Following his submission loss to Khamzat Chimaev in which the former UFC middleweight champ had his mandible broken by the undefeated Chechen star, Robert ‘the Reaper’ Whittaker revealed he simply had surgery to remove the teeth in question.
Chimaev was able to take down Whittaker in the first round of their UFC Saudi Arabia fight in October before putting a neck crank on him. Fans were shocked when Robert tapped almost instantly, but once he explained why it made sense.
Whittaker revealed on his podcast recently that he has not been able to bite into an apple since he was about 19-years-old. The fighter suffered an injury to the mandible as a teenager, leading to a brutal injury like the one that caused the central part of his lower mandible bone, plus the surrounding teeth and flesh, to go “floating.” Dr. David Abbassi on Instagram gave an excellent explanation of the gruesome wound following the fight.
😳🦷Robert Whittaker had the teeth removed that were broken in the fight with Khamzat Chimaev:
“My teeth always have been cracked. I haven’t been able to bite down on an apple… So I got rid of them, theyʼre gone.”
🎥 @MMArcadePodcast ▫️ pic.twitter.com/6xygCi3sIB
— Home of Fight (@Home_of_Fight) November 26, 2024
As always, ‘The Reaper’ remained in high spirits as he told the co-host of his MMArcade podcast, which discusses primarily videogames and MMA, about the old injury and the fact that it is now fixed.
Whittaker put the surgery off as long as he could to focus on his career, but said now, “I should’ve dealt with them much sooner.”
“They’re just gone,” the former UFC champ told his friend, “Don’t need ‘em. My life is better without them.”
This is a pattern with fighters, who often suffer injuries in training or fights and refuse to get them looked at since they need to keep earning a living. Thankfully the problem is fixed now and hopefully a fighter as beloved as Whittaker can return to the octagon soon to reassert his new, partially toothless self.
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