UFC lightweight Jared Gordon lost his most recent bout in the cage in February, but as he revealed yesterday, he fought with a completely fucked-up left hand. Gordon told ESPN’s Ariel Helwani that he suffered a grisly hand injury, requiring 21 stitches, when he defended his friend in a wild street fight outside of a barbershop less than two months before his fight.


Gordon and his pal Jeffery Gallardo were outside of the shop with Gallardo’s former jiu-jitsu pupil, when two dudes rolled up on Gallardo’s friend and spat in his face. Gordon tried to defuse the situation, but when fists started flying, he stepped in to defend his group.


As you can see, the storefront window breaks and glass slashes the finger on Gordon’s left hand. They managed to chase the two men off, but Gordon needed stitches. That wasn’t the end of the injury.

A week later, Gordon said the wound on his middle finger busted open when he was training, and he needed plastic surgery to repair the gash. He hurt it again when he fell in a train station, which may have led to an infection. It turned out that Gordon also tore a ligament in his middle finger.

“So now I have like an open wound on my hand, this gaping hole on my finger, and my finger is really the size of a sausage,” he said (transcription via MMA Fighting). “It was ridiculous. That took about four weeks for it to close.”

Gordon shared several incredibly gross photos of his finger, and yeah, he wasn’t exaggerating. His fight was coming up, and he couldn’t even strike with his left hand in training. He lost to Carlos Diego Ferreira in the first round by TKO at UFC Austin. While he used his left hand during the fight, he didn’t look too comfortable.


Insurance covered the damage to the window, and Gordon told Helwani that Gallardo’s pupil actually came out the best of anyone in the fight: