10 UFC Fighters Who Injured Themselves To Victory

Any of the UFC's Mixed Martial Artists will tell you that the years of honing your craft, gruelling sparring, monotonous drills and sharpening of technique are hard enough, but to actually defeat another individual in the Octagon is another sizeable barrier in itself.

Stars aren't made overnight, contrary to popular belief, and to consistently score 'W's takes a measure of dedication that only the few can maintain for a lengthy spell in their careers.

So, take all that, then add into the equation an injury that would generally debilitate an average human being and you can see the sort of athletes we are talking about in this list.

Whereas in football, for example, a player may be forced out of action for a pulled hamstring or sprained ankle, a fighter will regularly fight through the pain in order to achieve their goal. Simply put, these athletes aren't given the opportunity to fight week-in week-out if an injury threatens their moment, they will be driven to overcome it.

Winning is everything and you must be prepared to put everything on the line in order to do so. When you go to war, you accept the consequences. Nevertheless, what these 10 UFC fighters' went through to achieve victory turns fighting through a pain threshold up to an unfathomable degree.

If you've ever broken your foot then you can confess to knowing how quickly you can go from taking your daily walk to work for granted to being burdened by a considerably more useless fixture for 6-8 weeks. What you are told when suffering a stress fracture to your foot is to switch to activities that place less stress on the area - not to repeatedly use the end of your leg to inflict pain on another individual.

Conor McGregor does things his own way. He used a tactic of chopping down the marauding Nate Diaz in their second grudge match by regularly using a series of heavy kicks to his opponent's lead leg. Though it didn't stop Diaz ploughing forward towards McGregor but he definitely felt them and so did the Notorious one.

After the fight, which McGregor won by decision, it became apparent that he had injured the foot he had been implementing. Conor, who limped into the post-fight press conference, was quick to undersell the injury as 'pre-existing' and just a 'sore shin' - knowing that an injury lay-off could scupper any upcoming fights.

The injury was classed as a 'foot/ankle fracture' on the Nevada State Athletics Commissions' injury suspension list, which makes it sound a bit worse than a touch of bruising.