“I had some kind of incomprehensible injury for two weeks – I just pulled a thigh on my left leg in sparring,” Ponomarev told in an interview “The MMA Herald”. “It started to bother me a little bit, and forty minutes before we went into the fight we were practicing leg kicks, and I threw my leg out a lot, and it was really like a ligament in my hip exploded. I was really immobilized. We quickly ate painkillers, put warming ointment to dull the pain a little bit, because it really shocked me. I go to the fight and I feel that my leg is just so loose, uncontrolled”
“Let me clarify Muhumata’s lowkick. Sure, he has a good leg, but not this time. Let him hang too many orders on himself in terms of his lowkick – he was, frankly, not very good. And he didn’t shake me in any way with that lowkick. When we pushed off of each other, I tried to stand on my leg, and I can’t even tense it up because it just doesn’t work. I have normal strong legs, but on this day the ligament let me down. I’m looking at it and I’m thinking – wow, my legs can bend like a grasshopper!”
According to the heavyweight, surgery on the leg is scheduled for mid-September, however, the exact prognosis for recovery will only be known after surgery.
“Doctors say different things – some say a year, some say seven months, but we’re going to go on the assumption that we need to get in there first, because we don’t know exactly what’s in there. The operation, along with preparation, will take no more than three days. On the third day they send you home to recover”