The North Carolina native relied on his wrestling against Darren Till on Saturday, grounding his opponent three times before winning via rear-naked choke at the 2:13 mark of the third round in their middleweight bout at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas on Saturday. After his fifth consecutive Octagon triumph, Brunson revealed that his training camp for Till was severely limited.
“I had a rib injury,” Brunson at Saturday’s post-fight press conference. “I thought I broke my ribs. I got kicked in the ribs really hard by someone’s toe. This guy was about 240 [pounds]. It was kind of like a bad thing sparring with someone so heavy when I’m getting my body down to my fight weight and I’m getting ready to compete.
“But yeah, I thought I broke my ribs. The last three weeks to the camp, I couldn’t spar. I had to do conditioning, hit pads, I had to take a week off. So I only had two weeks to prepare. It was a little tough but that’s a part of the fight game.”
Brunson admitted that the injury was significant enough that he almost pulled out of the showdown with Till.
“It was close. It was thought about it,” Brunson said. “It was like can we push this fight back? Where we at with this fight? Cause the injury was pretty bad. It pretty much stopped my training camp.”
In an ideal world, Brunson would like to wait to face the winner of the Israel Adesanya-Robert Whittaker middleweight title bout, which doesn’t yet have an official date. However, he acknowledged that a title eliminator is also a possibility.
“I can use a tune-up with one of the Jake Paul brothers or something like that,” Brunson said. “Maybe Dana White can loan me to the Triller to fight one of those guys, or maybe I can wait until Israel and Whittaker fight early next year and we can fight in March or April. We have some options.
“Cannonier isn’t completely off the table, but I’ve been adamant about asking for the toughest guys in the division. I asked for Paulo Costa, the UFC sent him a contract and he didn’t sign it. If I would’ve got that fight I would’ve been definitely next for the title. I’m doing all this work. I want to be rewarded. I’ve never got a title shot in my career.”