ADCC and IBJJF World Champion Felipe Pena revealed that he suffered an ankle injury in the very early stages of his victory over Erberth Santos at BJJ Bet’s phenomenal event. He announced the news via his official Instagram where he showed a few photos of his clearly swollen ankle, although he hasn’t announced the specifics of his injury just yet, if he even knows himself at this point. It doesn’t seem to be too serious however, as Pena was able to finish his match and secure the victory over Santos after a rather unusual turn of events.
The ankle injury that Felipe Pena suffered appeared to happen right at the beginning of the match, when Santos initially had the upper hand and led on the scoreboard thanks to a quick takedown. Pena’s first attempt at a sweep then gave Santos the opportunity to take the back that he pounced on, quickly starting to work in his first hook. Pena then managed to roll out and return to guard before securing a sweep and tying up the score after the first few minutes.
This was when the match took an unusual turn as Pena passed his guard with ease and progressed to mount without Santos offering any resistance at all. He was speaking to the referee while Pena was still working and this led to the match being called off with around four and a half minutes remaining, Pena being declared the winner via verbal submission. In the post-fight interview, Pena claimed that Santos had actually asked the referee to stop the fight twice, but the first time the referee had merely told them to keep fighting.
The match had echoes of Santos’ previous loss to Nicholas Meregali, where he also stopped resisting when put in a bad position and verbally submitted so that the fight would be stopped. What’s unusual in this case is that the competitor who suffered an injury early in the match was actually not the one who chose to end the match.
