Brandon Vera's broken nose in his loss to Thiago Silva at UFC 125 on Saturday night has to go down as one of the ugliest injuries in UFC history.
It's certainly not the most serious injury -- there have been ugly broken legs in the Octagon, and plenty of fighters have been knocked unconscious -- but in terms of the way the injury looks, Vera's nose is about as bad as a UFC injury gets. When a close-up of Vera's face after the fight was shown on the big screen at the MGM Grand, the crowd gasped and then applauded Vera just for being tough enough to stick it out and finish the fight after he had been disfigured. Even Silva applauded, while Vera took a bow.
Was it the worst broken nose the UFC has ever seen? Probably not. During the first episode of Season 11 of The Ultimate Fighter, a little-known fighter named Charley Lynch suffered an even uglier injury when his nose was smashed by Clayton McKinney. And Rich Franklin also suffered a nasty broken nose at the hands of Anderson Silva in 2007.
But Vera's nose will never be the same after the way Silva pummeled him at UFC 125. The shape of his nose is not the way Vera would want to be remembered, but it's a sight that no one watching will soon forget.
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