Last night we saw the debut of the Ankle Destruction™ technique, as popularized by James Krause, and while we weren’t completely sure what happened at first, it was officially a very real injury caused by Krause.
Sadly, the uninformed Chael Sonnen had to go and talk about Varner on FOX Sports without even knowing that he indeed had a broken ankle:
“We’re led to believe that Varner had hurt his ankle in that last exchange. I’m not ready to tell the fans that, guys. That’s just not what I saw. Every Jamie Varner fight seems to have a moment like this, where a picture is being painted very early on. We don’t see Jamie Varner in very many fights that just have a good, clean outcome. Whether he’s the most unlucky ever, or this is the boy that called wolf, I don’t know. But this (has seemed) to happen for the last six years,”
You can see the kick hit Varner’s ankle, but I don’t know if that’s what caused the break. He rolled it badly and then continued to twist the joint for the next five minutes, showing plenty of heart in trying to fight back against Krause. It was all for naught, however.
Krause said this post-fight:
“One of the things we worked on was kicking the calfs. I threw one and Jamie lifted his knee to check it. I felt the contact with his ankle and when he stepped back I saw that he had injured it. After that, I started to target the ankle and unfortunately he wasn’t able to answer the second round. You never want to see an opponent get hurt out there, but I especially didn’t want to see Varner get injured. I’m a big fan and I looked up to him. I know that we could’ve given the fans a great three-round fight if we had the opportunity. Hat’s off to him, and I wish him a full and speedy recovery.”
