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T.J. Dillashaw doesn’t want to give up hope on ever competing again, but he’s not sure he’ll even be able to get back to grappling again due to his continued struggles with the shoulder injury that effectively ended his MMA career.

The now 38-year-old former UFC bantamweight champion retired from competition back in 2022 following a loss to Aljamain Sterling amid continued issues with his shoulder after multiple surgeries. After that fight, Dillashaw revealed that he “probably dislocated” his shoulder 20 times during his training camp.

Now nearly two years removed from that fight, Dillashaw is still struggling with his shoulder after another surgery that currently limits his mobility even more than before.

“I can’t even raise my arm up in the air yet,” Dillashaw said on the Jaxxxon podcast when asked about going for his black belt in the future. “I don’t know if my shoulder’s ever going to be the same again.

“It’s f*cking depressing. As a competitor, you have to be delusionally optimistic, but that’s also what got me in this position too.”

Dillashaw battled shoulder problems throughout the latter part of his UFC career, which is why he ultimately decided to hang up his gloves. In the aftermath of that decision, Dillashaw has continued seeking help from doctors to hopefully patch him back together again, but he’s rarely received much good news.

From muscle grafts to using cadaver parts, Dillashaw has endured plenty of of invasive surgeries in attempts to fix his shoulder, but he’s nowhere close to being fully healed.

“It’s just gotten worse and worse from each surgery,” Dillashaw said. “I had a massive surgery. I went to the world’s best specialist and it’s like he’s never seen anything like it. It looked like a bomb went off in there. He removed my lower trap and put it in my shoulder, removed a piece of my lower trap and replaced two of my rotator cuffs with it. He removed a piece of my lat, replaced my front rotator cuff with that. A cadaver bone graph in there. So there’s a lot of healing to be done.

“I’m hoping that maybe just me staying after my [physical therapy] is going to make it better, better, and better. This is my third surgery since my last fight and it’s not looking good. I just had a MRI done on Saturday. I’ll probably figure out next week what that f*cking looks like.”

At his peak, Dillashaw was one of the top pound-for-pound fighters in the sport and arguably one of the best bantamweights in history.

He lost two years of his career after he tested positive for recombinant human erythropoietin — better known as EPO — but Dillashaw still managed to return with a win over Cory Sandhagen back in 2021 to receive another title shot.

After coming up short against Sterling and the continued problems with his shoulder, Dillashaw retired from the UFC, but he kept trying to repair the damage so he could potentially compete again.

Sadly, it appears Dillashaw really is done with fighting and now he’s just battling for quality of life.

“It’s depressing,” Dillashaw said. “Going from being a professional athlete to having one arm. It’s a tough pill to swallow.”

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UFC Hall of Famer Mark Coleman is spending the weekend in a Columbus hospital after revealing that his hip replacement is dealing with a septic infection.

Coleman posted the news on Instagram on Thursday.

“Back in the hospital again,” Coleman said. “My hip is septically infected. They were going to do emergency surgery today, but I’m on blood thinners, so they’re going to have to wait until Monday. So I’m going to hang out here for the weekend. All’s going to be fine.”

Coleman has endured several hip replacement surgeries since his fighting career came to an end. Because hip replacements involve plastic or metal parts, bacteria is more likely to grow there with the body’s immune system sometimes struggling to battle back against those infections.

From the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons:

“It is difficult for the immune system to attack bacteria that make it to these implants. Bacteria like to stick to metal. Since the metal implant does not receive any blood flow, our immune system has a hard time identifying the bacteria, so it does not know how to respond and kill it. If bacteria gain access to the implants, they may multiply and result in a joint infection. Despite antibiotics and preventive treatments, patients with infected joint replacements often require surgery to cure the infection.”

As Coleman stated, he’s expected to go into surgery on Monday so doctors can deal with the infection in his hip.

The 59-year-old former UFC heavyweight champion has endured quite a year after he was hospitalized in March after rescuing his elderly parents from a house fire outside Toledo. Coleman saved his parents but ultimately succumbed to smoke inhalation while trying to rescue his dog from the house.

Coleman eventually recovered and lately he’s become a fixture at recent UFC events, including an appearance at the historic UFC 300 card in April where he placed the “BMF” title around Max Holloway’s waist after his win over Justin Gaethje.

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UFC

Michael “Venom” Page will have to go back to the drawing board after his second Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) appearance at UFC 303 last month (June 29, 2024).

“MVP’s” Welterweight contender clash with Ireland’s Ian Machado Garry resulted in only the third loss of his 25-fight career when Garry earned the unanimous decision nod. The fight was pivotal for either’s title hopes with the upcoming rematch between the champion, Leon Edwards, and top contender, Belal Muhammad, set to headline UFC 304 this month (Sat., July 27, 2024).

