Chances are Louis Smolka will not experience anything against Jose Alberto Quiñonez at UFC Vegas 14 as painful as this childhood accident.
Smolka (16-7) caught up with Fightful ahead of his fight with Quiñonez (8-4) on Saturday. The Hawaiian native reflected on a bodysurfing incident that left him disfigured and hospitalized.
"One time when I was a kid, I got my head run over at the beach. We were bodysurfing and my friend was trying to sand-slide and catch the wave behind it. I popped my head up right in front of him and he ran my head over with the bodyboard. I was bleeding out of my jaw, out of my mouth. It was horrible. All I could see was white for a little bit. My vision kind of came back and I saw this huge glob of blood and pus come off my face," Smolka shared. "He was crying on the ground for as long as I was. We were both fucked up."
"I had to have [my jaw] wired for six weeks. I spent a couple [of] nights at the hospital," he continued. "I was all fucked up. They were shooting me up with opium or whatever. It was bad. I had to go get X-rays. I would wake up in the middle of the night — I was there for two or three days before I could get surgery — I would wake up and I would start [groaning in pain]. They would shoot me up and I would pass back out."
UFC Vegas 14 takes place from the UFC Apex in Las Vegas, Nevada on Saturday, November 14. The ESPN+ card is headlined by Rafaels dos Anjos vs. Paul Felder. Keep up with Fightful for all your fight night coverage.
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