Former UFC Heavyweight Champion Cain Velasquez already admitted to having a surgery scheduled after his rematch at UFC 207 with Fabricio Werdum, but Velasquez also admitted to using marijuana to help ease his pain.
Velasquez admitted in an interview with ESPN that he has been vaping with CBD Oil in order to deal with the pain of a back injury, one that will require the fighter to get surgery shortly after the new year.
"It's the only thing that allows me to still train, and I'm not taking a harmful painkiller into my body that I'll later become addicted to. I don't know how everyone is going to feel about me saying this, but this is just one of the hard facts we as fighters have to go through. In the past, in the NFL, players have gotten addicted to painkillers. I don't want to be an addict of some sort,” said Velasquez.
The main problem Velasquez is facing right now has to due with a nerve issue in his right leg, which doesn't allow him to stand for extended periods.
"It's an achy pain that goes down your leg, and it gets to a point where if you're standing for 10 minutes, you have to sit down. If you're going out for a while, a half-hour, you know it's going to be pretty painful. You have to sit down and take the compression off your back. The surgery is basically shaving off some bone to make room for my sciatic nerve. After the last surgery, the doctor said I might be pain-free forever, but knowing how I train and what I do as a fighter, the pain could come back. I didn't really know how long I was going to feel good. It ended up being about a year,” Velasquez said.
UFC 207 takes place on Friday, December 30 from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada with Amanda Nunes and Ronda Rousey headlining.
