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  - BRANDON VERA LIKELY OUT UNTIL MAY
Friday, January 11, 2008 - by Tom Hamlin - MMAWeekly.com
Brandon Vera has watched the tape over and over again. It’s the first exchange of the fight. He steps forward with a jab, meets Tim Sylvia’s oncoming face, and slides into the clinch.
“My thumb got caught and pulled back like a banana,” he says.
It was a trivial shot, but it quickly derailed him. He thought it was dislocated and tried to re-set the thumb mid-fight.
“I held my breath and pulled it real hard and it didn’t go back in,” he continues. “I finished the first round, went back to my coaches, who were like ‘(expletive) your left hand, you don’t need it! Use your right hand.’ I was like cool, I won’t use my left hand.”
Vera had broken his scaphoid, a cashew-sized bone that keeps the thumb from bending too far towards the wrist.
The searing pain in his digit prevented him from putting together any combinations, which prevented him from letting his kicks fly freely. He felt like a lame duck.
“I wanted to punch Tim so hard,” he says. “I should have just kept touching and moving, instead of trying to light him up early. He started hitting me; I couldn’t hit him back. I started throwing short elbows to try and catch him on his way in. I sucked. That was one of the most boring fights ever. I’m ashamed to have been a part of it.”
Vera wanted surgery immediately. His doctor told him he might have to stabilize the hand with a screw. When he woke up from the procedure, he had three.
The UFC wanted Vera to fight on its March 1 card in Columbus, Ohio, but he says May is the earliest he could re-emerge.
“The weekend after the fight, I still couldn’t pick up a plate of food,” he says. “We’re hoping for the best. I wish they would put me with Tim again, but it looks like I’m going to climb up the ladder again. I don’t care who they put me with, I’m banging. I’ll make sure not to punch so hard in the beginning; I’ll make sure I use up all the rounds.”
In the mean time, Vera makes the nine-mile bike ride every day to his Chula Vista gym, Alliance MMA, teaching classes to eager students. He works on the things he can. At home, he distracts himself with remote control racecars, watching his dog chase them around the house.
When asked about his thoughts on the upcoming heavyweight title fight between Silva and Minotauro Nogueira, he’s hesitant to talk about it. It still upsets him.
“It’s really hard to look at,” he says. “Coulda, shoulda, woulda been me, so it sucks.”
Vera is 30 and has five fights left on his UFC contract, so father time isn’t exactly knocking on his door, but like his previous layoff from the Octagon, the fight with Sylvia has been a forced lesson in patience.
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