EVEN THE TOUGHEST TURN TO DR. POLITI: UFC PIONEER DISCUSSES RECENT HIP REPLACEMENT

Ultimate Fighting Championship pioneer Mark Coleman discusses his retirement, including his recent hip replacement surgery by Dr. Joel Politi.

The following article appeared on www.mmafighting.com, a popular website covering the world of mixed martial arts. Read the full article here.

UFC pioneer Mark Coleman looks back on career after recent retirement

By Dave Meltzer

The “Godfather of Ground and Pound,” one of UFC’s earliest stars, Mark Coleman accepts that his career in the cage is over. Yet, he leaves the sport with some regrets, the expected injuries, and some high highs and low lows.

Mark Coleman, the first world-class wrestler still in his prime to compete in the UFC, made official a couple of weeks back that his fighting career was over due to the hip replacement surgery he had on March 4.

It was more a confirmation of the obvious. Coleman, 48, hadn’t fought in three years, since his lost to Randy Couture at UFC 109. He’s been in a lot of pain for two years before that. He spent years hoping it would heal before a recent examination told him his hip was gone.

He was dreading the operation before hand. Today, he’s thrilled, and can’t stop raving about the work of his surgeon, Dr. Joel Politi of Columbus, Ohio.

“I walked the same day,” he said after an operation that lasted less than one hour. “I got real lucky. I had one of the best doctors in the country, period. My scar is four inches. That’s unheard of for a hip replacement. Nobody has a four-inch scar. My physical therapist, I showed her the scar. She said that was the smallest scar she’d ever seen from a hip replacement. It made a big difference in recovery. I woke up from surgery and it was such a relief. I wasn’t feeling so confident going into the surgery. I was a little nervous.”

Coleman noted he could lift his leg immediately, was walking with a walker four or five hours after surgery. He thinks he could have walked without the walker, but they wouldn’t let him. He said his hip is far stronger than it has been in years. He’s been told he can’t do anything but controlled movements. That means no more competition wrestling or fighting.

“If not for this hip, I’d have done the journeyman tour, and collected a few paychecks,” he said. “Guys don’t like to quit, wrestlers or fighters. You don’t tell MMA when you want to retire. It tells you when you’re done. I was done. I didn’t know what the problem was. I finally got the MRI done. They told me, ‘You don’t even have a hip basically.”

Coleman noted that his former sponsor, MMA Elite, kept him on insurance which paid for the surgery, and he’s grateful.

“I called them up, basically begged them to keep me on,” he said. “They stepped up and put me back on insurance. I’m very grateful to them.”

This past weekend was big for him in his new role as a full-time spectator. READ MORE.