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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
"The Korean Zombie" Chan Sung Jung has had really bad luck with injuries this last couple of years, spending 15-months out of action before returning to a fight with Jose Aldo. Unfortunately, he separated his shoulder in that fight, and broke his orbital bone, so he's going to be out for the foreseeable future.
He discussed the injury in an interview this weekend with MMAMania.com, and said he's expecting to return to training in ten months.
"I swung and the shoulder came out," Jung said of the arm injury. "It was the first time I've ever dislocated my shoulder, but I knew what happened. I thought, 'So ... this is what it feels like to dislocate your shoulder.' I tried to push the shoulder up, but I should have been trying to push it backwards. I also tried to hide it, but Aldo saw it and took advantage. Once the fight was called it hurt really badly, but it was okay once the doctors put it back in place.
"I had surgery on my shoulder, otherwise it would have been recurring. Also, I had surgery for a fractured orbital bone. I'll probably be back in the gym in ten months. With the surgery and the rehab, it shouldn't be a problem."
Jung doesn't feel he learned a ton about himself from the loss to Aldo because of the way it ended, but does think he learned a little about Aldo that he could use in a rematch if he can get one.
"Honestly, I don't know if I learned much from it," he admitted. "If I had lost because of skill or technique, then I could take something away from it, but losing like that doesn't leave me with much. I just want to come back as quickly as possible."
"You can't fight wild against a guy like Aldo - at least not right off the bat," he continued. "It was part of our gameplan. If that didn't work out, I was planning to go into Zombie-mode, but things were going as we planned early in the fight. Part of my hesitation was that I kept expecting the low kicks, but they never came. I didn't realize that he had injured his foot in the first round.
"I felt that he's definitely human. He's got such an aura of invincibility built up around him, but after fighting him, I know that he's human and can get tired. I would really like the opportunity to fight him again."
Penick's Analysis: Jung and Aldo was a much more tentative fight than everyone expected, and it's because of Aldo's foot injury. Because he was hesitant to attack with that, Jung was hesitant to come forward himself, expecting more offense from the Champ to work off of. So there wasn't a ton to work with offensively for Jung in that fight, and then when he separated his shoulder from throwing a punch, that was the end for him. Hopefully he can get back to 100% by this time next year, but it's a tough road still ahead of him.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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