New footage from Conor McGregor's documentary has detailed the severity of a hand injury that sidelined him for all of 2019.
McGregor, 34, broke his hand during training roughly five months after his UFC loss to bitter rival Khabib Nurmagomedov. The former two-weight champion was in "fight shape" at the time of his injury, which delayed his return until the beginning of 2020. Brought to light in his Netflix documentary 'McGregor Forever', the Irishman first noticed something was wrong when his hand started to click in training.
"Oh this is clicking, like literally clicking. It's like moving into a click or something," McGregor said whilst moving his wrist around. "It feels a bit broke to be honest. It's banged up." McGregor was then informed that his hand was broken and he would need to undergo surgery to fix it, preventing him from training for three months.
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McGregor underwent successful surgery for the injury but delayed his recovery after returning to training too quickly. "What happened was I had two wires put in it. It was taken out of a cast after five days but that was too soon, then i was shadowboxing again and moved it so the wires came loose and I had to go again. I was in great shape before I broke my hand, fight shape," he said.
The Irishman could be seen training on a rowing machine with two pins in his hand, but he suffered another setback when his hand got infected. "I had rough week where it got like infected. Antibiotics, it was a bleeding heavy week it was. I dipped down badly, in my headspace I didn't know what was going to happen," he added.
'Notorious' eventually returned to the octagon at UFC 246 in January 2020 when he knocked out Donald Cerrone in just 40 seconds. McGregor didn't fight again for another year due to the Covid-19 pandemic and he suffered his first knockout loss in his return at the hands of Dustin Poirier in their rematch.
McGregor will look to win his first fight in over three years when he takes on Michael Chandler later this year, but no date or venue has yet been announced for their fight. The UFC rivals recently completed filming for season 31 of The Ultimate Fighter against each other as the reality TV series airs at end of this month.