Garry, 26, kept his perfect 15-0 record intact with the victory over England’s Page. However, the former Bellator Welterweight staple wasn’t overly impressed with the rising contender.

“Not all. No,” Page responded when asked on The MMA Hour if Garry is championship material. “Because if that’s the game you’re going to go [to] when you get a decent striker, then Leon is going to kill you anyway, then Shavkat [Rakhmonov] is going to kill you anyway. There’s a few guys in there that I just don’t see him surpassing.

“Even in some of the areas, he didn’t feel massively strong,” he continued. “I’m not even trying to be disrespectful to him, because again, he’s done his job, he was smart about how he kind of went by it. But for me, regardless, this game for me is about combat. It’s about fighting. Not about stealing wins. Even like I said, that last round, I didn’t necessarily need to stand up or need to let him stand up. I could’ve stayed there and just dragged it out and potentially got a better score in the third round and maybe that would’ve swayed it, but that’s not the game I’m in. I’m in a combat game. Like, I want to cause damage, I want to hurt people.

“So yeah, I don’t see him progressing to the top,” Page concluded. “I think he’s talented. I think he’ll always be around there, top 10, top five and then he’ll keep losing out to certain people. But he is still talented, and obviously, he’s got a loads of time to progress and get better anyway.”

While Page looks to regroup and rebound in whatever his third Octagon appearance will be, Garry advances and has postured for a match up against the mentioned Rakhmonov.

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Rose Namajunas is still excited to compete in the main event of UFC Denver, but there’s a part of her that wishes she had her original opponent.

The former UFC strawweight champion faces Tracy Cortez in the flyweight headliner this Saturday at Ball Arena. Namajunas was originally slated to face rising contender Maycee Barber before Barber was forced to withdraw from the bout.

Namajunas has seen how Barber has acted on social media, and her methods of callouts recently — even using some of Namajunas’ teammates as potential bait — which is why the competitive fire in Namajunas was a little more stoked to face Barber.

“It’s just been a few interactions that I’ve had with her, or on social media a long time ago, just like silly stuff,” Namajunas said Wednesday on The MMA Hour. “She posted a picture of me with my training partners and X’d out all of their faces and then circled my face and was like, ‘I’m coming for you next.’ I’m just like, ‘OK.’

“She always tries to say that by beating my training partners, [she thinks], ‘I know that broke her.’ You don’t know what could break me, because there’s a lot more that has to break me. I don’t have anything personal against her, but the competitor inside of me, it’s like, yeah, I really wanted to show her what’s up.”

After losing the 115-pound title to Carla Esparza at UFC 274 in May 2022, Namajunas moved up to flyweight and is 1-1 in her new weight class. In her divisional debut, Namajunas dropped a decision to Manon Fiorot at UFC Paris this past September before bouncing back with a main event decision win over Amanda Ribas in March at UFC Vegas 89.

Looking to climb the ranks of a second division, she was able to digest the news of Barber’s departure and Cortez’s entry pretty quickly.

“Definitely, fighting Maycee was super exciting at the time,” Namajunas said. “I was a little disappointed to find out the news, but now that it’s Tracy, it’s just different. I’m just as excited.

“I went through that process of being like, ‘Oh, man,’ and then as soon as they were working on Tracy, it took me a second, but once I made that transition, it took me a day to process it, and it was like, ‘Alright, this is what we’re doing.’”

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Mark Coleman is back in the hospital.

The UFC legend recently revealed in a post on Instagram that he would be spending some time in a Columbus, Ohio hospital to deal with a septic infection in his replacement hip.

“Back in the hospital again,” Coleman said. “My hip is septically infected. They were going to do emergency surgery today, but I’m on blood thinners, so they’re going to have to wait until Monday. So I’m going to hang out here for the weekend. All’s going to be fine.”

According to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons:

“It is difficult for the immune system to attack bacteria that make it to these implants. Bacteria like to stick to metal. Since the metal implant does not receive any blood flow, our immune system has a hard time identifying the bacteria, so it does not know how to respond and kill it. If bacteria gain access to the implants, they may multiply and result in a joint infection.

“Despite antibiotics and preventive treatments, patients with infected joint replacements often require surgery to cure the infection” (h/t MMA Fighting).

Mark Coleman back in the hospital four months after saving his parents in Devastating house fire

In March, the 59-year-old Hall of Famer courageously ran back into his childhood home outside of Toledo after it was engulfed in flames in the middle of the night to save his parents. ‘The Hammer’ suffered smoke inhalation after running back inside the house to try and save his dog once his parents were carried to safety.

Coleman spent the next few days fighting for his life with his two daughters by his bedside.

Fortunately, he made a full recovery and has since appeared at multiple UFC events, including the promotion’s landmark UFC 300 card in Las Vegas when he wrapped the BMF belt around the waist of Max Holloway following his buzzer-beating knockout of Justin Gaethje.

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