nt"

LAS VEGAS – Brad Tavares is still on the “slow road to recovery” after a broken left arm went without surgery for longer than it should have. But he’s not allowing the situation to turn into bitterness.

As Tavares told MMA Junkie Radio earlier this year, he broke his arm during an unsuccessful meeting with now-interim-champ Israel Adesanya last July. After an initial trip to the hospital and what he now believes was a poorly conducted X-Ray, Tavares was told that his arm wouldn’t require surgery. Three months later, though, the prognosis was different, and Tavares went under the knife.

The loss in mobility and strength in the arm, Tavares says, ended up being more severe than it would have if he’d just gotten surgery right away. As a result, his return to the cage was delayed. But Tavares is trying not to succumb to the pull of frustration.

“There’s no sense in being bitter about it,” Tavares recently told MMA Junkie at the UFC’s Performance Institute in Las Vegas. “Obviously, there were points throughout this process that I was frustrated. I can’t say that I was unhappy, because it’s not like I was unhappy in life. I was just unhappy about the situation. Just looking back on it – and I could easily dwell on that, be like, ‘If only I had the surgery’ and just get myself worked up.

“And it tends to go there sometimes, but I’m like, ‘You know what? Everything happens for a reason. It is what it is. I’m here now. Let’s work on what I can work on right now.’ I can’t fix the past, I can’t change what happened, I can’t change the path that I’ve been put on. But, moving forward, I can just work as hard as I can to get back.”

The good news is that the bone has healed and Tavares has been medically cleared. Although there’s still “a lot of weird stuff” going on with the arm, which he still wants to improve before taking a fight, he’s back to training and was pleasantly surprised to find out that he hadn’t lost as much of his conditioning and technique as he’d expected.

And at least there were some takeaways from the situation. Tavares, who’d never had surgery before, now knows better than blindly trust doctors and has learned to look for multiple opinions when it comes to health issues. He also had some time to let his body rest and got to spend a lot of time with his daughter.

Although Tavares didn’t stay completely out of the gym, looking to do cardio and use other parts of his body, he also got to heal up some old injuries, like the broken foot he’d nursed going into the meeting with Adesanya – you know, the same one he’d chalked up to “miscommunication and misinformation” before the fight.

“Yeah, my foot was broken,” Tavares said. “And it’s not an excuse. Israel was the better man that night. But at least I’ve had time for my foot to heal, too. I haven’t kicked that whole time that my arm was down. Hopefully, all (lingering) injuries are healed now.”

As Tavares (17-5 MMA, 12-5 UFC) dealt with the injury he inherited in their five-round battle, which Adesanya (16-0 MMA, 6-0 UFC) won in rather lopsided unanimous-decision fashion, Adesanya made his way up the UFC’s middleweight ladder. After wins over Derek Brunson and former long-reigning champion Anderson Silva, he was paired with Kelvin Gastelum in an interim title bout.

Adesanya took a unanimous decision over Gastelum in what ended up being an instant classic and is now expected to unify the title with undisputed champ Robert Whittaker.

“It kills me” to watch fights like this, Tavares says, as it makes his desire to return that much stronger. But it also ended up serving as positive reinforcement for the middleweight, who believes he’s got what it takes to beat the interim champ if they are to meet again.

“Put it this way: I went into that fight and I tried to box, just straight-up box, a badass professional kickboxer – a guy who’s been doing it years and has multiple fights,” Tavares said. “What does he have, like 80-something kickboxing fights? And he’s probably lost only like two, three? I don’t know. I know he has some crazy record, though. That’s the thing, I look at that fight and I’m like, ‘Hey, there’s things that – I know what went wrong there.’ And I’m not going to sit here and use my foot being broken as an excuse, you know. I tried to actually kick in that fight. I kicked him in his leg one time and my foot instantly blew up, swole up.

“I knew that, when I put it back down, I was like, ‘If I kick again there’s a chance that I can’t even stand on it.’ So kicking with the right leg is out of the question. And, for me, leg kicks and my kicks are one of the biggest parts of my game. But I was like, ‘You know what, let’s get through this, though. Let’s go box this guy.’ And didn’t end up working out in my favor. But, like you said, it makes me excited. Because I know I can beat that guy. I know what it takes and what I need to do to beat that guy, and he’s a champion now.”

As for more immediate plans, Tavares says it’s hard to think of specific opponents without knowing for sure when he’ll be back. The focus now is getting back to 100 percent. When he is ready to return, though, Tavares knows this: He doesn’t want a tune-up fight.

“That’s the main goal: it’s that strap around your waist,” Tavares said. “That title, so, whatever fight gets me there.”

To hear more from Tavares, check out the video above.

And for more on the UFC’s upcoming schedule, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.