Gilbert Burns suffered an obvious shoulder injury during his fight against Belal Muhammad at UFC 288, and he’s now given the public an update on the situation. It’s a shame too, because the fight was only put together on incredibly short notice and Burns was eager to earn a title-shot after his recent victory over Jorge Masvidal at UFC 287. Then when the co-main event for UFC 288 fell through just a few week’s before the event took place, the UFC managed to book him against Muhammad in a five-round fight.
While the fight looked as though it would be incredibly close on paper, in the end it was a clean and undisputable unanimous decision win for Muhammad. Part of the reason for that convincing win was because Gilbert Burns was clearly dealing with some sort of injury to his shoulder after an incident early in the fight. He recently explained exactly how it happened:
“He kinda sprawled back a little bit and did a kinda down block, the technique, and I landed right on my left shoulder. All my weight, all Belal Muhammad’s weight was on my left shoulder. From there on it was hard to kinda clear my mind and accept that I was hurt.”
It was an unfortunate incident that could happen to any fighter in that scenario, and Gilbert Burns also gave an update on the actual nature of the shoulder injury he suffered and what the recovery process is going to look like for him:
“I have AC joint torn, but it’s the second to third grade. I have the dilatory torn. I have on the trapezius, I have a muscle torn, and I have a sprain on my C-4 and my C-5 (vertebrae). But all of those are partial. Nothing major. Thank God I don’t need no surgery… I’m taking a strong inflammatory… As of right now it doesn’t hurt because I’m taking a lot of medicines but it’s so swollen this area. But the good news is I don’t need surgery. It’s going to be between two to three months recovery. I’ve got to do a lot of rest the first three weeks. I don’t think I even have PT. I’m just going to get a brace just to keep my arm right here. The good thing was all partial.”