KANSAS CITY, Mo. – UFC middleweight [autotag]Zak Cummings[/autotag] has not competed since August 2020, and he can thank a sneeze for keeping him on the sidelines.
Cummings (24-7 MMA, 9-4 UFC) returns to action Saturday at UFC on ESPN 44 at T-Mobile Center in Kansas City, Mo., to take on Ed Herman (27-15 MMA, 13-11 UFC) in a preliminary bout that airs on ESPN+.
It’s been a long journey to get back to competitive shape after a sneeze was the straw that essentially broke Cummings’ already-damaged back while preparing for a fight two years ago.
“I’ve been dealing with some back stuff over time and everything, and I was getting ready for, I think the Sam Alvey fight, and then I just had a lot of pain and a lot of nerve issues and stuff,” Cummings told MMA Junkie and other reporters at Wednesday’s media day. “And then I was really in an awkward position, and I really hate to admit it, but I sneezed and it blew a disc out that was like dangling to the vertebrae below it, and it was completely blocking my nerves, my spinal cord off, and it left me bedridden for three months.
“It took me a long time to get in to a neurosurgeon. I wanted to make sure that if I’m dealing with that stuff, I’m seeing someone high level. It took me a while, but the second he saw me, he got me in surgery immediately, and got everything clipped out and taken care of. But yeah, it was bad. It was rough.”
After surgery, Cummings admits he wasn’t ready to return to his fighting career, because his focus shifted to being healthy enough to do simple tasks with his family, such as picking up his three-year-old daughter. Quality of life became paramount, but a return to fighting was inevitable, as long as his body would allow it.
“If I never fought again, I was really OK with it,” Cummings said. “I’ve been doing this for a decade with the UFC now and I’ve been fighting since I was 7. … I was really unhappy with my quality of life, you know, with like family and stuff like that. But the healthier you get, the more you move – this stuff is very much a part of me and it’s one of those where I needed to prove to myself that I could get back to what I was.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC on ESPN 44.