In the main event of the UFC 257 pay-per-view, Dustin Poirier defeated Conor McGregor via technical knockout in the 2nd round of their fight.

One of the reasons why Poirier was so successful against McGregor was his game plan which involved using a lot of calf kicks that targeted Conor’s lead leg. Throughout the fight which only lasted one and a half rounds, Poirier landed 18 leg kicks and did some serious damage to McGregor’s right leg.

After the fight, “The Notorious” was limping and left an arena on crutches. His right leg below the knee was bruised and swollen from Poirier’s brutal kicks.

According to McGregor’s coach, John Kavanagh, it’s not a serious leg injury and no damage was done to his bone. Apparently, Poirier landed his leg kicks on the outside of McGregor’s calf just below the knee which hit the fibula nerve. As Conor stated in the post-fight interview, his leg was “dead” and he couldn’t put any weight on it at the moment.

Is it a serious injury?

Recovery after taking these kicks should only take a few weeks and McGregor was able to do an upper body workout already the next day after the fight with Poirier.

Per John Cavanagh, McGregor was ready to deal with leg kicks which were part of his preparation ahead of the UFC 257. But they did not realize how devastating the damage might be in a fight when you get kicked as hard as possible and unlike in training, you not wearing shin pads.

Calf kicks is a technique that’s been known in MMA for many years but it hasn’t been used as much until not that long ago. In the last few years, leg kicks to the calf really evolved into a serious weapon very effectively used by many UFC fighters.

Prior to UFC 257, Conor McGregor was very inactive and he only fought twice since 2016 when he beat Eddie Alvarez. In those two fights, he only got leg kicked once by Khabib Nurmagomedov and was never hit by Donald Cerrone.