Chris Weidman on neck surgery: 'It's going to be sooner rather than later'

Former UFC middleweight champion Chris Weidman was scheduled to rematch Luke Rockhold at UFC 199, but was forced out due to a neck injury. The former champ was a guest on a recent edition of The MMA Hour, and detailed everything surrounding the injury - including the innovative surgery he's considering to correct the problem.

Basically, he is having trouble with a herniated disc in his back that is causing weakness in his triceps and forearm areas, along with causing a lot of pain initially. He has been doing a lot of research of what type of surgery to have, or if he even needs it at all (via MMA Fighting):

"It’s going to be sooner rather than later. The other thing I was running into is some doctors who were saying you’ve got to get this taken care of now, like ASAP, because the nerve is getting damaged every second of every day. And then other doctors were like, you know, there’s a good chance if you just wait another couple of weeks it just goes away completely. I don’t know what to believe. But looks like I’m going to be getting surgery in the next week or two."

One of the options, and the one he is apparently leaning towards, is an innovative, "low risk" surgery performed by a doctor in Pittsburgh. If you're a pro wrestling fan, you're probably well aware that Kurt Angle had the surgery performed a few years ago. In fact, he's the one that actually recommended it to Weidman:

"We’ve been texting and direct messaging back and forth and he gave me a lot of great advice," Weidman said. "And I had a 45-minute conversation with Mark Coleman, because he got the same surgery done from Dr. Jho in Pittsburgh. So he was high on it. He walked right out of there feeling 100 percent. He had issues in his neck about two years."

Apparently it will allow him to return to action pretty quickly:

"Literally I an get back to training pretty much right away," he said. "The only issue is I’ll have a scar. So they’ll clean it up, and I just have to wait for the scar to heal and that’s about it. I can go right to strength training and stuff like that right away. And I guess after four weeks I can go into full out everything."

In the meantime, Rockhold, who was talking a bunch of smack about Weidman on the same episode of the show, will face Michael Bisping this weekend at UFC 199.