Irene Aldana suffered broken foot two days before Holly Holm bout, will have surgery
It appears Irene Aldana is out for the rest of 2020.
The UFC women’s bantamweight contender said she suffered a broken foot two days prior to her bout with former champion Holly Holm earlier this month in the main event of UFC on ESPN 16 in Abu Dhabi. The injury requires surgery, and Aldana (12-6 MMA, 5-4 UFC) will go under the knife Monday.
“It’s broken; I have a broken bone and it’s definitely going to need surgery,” Aldana said in Spanish on “Hablemos MMA EXTRA.” “I will be getting it on Monday. It seems it’s a very simple surgery.
“I’ll need around a month-and-a-half or a month to be able to return to training, then like another month or two to be able to be return to a normal training camp. But everything is OK. It’s unfortunate that it required surgery, but it’s part of the sport.”
Aldana’s decision loss to Holm snapped a two-fight winning streak for the Mexican fighter. She hoped for a return in December, but with the news of the surgery, she expects to be out for the rest of 2020. Aldana targets a comeback for early 2021.
“Robles” said the injury happened just a couple of days before the event. But since the fight was close and it was her first main event against a big name in Holm, Aldana decided to roll the dice.
“I was training, and I had a very strange accident; it was bizarre,” Aldana recalled. “I made a mistake and threw a kick badly timed, and that’s how I got injured. It hurt a lot, but I decided to continue. We were already there. We had everything ready. The fight was right there, so I felt like I couldn’t cancel the fight with such short notice.
“I felt that because of my training, my mentality, my character, I would be able to move forward with the fight because as an athlete I want to give my best, even in my worst days. And I also like to face those challenges, knowing I’m not 100 percent and giving it my all.”
Aldana knew something was off, as her foot hurt during the two remaining days of fight week and then during the fight. But she had no idea her foot was broken until she got it checked out afterwards.
“It was something that affected me,” Aldana explained. “I couldn’t move well, I couldn’t execute the game plan how I had it planned. I was also facing a former champ, a great athlete and a very tough competitor, so I’m not taking anything away from Holly.
“Maybe I would’ve still lost, but maybe I would’ve had a better performance or maybe I would’ve had a better shot at winning the fight. We’ll never know. But my foot started failing me in the fight, and it wasn’t responding. I panicked, and I stopped thinking on what I was supposed to do.”
Aldana admits the defeat stung and she’s upset at how things played out. Yet the Lobo Gym product is leaving the loss behind and focusing on improving and learning from the experience.
“I definitely felt the defeat, and I feel sad,” Aldana said. “No one likes to lose. I’ve obviously lost in fights before, but I’ve always felt like I could say I lost but I gave it my all, and that’s not how it was for this one, and that’s what hurts the most.
“I couldn’t fight the way I fight. I couldn’t fight and give it my 100 percent. It’s something that I’m upset about, but at the same time I tell myself, ‘Hey, I’m fighting the best in the world, in a pandemic, doing this while everything is very difficult in the world right now. I got COVID and overcame it. I’m still in the top five of the division, and they’re giving me fighters who’ve been doing this for years. I haven’t been fighting as long as these people. In a way, winning or losing, just getting to this level I can see how far I’ve come.
“It’s time to take the defeat in and act. I want to focus on what I’m going to do next, on what I can improve, so I can come back even stronger. I can’t control what happened, but I can control what I do about it.”
