't physically do anything because you're healing so um i was just really happy that i got it done but now i need to go back and start to get back on that horse a little bit to get ready for the next one yeah go back and watch it you're gonna appreciate it it's it's a great fight it's a very good fight but you're just different you're so much different than the first fight which made you know for someone who's had neck injuries myself i was wanting to ask you like how bad was your neck [ __ ] up before the first fight yeah so going into the fight it was [ __ ] up so just to give a kind of a storyline
college wrestling freshman year me and this guy talking [ __ ] to each other we call each other out he's up a weight class for me but he last year he wrestled the same weight class as me i'm very competitive that kid was competitive we're both from new york so we go after he slams me spikes me on my head his name is dave uh spiked me on my head i had stingers so anytime i would turn my head i would find like a radiant pain from like the crown of my head all the way down to like somewhere around that c c disc like right around that area and then each year it got progressively worse like that got better but each year after that wrestling pulling on the head we do hand fighting drills where we put our hands behind our back and you got to keep your head up in a wrestling position and someone your partner is just pulling on your neck and ganking and yanking it so that didn't help jiu-jitsu didn't help all these other things so over the years it got progressively worse i have mris dating back from i think 2014 when when i had my ufc debut and every time was about my neck almost every single fight i had an mri about my neck because i kept thinking okay this is the time i might have to get a fix this is the time and we were able to just let it heal do pt and then before the first yawn fight when he pulled out i was contemplating on pulling out because my neck had a really bad flare-up and i thought i wasn't gonna make it to the fight and um thankfully he pulled out gave me some time to do some pt at the ufc pi that helped out a ton all everyone over there and then i got a shot but the funny part about the shot the cortisone shot they put it in the wrong spot but he's the doctor said oh you but you'll still get the effects he put it like a a disc level too high wow so c67 was mine he put it in the c5 c6 he said i'm like well it's not the end of the world but i did feel some relief but then i go through training i'm rolling with this guy at 10th planet and i'm in vegas and um it's a guy i've never trained with before jumps on my
neck and a guillotine cranks my neck on a flow roll to warm up it's the very second flow roll right before the fight again i think about three weeks before the fight and i as soon as he did that and the role was done i i go to him i was like i know the rest of this week is shot and i'm probably gonna be out um for a couple of days because it is and that's exactly what happened and then we had the fight whatever after the knee i started having some atrophy because now they're rushing me to get because i i texted dana when i was when you stay after the knee tell everybody when you got illegally yeah from the first fight um in march march 6 2021 that night went to the hospital and uh i texted dana white and i told him like i want i want to have the rematch and get this done and settle the right way like as soon as we can kind of thing they were offered me to fight like i think like two months what was it march april may i was like dude if i was suspended if that was a legal shot i would have been suspended there's no way i can fight in may like if it was a legal fight ending sequence i would not even be clear to to compete did you get concussed from that 100 so my analysts out there my doctors that know what a concussion is they know all the symptoms they know what a concussion is i threw up later that night they thought i was drinking i was like i didn't drink my friends were there and we they came to see me so they all spent a ton of money come out buying uh tickets um for the fight for the flight and some of them even gathered at the house that couldn't pay for the tickets to get out so i had about 30 something people at the house and here i come back from the hospital and i still don't remember much of the night i had to get like people to kind of help me recall what actually happened and when we're at the house i kind of want to just go to bed but then at the same time i felt bad because everyone spent so much money to come see
me you know these are friends from college from high school middle school so at that point i'm kind of like well i can't just be mopey and you know i have these guys trying to get lift me up hey guy you you made it here one of the hardest things to do is to get to the top to even earn a title shot everything you had to do just to get the title shot um you finally got it it's not the way you want to win but you get an opportunity to do it again you know i had to keep it in perspective and they helped me do that and they just they wanted me to have a toast so i had a toast with the with the with my with my friends and family and people took that and i never posted anything but people took that because my friends were posting stuff because they were excited i mean i can understand why me i'm not very excited as an athlete you know you know no one wants to win like that so it's not a very exciting moment but i did understand this that this was special to have people that cared about you and have been following my career for so long to come out and want to hang out so for that moment for me it was just really cool just to to take that moment in with them like hey man like after this i got to kind of get back to work and uh we had a toast i said a couple words we'll do it again blah blah blah and you know they said to the champion whatever there was videos out then it looked like i was faking i'm like guys i didn't know there's a protocol how you're supposed to react after being illegally need to in the head from a shot you don't even see right while you're exhausted in a high stakes fight i didn't know there was a certain way you're supposed to act i'm like was i supposed to pretend like i was being like macho like i'm just trying to gather myself but after that knee i tried to get back into the gym like a week later i started to hit the bag to try to see if i can make may happen but i told my manager that's probably not going to be a go they asked for june that would have been the brandon moreno fight i think they had that rematch and that would have been cool but i couldn't do push-ups i hit the bag i was getting radiating pain down my arm and uh i
