The fighter underwent some minor knee surgery after the loss, but an infection took hold after the surgery and Martin has been hospitalized ever since.
“Usually you’re allowed to start training with a scope or something like that after two weeks,” Martin told MMA Junkie. “I waited about two and a half weeks to train and I was like, ‘Man, I’ve got to start training because I can’t be sitting on the shelf forever.’ I’ve had four of these before so it’s not anything I haven’t experienced before and I’ve always trained like a week later. This is the longest I’ve waited, and then I trained and later that night it really started hurting and I didn’t know what was going on. It definitely wasn’t normal and I thought I must’ve aggravated it. I made some calls to take my mind off it and I had a couple drinks to try to get the pain to go away. The pain was not going away and it was just getting worse. So about 3:30 in the morning, I couldn’t sleep and it was the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life. I wouldn’t wish pain like this on anybody. I took an Uber to the ER because I couldn’t even drive or bend my leg, went in and they said I definitely have an infection.”
A hospitalized Martin will need an invasive IV and will need to take antibiotics for four to six weeks.
Martin’s doctor even told the fighter that the infection was one of the worst he has seen in a fifteen-plus year career as a doctor.
“About four hours later I go back into surgery and they cleaned out the entire knee and I’ve been in the hospital ever since,” Martin said. “It’s been three days or four days and I’m not sure if I’m going home. I’ve been in extreme pain where I’ve been having to dose on morphine and Lortabs, which is like hydrocodone. I do both of those, one every four hours, and one every three hours. Then it started spreading up my leg a little bit and it kept getting redder and redder. I started getting worried and I was talking to the UFC PI and I obviously saw the Alex Smith thing and worried about infections, especially when you’re talking about a knee scope that you think is a minor surgery turning into something like this where I can barely walk. They say it’s very rare on a knee scope. The doctor I used here says in 15 years he’s never had someone get an infection on a knee scope.”
There is no word yet on when Martin, who is now a free agent, will compete again, but more should be known as the fighter goes through the healing process.
