Two amateur Muay Thai fighters both broke a leg in separate fights Saturday night in Deerfield Beach.
Just two and a half minutes into his fight, Edson El Toro broke his left leg at the Deerfield Sports Complex.
"MMA is pretty safe the way they run it, this is just like a freak accident," he said. "The guy was doing a spinning back fist and I did a spinning back fist, and it was the momentum and we hit."
Moments later, fighter Chad Nance's leg took the same turn at the event, produced by Elite Productions.
"Didn't I just watch the same thing happen in the match before?" he thought to himself. "I hope they got another ambulance around here."
The two were rushed to North Broward Medical Center into surgery Saturday, and are now recovering in good company and good spirits.
"It may take (Nance) as little as six weeks to heal," said Dr. Peter Merkle of North Broward Medical Center. "He'll go back to fighting and it will actually be stronger in that particular part of his leg."
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Doctors put titanium rods behind their knee caps and through the bone down to their ankles.
"I actually watch people break their shins on YouTube and you always wonder how that feels," said Nance. "Now I know."
"We've done 75 shows in Florida over the last 11 years, but this is the first time an incident like this happened, but to have two is just crazy," said Elite Promotions' CEO, Jeff Gibson.
He called both injuries flukes.
The two made light of their fights as they watched them on a laptop in the hospital for the first time since Saturday.
But at one point, Nance felt heavy-hearted.
"Just to step in the ring just to be carried out in 10 seconds, is a letdown," he said.
Both fighters are expected to make a full recovery and to be released from the hospital late Monday.
