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Sage Northcutt was one of the fighters getting a fairly strong push from the UFC, but left the promotion on the heels of a three-fight winning streak to fight in Southeast Asian.
Northcutt followed in the footsteps of Eddie Alvarez and Demetrious Johnson to ink a deal with ONE Championship. His, however, was a disastrous debut, and not only because Cosmo Alexndre knocked him out in 29 seconds.
Alexandre’s right hand literally was bone shattering.
Northcutt tried to stand and trade with the striking veteran, who needed just one brutal punch to send him crashing to the canvas.
One of his coaches at Team Alpha Male, UFC Hall of Famer Urijah Faber, recently weighed in on the fight, describing the horrible injury and admitting that Northcutt probably shouldn’t have followed through with that fight in the first place.
“Dude, got his face blasted. We said eight fractures… literally 30 different pieces, his cheek shattered like an eggshell,” Faber said in an interview with TMZ Sports.
“The whole ride back in the ambulance, he’s talking to me and his dad and he’s telling us, ‘I’m telling you, I broke my arm in three places and this is 40 times worse than any pain I’ve ever felt.'”
Northcutt immediately had a nine-hour surgery to repair his face.
“He’s doing good. He stayed positive the whole way. He’s in good spirits and whatnot, his face is reconstructed.”
That said, Faber isn’t so sure that Northcutt should have been fighting in the first place, admitting that he had an injury-riddled training camp.
“He was fighting injuries the whole time,” Faber said.
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But at the end of the day, Northcutt felt he’d be good to go and there’s no telling how much effect that had on the fight. The only way to stop Alexandre’s punch from doing the damage was to avoid it in the first place.
According to Faber, it sounds as if Northcutt should fully heal from the incident and could fight again in the future.
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