Rich Franklin's Brutal Legacy

I recently spoke with former UFC Middleweight Champion Rich Franklin for an in-depth feature on Tapology. We focused on Franklin's violent legacy in the sport and discussed the differences between fan perspective and fighter perspective regarding MMA injuries. 

A history of violence:

 

“The first fight where I ever really got injured was the Jorge Rivera fight,” Franklin said. “I just remember that he and I traded back and forth and I got caught with quite a few punches and was bleeding. That was the first fight that I was really sore afterward. Most of my fights before that I managed to win easily and without taking any damage. When I went back to my hotel, I was like, ‘Wow, this is what fighting is really like.’”

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“The [David] Loiseau fight was tough because it was really the first time I had broken anything,” Franklin recalled. “Getting my nose broken in the [Anderson] Silva fight was tough because, even though getting the nose broken isn’t that painful, getting it set back in the locker room is slightly more painful. My septum was deviated and I had to have surgery on my nose. That was probably the worst recovery I had to go through because you can’t breath, so for a week I couldn’t taste my food because I couldn’t smell it, I couldn’t sleep because I couldn’t breath properly, and I could only breath in and out of my mouth.”

Franklin elaborated, saying, “I was breathing out of my mouth so much that my lips had become so chapped that they were cracked and bleeding. At night I would put Vaseline on the bottom of my nose and on my lips and I would stick tissues to my lips so I could breath warm air underneath the tissue to keep my lips from cracking. The thing is, I’ve had my nose broken again so when I’m done with my career I’ll have to go through that surgery again. The funny thing is that when you get hurt you don’t realize the impact it’s going to have on your quality of life.”

 

Clash in Dublin:

“I look back at some of the things that have happened to me, like getting my nose broken in the Silva fight—and that wasn’t fun—or getting my hands broken in the Loiseau fight, but the Henderson fight was bad because I got poked in the eye and I had never had an eye injury before,” Franklin said.

Franklin steels himself for the pain after the Henderson fight | Source: MMAWeekly.com

“There was a time where I thought the vision in that eye would be affected for the rest of my life,” Franklin said. “That was really scary for a person like myself because I’ve always had great vision, so going through that entire procedure was bad. On top of that, I got head butted twice in that fight and had to get stitches in two different places in my head. One of the worst things was, I threw so many left-leg power kicks to the body, and I was catching his elbow and his forearm—I think I ended up breaking several of his ribs—but my leg had taken so much punishment from throwing the kicks. You typically don’t feel pain until 15-20 minutes after the fight, and I remember when walking out of the Octagon in that fight, the pain had already started to set in, so I knew it was going to be really bad. I had trouble walking for nearly two weeks.”

Read the full interview to get Franklin's thoughts on the disconnect between fans and fighters and whether or not these injuries have had a lasting psychological effect on the fan-favorite veteran.