What towel? Coach explains decision to let Paige VanZant fight with broken arm

Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) flyweight sensation, Paige VanZant, suffered a broken arm when trying to execute a spinning back fist against Jessica Rose-Clark last Sunday night (Jan. 14, 2018), as part of the UFC Fight Night 124 mixed martial arts (MMA) event in St. Louis, Missouri.

See her X-ray here.

Because “12 Gauge” snapped her wing so early in the fight — ending in favor of “Jessy Jess“ — questions were raised as to why her coach, Fabiano Scherner, allowed the injured fighter to continue and risk further damage to her arm.

Scherner defends his position to MMA Fighting:

“I was asking her to stay away from the clinch and keep the distance to use her boxing and kickboxing, and she said, ‘My arm is broken.’ She wasn’t feeling any pain, so I thought it could be a fissure, that sometimes hurts as much as a fracture. I let the fight play out because at any moment she… She wasn’t using her right hand, but I was looking at her face and she didn’t appear to be in pain or anything like that, so I thought it was serious but that she could continue. I didn’t think about throwing in the towel. We spoke about it after the fight and I saw the X-ray, I apologized to her for making that call, and she said, ‘It was the right call because I wanted to go back and continue fighting. I would be disappointed if you had stopped the fight.’ I didn’t ask her if she wanted to continue or not because she would lose confidence in the fight. I want to make clear that it was my decision to let the fight continue, and I would take all the responsibility if something worse had happened. But what matters to me is her opinion about it, and she was happy with my decision. She thought it was the right thing, and that’s what matters to me.”

For the live play-by-play of their fight click here.

No medical suspensions have been released (yet) for last weekend’s big shebang in “Gateway City;” however, you can expect VanZant to be on the shelf for the better part of 2018, depending on what surgery she needs (if any).

No doubt this will prove to be a disappointing turn of events for the former strawweight, who was hoping to reinvent herself at 125 pounds after struggling to make weight in her old stomping grounds.

The good news is, at just age 23, she has plenty of time to get back on the winning track.