Phil Davis Discovers Two-Inch Gash Requiring 36 Stitches After UFC 123 Win

Phil Davis

A victorious Phil Davis celebrated his win over Tim Boetsch like any fighter might, but first he was checked out by the doctors following his fight to make sure he was all together with no injuries.

Davis seemed above board considering he took little to no damage in the fight. He finished his opponent with a submission, so not so much as a hand injury from punching someone too much.

Needless to say, Davis was surprised when he found a gash over two inches long on his shin that was somehow missed in his post fight examination, simply because he didn’t know it was there.

“I have no idea. I just kept kicking, and I would not stop kicking, and if I felt like he was going to kick, I kicked him first,” Davis told MMAWeekly Radio about his lack of knowledge about the injury or how it happened.

“This is how bad it didn’t hurt… it didn’t hurt at all. You walk off the stage, and the doctor’s like, ‘does anything hurt?’ I’m like, ‘no bro, I feel awesome, I just won.’ Then you go into the back and the doctor’s ask again like, ‘is anything hurt?’ They sit you down; they’re checking you out. I missed it, the UFC doctors missed it, and we saw a little blood trickling, but neither I nor the doctor had any idea it was as bad as it was.”

Davis then proceeded to watch some of the other UFC 123 fights in Detroit, but just before B.J. Penn hit the Octagon for his third and final fight against Matt Hughes, the former NCAA All-American noticed the cut was a little worse than just a small trickle of blood.

He went back and had the doctor look at his leg. What they discovered was a nasty cut that could have become infected if not treated properly.

“Thank God I didn’t go home like that. Knowing me being me, I wouldn’t have gotten medical attention right away and I would have gangrene and I’d probably lose my foot or something. Not even joking. It was cut all the way to the bone. It was about two inches to maybe two and a half inches long,” Davis explained.

The surprise about the cut basically came from the fact that little to no blood came out of Davis’ leg from the injury, even though the gash went all the way to his bone.

“It was deep and it should have been bleeding a lot,” Davis said.

He had the doctor stitch up the cut. What resulted was 36 stitches in his leg. Even after everything he went through, Davis still had an amazing tolerance for the pain that would have sent most people to the doctor begging for a painkiller.

The former wrestler from Pennsylvania has an easy explanation why the pain didn’t affect him.

“Well you know, I went to Penn State,” Davis said.

The fighter will be taking some time off to let the leg heal and spend some time with family around the holidays before getting back to business.