couldn't do pull-ups push-ups um bag work all that stuff so this disc that you had was it bulging at this point or had it deteriorated to the point where it's bone on bone like where were you at so that's a good question i never really asked it's just i'm having i was having pressing from i guess herniation is when it's like spilling out yeah so it was that's what it is yes herniating yeah so i guess that would be the proper term so it was spilling out into the spinal column and pushing on the nerve and they said if it doesn't unblock within two to four weeks that muscle could just end up just being like i could just lose muscle and that would just be the that's boss ruden have you ever seen boss rooten's arm his arm i haven't seen it but i've heard about it it's crazy he has one arm he calls baby arm because it's like it's so atrophied it's like he has nothing there his other arm's jacked and he's got his right arm he goes i can't even hold a gallon of milk out it's crazy yeah and people don't understand how big of like how severe of a thing that really is in years and years and years for him and it still hasn't grown back exactly so that could have been me yeah try to be tough and say you know i'm just gonna go fight and um they looked at it again and surgery was the option i was so afraid to do the surgery though because i just wasn't sure how that was gonna so let's explain the surgery you have uh an artificial disc this replacement yeah yeah and weidman had the same thing right so he did like a discectomy he never had an artificial disc no he does yeah but the first one he did was a discectomy i think where they just clean it out yeah and then i guess that didn't do too well and then they went in and actually took it out and replace it so we're like blood brothers so when he so when he had his uh disc you at least had a friend that it was a training partner you knew well and you got a chance to ask him what the recovery was like and how is he doing is he is he good to go with that now or is he having issues well he fought after i mean he fought you right you ride a hall i mean obviously well that was that was a crazy yeah
but he's trained after that um i think he actually fought even other fights after that as well if i'm not mistaken i think he had a couple of fights i think he had a couple but he said doesn't bother him same thing with me you could barely even see my scar and so your neck feels just like a normal neck now it's weird so i i hit the doctor up um dr robert walker's watkins jr he's the man super cool super accessible and um really like checks up on his patients which which not a lot of people do that and thank god he was the guy who did handle the procedure because i think he did a phenomenal job from what i know and um just being very hands-on with me walking me through the process when i'm asking him about my recovery from a neurological standpoint when i'm trying to get back into training and i'm like not feeling the muscle endurance and i still feel like i'm slowing down and uh he did a good job walking me through everything just saying like hey man it just kind of just takes time to stay with the stuff and the protocol as long as you're not having any pain kind of thing so when you're saying muscle endurance like like your neck was fatiguing is that what you're saying just about everything everything like a lot quicker like like physically i looked good but like internally like all the the neurological things like the wiring it's like since they severed the nerves i guess it just took a while for your nerves well i mean i would imagine like when you cut the neck that's there's probably nerve endings in there they don't cut your nerves well i know i think the nerves move out of the way or something like that they push them out of the way yeah but when they do cut in like something happens there mechanically where you have to like get everything back to working the way that was before do you have an image of what it looks like now like an mri or an x-ray or something like that where we could see the fake disc that always freaks me out um i might have something on my ig eddie bravo's got one of those uh in his lower back he's got a fake one i know a
lot of guys that have them now you know it's one of the things that you know we were talking about people that have uh issues over time and get surgeries over time from jiu-jitsu like everybody has something eventually but a lot of guys are getting disc replacements yeah i i do have a picture posted i mean it might take me a while to find it because i don't have one on instagram yeah you'll find it but um yeah man it was just a crazy process like just to get back and after the knee then i did the surgery and i was afraid to do it because i just wasn't sure what i was gonna look like because i there was only like three people who have done it allen joe band he was very great with me as well oh allen did yeah and i think we had we actually had the same doctor and um i asked him about it and we got to talk and that was cool that he got to express everything and kind of similar feelings for the two of us so that was amazing to talk to him talk to wyman i talked to wyman's doctor but i almost felt like he the guy didn't really you know i'm not trying to offend anybody but it just felt like he did doesn't didn't really no i don't say care but it didn't seem like he was really it was i feel like i was just another number to him kind of thing that happens with a lot yeah so i just i think that's the most pc way to put it bummer yeah when doctors start thinking people are just like numbers like this is my neck we're talking about no i'm like and i'm not just a regular i mean i am a regular guy but not just a i don't do a regular job [ __ ] regular guys you're the [ __ ] bantamweight champion in the world and your job is crazy as [ __ ] oh there it is wow wow so that's articulating disc so that disc uh allows your neck to move as freely as if you had the regular disc tissue in there yeah and you don't do you feel anything in there so that's what i was oh yeah that's what i was i was gonna say so i hit the doctor up um dr watkins and i go is it weird does that feel like sometimes i need to oil my neck like a like a car because it feels like the joint it gets
like dry because i can hear it go sometimes not all the time um got my shake shack is that right after you had it done yeah wow got shake shack out there i needed that go back to the other picture jamie shake shack needs to step their [ __ ] up though man they do yeah what's the matter like just a service sometimes is yeah it's like but they'd make a damn good milkshake so i'm okay with it that is wild looking at that neck thing you