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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
Josh Koscheck's face was very visibly damaged after his five round fight with Georges St. Pierre on Saturday night, and ESPN's Josh Gross reports that Koscheck in fact broke his orbital bone in the first round of the fight.
After being released from a Montreal area hospital, Koscheck was unable to fly home to San Jose, Calif. due to an air pocket forming behind the break that made air travel dangerous. He and his trainer Bob Cook will drive to Boston where he will undergo surgery on the injury on Monday or Tuesday.
Said Cook: "We're going to have a much better sense of the injury when we get to the States. We'll get it checked down there. Hopefully he can have the surgery there and head home as soon as possible."
Koscheck lost a unanimous decision to St. Pierre in Montreal at UFC 124 on Saturday, with scores of 50-45 in favor of the Champion across the board.
Penick's Analysis: From a fan standpoint, it would have been very disappointing for the fight to have been stopped when the doctor was checking Koscheck's eye after the third round. However, it would have been a very legitimate stoppage, as Koscheck clearly took even more damage to a broken bone than was probably necessary, and it could have led to more severe damage. But it illustrates how much damage GSP was able to do simply with his jab in that fight, as well as how tough Koscheck was for fighting through it. Koscheck's toughness cannot be denied, and the fact that he didn't and wouldn't quit is commendable, but that's where doctors come in to protect fighters from themselves. With that, Joe Rogan shouldn't have railed against "Kris Kringle" checking on Koscheck like he did in between the third and fourth round, because with Koscheck being unable to see out of the eye, his ability to defend himself was severely compromised the rest of the fight.
[Josh Koscheck art by Cory Gould (c) MMATorch.com]
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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