Yoel Romero finished Luke Rockhold with an outrageous left hand in the third round via knockout on Saturday night’s PPV headliner (Feb 10, 2018) at UFC 221 in Perth, Australia. Romero’s third-round stoppage over Rockhold did not earn him an interim title, but it was still the biggest win of his career.
After the fight, in an interview with Megan Olivi on the FS1 post-fight show that he believes he broke his leg after taking two hard kicks from Rockhold in the opening round:
.@YoelRomeroMMA confirms that he has a broken leg from kicks by @LukeRockhold after his win at #UFC221 https://t.co/35ZFJbKj5j
— FOX Sports: UFC (@UFCONFOX) February 11, 2018
“Yes, I think in the first round I took two kicks and I’m pretty sure that it broke my leg,” Romero said through a translator.
Yoel Romero, 40, could not stand up for the post-fight interview with Jon Anik in the Octagon and he had to be helped out of the Octagon by his team. Journalist Ariel Helwani reported that Romero’s management said it was an injury to the shin and it was nothing he came into the fight with.
Yoel Romero was taken to the hospital following his knockout of Luke Rockhold in the UFC 221 main event because of a suspected broken leg.
Romero felt he prepared well for the fight despite missing weight.
“Oh, I felt really good. We trained really hard for this fight. We trained very good for this fight. We had 6-7 round sparrings; I had no worries whatsoever in terms of cardio. If we would have small, minor changes, we would have had a better result.”
Yoel Romero apologizes for his weigh-in failure, but couldn’t give a detailed account of how the situation got off track. He was supposed to fight at UFC on FOX 28 later this month, but then an injury to champ Robert Whittaker opened an opportunity at UFC 221 main event.
Yoel Romero’s manager – Abe Kawa– took to social media to say his client’s leg injury might not have been as severe as he thought and doing better than expected.
With @YoelRomeroMMA in the hospital. Leg is fine people couple weeks and he will be good to go
— Abe kawa (@Abraham_kawa) February 11, 2018
@YoelRomeroMMA in the hospital. Leg is fine people couple weeks and he will be good to go
UFC President Dana White told Fox Sports that Romero will be Whittaker’s next title challenger. That fight will be a rematch of a closely contested five-round bout last July.
Report: Dana White confirms that Yoel Romero will fight Robert Whittaker next.@bisping @twooodley debate what a rematch would look like for the title? #UFC221 https://t.co/Iagztk7HJw
— FOX Sports: UFC (@UFCONFOX) February 11, 2018
Robert Whittaker defeated Yoel Romero via unanimous decision at UFC 213 in July in what stands as Romero’s only UFC loss. Romero won the first two rounds but appeared to run out of gas in the last 15 minutes.
Whittaker may not be able to fight for several months himself after recovering from several medical ailments.
Now probably we will see Romero and Whittaker rematch sometime down the road to determine who the true champion at 185 pounds is.
