Want more wrestling news, rumors, and results? Be sure to visit PWInsider.com and PWInsiderXtra.com.
Former UFC Bantamweight Champion Cody Garbrandt scored a unanimous decision win over Trevin Jones on the preliminary card of UFC 285.
A victorious Garbrandt, after the event, revealed that a neck injury nearly derailed his comeback fight.
“I had a lot of things going on in the last 16 months. Even just prior to last week and this morning, there were so many things that were just trying to block and not let me get to the octagon,” Garbrandt told reporters at the UFC 285 post-fight press conference (transcript via Danny Segura & Ken Hathaway of MMA Junkie). “I ended up injuring my neck and had to have a nerve block put in my neck last week.
“My last takedown in my warmup this morning, I ended up slamming on my neck and ended up losing all full range of motion on my left arm. I was like, ‘You know, there’s never going to be an ideal situation, just like in life. There’s never going to be an ideal situation.’ I was just excited and believed in myself.”
That win for Garbrandt was the fighter’s first in almost three years, with his last victory coming at UFC 250 in June of 2020.
Garbrandt also states that the neck injury did affect him during the fight against Jones.
“In one of the takedowns I got, I ended up, for about two minutes of the round, I kept looking at the clock because I had a really bad stinger,” Garbrandt said. “He almost got me in a guillotine and fought out of it and the arm was completely dead.
“Like I said, there’s never an ideal situation. You have another trained killer trying to take your head off to get his money, and who knows what he’s facing, what he’s got going on in his life. I’m just forever grateful that we didn’t come out with any serious injuries.”
