St. Pierre wrote last week that he expects to make a full recovery from the surgery in six to nine months. We don’t have an e.t.a. on exactly when he might return to face the winner of Nick Diaz vs. Carlos Condit, but after two knee injuries and more than a year on the sidelines, it could turn out to be the toughest fight of St. Pierre’s career.
After the jump, more details about GSP’s knee injury from a conference call St. Pierre held last week with his doctor, Sebastien Simard:
“In the preparation for Carlos Condit, he injured his left knee during a sparring session. The diagnosis at that moment was a sprained MCL, a diagnosis that was confirmed by the MRI. Georges tried to continue his training camp even though he had the pain and while doing another sparring session, he had the little injury on the right leg at the time and the diagnosis on his right leg was a pulled hamstring. So, having injuries on both knees, we decided to cancel the fight against Mr. Condit.
Georges went on and did his physical therapy and rehab and everything went perfectly. He recovered completely from the injury to the left knee. He started back training and while doing wrestling, he tried to defend a takedown and at that time, he suffered a hyperextension on the right knee. He felt pain and he heard a crack inside his knee at that time. It was terrible to walk and there was not much swelling on the knee so he tried to continue training but in the few days after, he felt the pain and the instability was increasing so he called me, he was in Vegas and we did an MRI on Monday morning. I saw Georges yesterday with the results of the MRI and the physical exam that I did confirmed that Georges suffered a complete tear of his ACL and a small tear of his internal meniscus on the right knee, which is not the same knee that he suffered the sprained MCL in mid-October.”
“Considering the instability and the pain, surgery for Georges is mandatory. There’s no way he can compete with the problem on the right knee. We’re looking at doing an ACL reconstruction with meniscal repair. The technique that’s going to be used is the technique of anatomical ACL reconstruction, which is the best technique for this kind of injury…I’ve been the treating doctor for Georges for five years now and I did two surgeries on him already for elbow endoscopy. His recovery rate is completely off the charts. He has an amazing genetics and he has extraordinary physical capabilities and I know Georges has the discipline and the determination that’s gonna allow him to be back to the same level of competition that he was before the injury.”
Get well soon GSP, looking forward to seeing you back in the cage.
