More than two years removed from suffering a gruesome broken leg against Uriah Hall at UFC 261 in April 2021, the former middleweight champion struggled mightily defending low kicks in a unanimous decision loss to Brad Tavares on Saturday night at TD Garden in Boston. Even worse for “The All-American” is that he might have suffered some more serious injuries in the bout.
At Saturday’s post-fight press conference, UFC president Dana White cited those injuries while urging Weidman to call it a career.
“I love Chris Weidman. I love him. I love his family. I think he should retire,” White said. “We talked to Dr. [Jeff Davidson]. He thinks he blew his ACL, MCL … The guy is just coming back from a gruesome injury and, listen man, Father Time is not our friend at all. But definitely, if you’re a professional athlete. Depending on the damage to the knee, you’re talking another year. So I would say. ‘Chris, I love you. Please, please retire.’”
Weidman has fallen on tough times in recent years. Including his title bout loss to Luke Rockhold at UFC 194, the Serra-Longo Fight Team product is just 2-7 in his last nine promotional appearances. According to White, Weidman has nothing left to prove.
"Weidman reached the pinnacle of the sport and did it in spectacular fashion, knocking out the greatest of all time [Anderson Silva],” White said. “What now? Why? To come back and feel it one more time. He felt it tonight, and he blew his knee out and he’s going to have to go through crazy surgery again and recover from it. It’s just like, why? You’ve done it all. You’ve accomplished everything that you could hope to accomplish in the UFC.”