Anderson Silva has never been the type of fighter to reveal a hint of vulnerability, but at a press conference Tuesday the former UFC middleweight champion opened up about how hard it was to recover from his last fight in which he broke his leg.
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Silva gruesomely shattered his left tibia and fibula in December when current 185-pound champion Chris Weidman checked a leg kick. "The Spider" is scheduled to make his return to the octagon on at UFC 183 on Jan. 31 in a blockbuster fight against the popular Nick Diaz. But Silva admits he was unsure he would ever be able to return to fighting after the injury.
"I play around because I have to play around," Silva said through a translator, according to MMAFighting.com. "But it's something I don't like to remember too much. I went through the worst month of my life. It was a lot of pain the moment when I broke my leg. When I realized my leg was broken, I thought my career was over. So a million things went through my mind. You might think that depression is not something serious, but I was depressed. I was very upset, and if I didn't have the people that I have by my side, maybe I wouldn't come back."
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Once he started rehabbing he was able to recover fairly quickly. But Silva admitted the hardest part was the mental rehabilitation, to get back to the point where he isn't kicking with any hesitation.
"Right after I got injured and I recuperated and I started kicking, I didn't have a lot of strength," he said. "I lost some strength in my leg, which is normal, but now I'm recuperating and I'm working specific work to recuperate my strength in my leg. Every day that goes by, I'm going back to my origins and being able to kick without any fear, and I believe that on fight night I will be 100-percent.
"When in doubt, I'll kick from the hip up," he said jokingly.
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