Why Jose Aldo's injuries are still a big, dangerous deal

Last night, the UFC announced that Jose Aldo only bruised a rib bone and tore some cartilage in his rib cage, not suffered a fracture, and so he still plans to fight in the UFC 189 main event next month. That's good news for a lot of people.

It's certainly good for the featherweight champion Aldo and his challenger Conor McGregor, financially. The UFC has said that they've put a record amount of promotion money into this fight, and I bet it will pay off.

You've got the UFC's longest reigning and most dominant world champion in Aldo taking on one of the promotion's fastest rising stars and a living hype machine in McGregor. Plus, there's lots of personal enmity between the two.

It's a great fight with a lot of heat and it should do big numbers. That means, Aldo and McGregor's bank accounts should get the biggest deposits of their careers as well, after pay-per view percentage points are calculated and added to their respective purses.

It's good for the UFC, who will make the lion's share of the money from the event they are putting on. It's good for the fans, and it's good for me. 

I'll be at UFC 189 and with due respect to the many other great matchups on this card (including the welterweight title rematch between Robbie Lawler and Rory MacDonald), I most looked forward to seeing Aldo fight, live.

As such, everyone rejoiced Wednesday, when it was announced that Aldo's doctors told him that he hadn't, in fact, broken any ribs, and that he'd be allowed to fight. Make no mistake, however - just because Jose Aldo's rib isn't broken, doesn't mean that he isn't very seriously injured.

And, just because he's willing to fight, doesn't mean that he'll be right at UFC 189. At this point in his training camp, Aldo would ideally be working towards a crescendo in terms of work rate and intensity.

That type of heavy work - in sparring, and a number of other areas - are key to a fighter being sharp and conditioned for a fight. Right now, Aldo has two options, and neither of them is great.

Should he continue to work with his bruised ribs and twisted cartilage, he risks not allowing the injuries to heal, or making them much worse. After all, a rib bone bruise that takes more damage before healing can quickly become a fractured rib.

And, damaged rib cartilage can become so bad that it pulls at bones and leads to them breaking. So, if Aldo continues to do what he needs to in training to make sure he makes weight and is on point to fight an opponent as good as McGregor, he could very well end up in worse shape on fight night than he is now.

Or, Aldo can ease off the gas pedal to try and allow some level of healing for his ribs. That's good for his body, but it makes being conditioned and on-point for a five-round fight more difficult, in other ways.

Like all pro fighters, Aldo's opponent Conor McGregor also knows what it's like to train and fight through injuries.

Resting his body to try and be as healthy as possible on fight night risks sharpness on fight night. A fighter like Aldo is simply rolling the dice, one way or another. 

I remember the stress of partially tearing my left ACL two weeks before an amateur MMA fight of mine. Even kneeling on my bed caused a great deal of pressure and discomfort in my knee, making it feel as if a balloon was being blown up, tight, inside my knee.

In order to go ahead with the fight, I made the decision to basically abstain from any taxing work for the last two weeks of camp, including what was supposed to be my final week of sparring. I ate less in order to make sure I was on pace to make weight (probably a good idea for my chubby ass at the time, in any case), and decided I'd need to have a different, less grappling-centered approach to the fight, since I thought wrestling and grappling was likely to be extra shaky without my knee's full stability.

On fight night, I just hoped that the fight would be quick enough for my knee to hold up. Aldo will have to do the same, with his ribs.

In fact, professional fighters do that type of thing all the time. Their stress is infinitely higher than anything I experienced, because their livelihood depends on their fighting.

As bad as knee injuries are, rib injuries are even harder to work around. The thing about one's rib cage is that it is engaged with almost any type of movement, including simply breathing. 

There's a good chance that any and all types of exercise produce excruciating pain for Aldo, right now. Just because a rib isn't fractured, doesn't mean that Aldo is anywhere near healthy, right now, or that he can get there by UFC 189.

With bruised rib bones and torn rib cartilage, deep breaths will be painful for the champion, and could be for weeks. The first time I suffered bruised ribs, I was just a child and so I wasn't well-suited to deal with the pain.

The next times I suffered rib injuries (including torn cartilage, bone bruises, and, on another occasion, a fractured rib) I was an adult and had fought for years. Still, there was just no real, functional dealing with the pain.

I couldn't sleep on my stomach for months, without pain, pressure, and it impeding my ability to breathe. Lifting my legs affected my ribs, turning my body, did, as did walking, jogging, bending over, bouncing, or reaching my arms above my shoulders.

With my lifestyle, I was able to rest, type, and do a whole lot of nothing. Jose Aldo is preparing for the biggest fight of his life with those types of symptoms and that type of pain. 

Good luck, champ. 

Aldo will be slightly healed on fight night and much less sharp than he could have been, because of lost training. Or, he'll have worked through the pain and his ribs will be in just  as bad shape, or worse, at UFC 189 as they are right now. 

So, I hope he negotiated a purse raise and an automatic rematch clause in the event he loses to McGregor. Fighting through bruised ribs and torn cartilage in order to save an event is no small task. 

I'm excited to see Aldo fight July 11 in Las Vegas, and he's earned the right to decide to gut through injuries and make a living. But I know too well that there's no way he'll be anywhere near right on fight night.