Yoel Romero thinks he suffered broken leg in UFC 221 victory over Luke Rockhold

Yoel Romero was taken to hospital following his knockout of Luke Rockhold in the UFC 221 main event because of a suspected broken leg.

“I think in the first round I took two kicks and I’m pretty sure it broke my leg,” Romero told Megan Olivi through an interpreter on the UFC 221 post-fight show on FS1.

Romero (13-2 MMA, 9-1 UFC) stopped Rockhold (16-4 MMA, 6-3 UFC) with a third-round knockout in Saturday’s pay-per-view headliner, which took place at Perth Arena in Perth, Western Australia. After a methodical opening two rounds, “The Solider of God” unleashed one of his trademark offensive bursts and floored his opponent.

The original plans for the fight called for an interim middleweight champion to be decided. Romero missed weight for the fight, though, and only Rockhold was eligible to win the belt.

Romero was apologetic 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 (19-4 MMA, 10-2 UFC) opened a spot in the UFC 221 main event.

“I’m not necessarily sure what we did wrong,” Romero said. We worked the same as we do for every week. We had a plan laid out and we got a call from UFC and we knew that we were only two pounds overweight, but do you seriously think if I would have been fighting in Orlando I would have had this issue?”

Although he botched his weight cut, UFC President Dana White told ESPN that Romero will rematch Whittaker at a later date. He lost to “The Reaper” by unanimous decision at UFC 213 in July in what stands as Romero’s only UFC loss. Romero said he felt sharp in the octagon, but believes he can be even better with a full training camp. Now it remains to be seen how long he’s sidelined with his leg injury.

“I felt really good,” Romero said. “We trained really hard for this fight, we trained really good for this fight. We had six, seven rounds of sparring. I had no worries in terms of cardio. Small, minor changes we would have had a better result.”

For complete coverage of UFC 221, check out the UFC Events section of the site.