Photo: Lucas Noonan/Bellator MMA
Goiti Yamauchi Suffers Patellar Tendon Rupture at Bellator 292
Goiti Yamauchi suffered a pretty horrific and rare injury in the opening bout of the main card for Bellator 292. Michael “Venom” Page took out the grappler, early in round one when the leg kick Page threw injured the right knee of Yamauchi it gave Page a quick victory in his return to the Bellator MMA cage.
Yamauchi was quickly taken to the hospital and while Page was happy to win, he found it difficult to celebrate seeing the magnitude of the injury. The replay showed that the damage done, was quite visible afterward:
That kick… 😱
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During the post-fight presser, Bellator MMA President, Scott Coker gave an update to the media on Yamauchi, saying he suffered a “patellar tendon rupture.”
To the trained eye, the injury seems apparent. Not long after the fight, Dr. Brian Sutterer, who has a YouTube channel where he breaks down and discusses sports injuries, looked at how the injury happened and seemingly diagnosed it based on the way Yamauchi’s knee looked during the replay.
Dr. Sutterer said he initially thought it was a patella or kneecap dislocation, which would have been the best-case scenario for Yamauchi. But when looking at the replay, Sutterer noticed the kneecap position and figured it might be a fracture of the kneecap or a rupture of the tendon.
“What can happen if you have either a rupture of the patellar tendon or of the quadriceps tendon it’s almost like cutting a rubber band that’s been stretched, “Dr. Sutterer said. “You have sort of this snapping is where whatever’s inside the rubber band it’s going to move to the opposite side of what was cut. So, whenever an athlete has for example a patellar tendon rupture we often see the kneecap translate superior [up] because of that recoil force of the quadriceps muscle and tendon pulling it upwards.”
See Dr. Sutterer’s full breakdown here. Knee injuries can take athletes out for a while and we hope Yamauchi has a speedy recovery.
