Australian UFC fighter Jack Jenkins has revealed how terrifyingly close he came to asphyxiating himself after fighting for seven minutes with a snapped thyroid cartilage, admitting: “I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t had an impact on me mentally”.
Speaking with Fox Sports Australia, the 31-year-old featherweight also admits to having no idea how he will respond in his September comeback from an injury that also saw him come within one millimetre of never speaking again.
Ranked among the nation’s most exciting prospects, Jenkins is one of three bouts the UFC have this morning confirmed for the promotion’s return to Perth next month, with the fighter dubbed ‘Phar Jack’ to face America’s Ramon Tavares.
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Elsewhere on the UFC Perth card – which will be headlined by Dominick Reyes and Carlos Ulberg – longtime Aussie favourite Jake Matthews face Neil Magny while hyped welterweight Jonathan Micallef squares off against Oban Elliott.
For Jenkins, the return comes just after six months after a scary ordeal saw him rushed to intensive care and prepped for emergency surgery following an appearance at UFC 312 in Sydney.
Afterwards, the athlete was out enjoying dinner at Betty’s Burgers when he received an urgent phone call from UFC medical staff saying he wasn’t to speak loudly or make any sudden movements.
It followed, hours earlier, having been submitted in the third round of a bout against Gabriel Santos – and two rounds on from a first-round triangle choke escape that resulted in air leaking into his chest and neck.
“I was escaping a triangle choke and my thyroid cartilage was snapped,” Jenkins recounts.
“The pressure from that attempt cracked it …”
Immediately, Jenkins says he knew something was wrong.
“I started losing feeling on the left side of my body,” he continues. “If you watch the fight back, you’ll see I keep shaking my left arm.
“I just can’t put things together.
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“At first, I thought it might just a little bit of nerve damage, like when you get kicked in the calf and get drop foot.
“I assumed with time the feeling would come back.
“But then I also couldn’t seem to get air in like I would normally.
“And on the scans later, it showed I had air pockets in my throat and air pockets in my chest.
“So it makes sense that the thyroid cracked, and then as I was trying to get air in, it’s escaping into my throat and chest cavity instead of going into my lungs.
“But at the time, I thought I’d be able to tough it out.”
While Jenkins would eventually be submitted in the third, he still fought for over seven minutes with the injury that, initially afterwards, so him sent to hospital with what medical staff thought may have been a broken jaw.
“But when my scans came back showing the jaw wasn’t broken I was allowed leave,” he explains.
“And to be fair, there was nothing to suggest I was in a bad way.
“So my team and my family, we all went for dinner.”
Which is when things took a real turn.
“We were sitting down for dinner when the UFC rang,” he says of a call taken by one of his coaches.
“I was told ‘they’ve missed something on your scans’.
“And then they’ve told me, ‘don’t speak too loudly and don’t make any sudden movements’.
“That’s when I got scared.
“We were upstairs at Betty’s Burgers and my niece, she starts crying.
“Then mum starts crying.
“It was a brutal experience.
“And then from there, I was transported to the hospital where a doctor said ‘he’s nil by mouth, prep him for emergency surgery’.
“I was then sent to the ICU …”
While Jenkins would eventually avoid surgery, the wait left him more than a little anxious.
“Because by now my throat was swelling up,” Jenkins continues. “And had it swollen anymore there was a chance I could asphyxiate myself.
“That’s why there was a chance of an emergency tracheostomy.
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“I’m really lucky that my doctor, Naomi, doubles as the UFC doctor.
“After we left the hospital, she was already waiting for me back at the hotel lobby, where they had a transport van already waiting for me.
“The UFC were phenomenal.
“I can’t speak highly enough of how they dealt with it.
“I also went and saw another specialist recently who put a tube down my throat, just to make sure my voice box was healthy.
“He showed me the scans and there was essentially one millimetre between the crack in the thyroid cartilage and my voice box,
“One millimetre over and I probably never speak again.”
Quizzed on what type of toll the experience has taken on him, Jenkins says: “I’d be lying if I said, initially, it didn’t have an impact on me mentally.
“There were times were I genuinely thought ‘is this what you want to do’.
“Young men, we all have this since of invincibility.
“But it was in that moment I realised I am mortal — and that at some point I will die.
“And having now crossed that threshold, the question becomes ‘OK, knowing you are in danger, does that make you a worse fighter, or does understanding the consequences make you a better fighter?’
“And there is no way of knowing until I fight.”
Jenkins quickly added, however, that all signs in training have been incredibly positive.
“My instincts, and the way everything that has happened this camp suggest I’m going to be better fighter because of this,” he insists.
“In sparring, I’m actually more aggressive.
“Hunting things I might have let go in the past.
“And when I’ve got my foot on an opponent’s neck, I don’t take it off.
“I’m ready to get back in there.”