It seems that the MMA community has received closure after weeks of gossip, rumors, and smack talk from Conor McGregor and his sugar-daddy/promoter Dana White; Joe Aldo’s rib is most definitely broken. Specifically, his 10th rib on his left side.
Even casual MMA fans understand that a broken rib comes with nasty side effects like the stamina of a thirty year chain smoker but why is that? Remember that Jose Aldo is having trouble walking and even standing straight. That’s a medical issue that should only occur after a bad break up and a $120 bar tab; you’d think a world class fighter would handle a broken rib better.
To understand how much this injury hurts it’s essential to gain an understanding of the anatomy and physiology surrounding the rib cage.
The ribs are divided into three categories: True, False, and Floating.
True ribs are connected to the sternum by their own, individual piece of cartilage. False ribs do so by having their individual pieces of cartilage fuse into a single piece before connecting. Floating ribs, on the other hand, don’t have any cartilage at all.
These ribs protect organs within the thoracic cavity and parts of the abdominopelvic cavity to varying degrees. True ribs guard the lungs and heart, false ribs protect the stomach and the corresponding accessory digestive organs, and the false ribs (dinky little things that they are) do a decent job shielding the kidneys from posterior impact.
Ribs are very strong where they meet the vertebra and very flexible closer to the sternum. Due to those properties, ribs generally break just anterior to their “angle” (curvature) which is usually just before they connect to their cartilage. True ribs have extensive musculature over them, are shorter in length and are generally most robust which makes them difficult to break in a combat sport. Floating ribs are so short that it takes a very specific strike to break them (a solid kidney shot, for example).
False ribs are still easy targets, have a longer length to connect to the sternum and are the least robust of the first 10 ribs making them the easiest to break and target.
Jose Aldo broke rib 10 on his left side which is in a real problem area. Bas Rutten illustrated this on ESPN’s Sports Science with a vicious hook targeting the same area.
The red stain blossoming underneath the ribs is a simulated ruptured spleen. The spleen is like a senator’s spoiled but insecure son; important but fragile. It is extraordinarily well vascularized and important to the immune system but takes very little force to damage. A damaged rib in that area not only lowers the amount of force needed to touch the spleen but may push the rib into the spleen itself.
The placement of Rib 10 along the rib cage itself is also problematic.
Make a fist and pretend you’re attempting to target a specific rib in the middle of your rib cage with a gentle push. The adjacent ribs will stop your fist before you can push the chosen rib in very far. The rib cage is designed so that most blunt force trauma will be dispersed among multiple ribs instead of one.
Rib 10 has no such protection; it is the last rib to attach to the sternum and the two ribs below it do not come out far enough. This means that a strike that travels at an upwards trajectory (like Rutten’s shovel hook) can hit Rib 10 with no other rib to cushion the force.
Conor McGregor is a fast, dexterous fighter whose unorthodox kicks and lead right hand would have a field day with an injured tenth rib on the left side. Exhaling and contracting the abs won’t do much to help when the rib is already broken.
That brings us to the more confusing question: why is Jose Aldo having trouble standing and walking?
The abdominal muscles (in conjunction with muscles in the back) play an enormous role in maintaining posture and balance. The actions are performed subconsciously but the abdominal muscles are constantly contracting and relaxing to perform minute adjustments during the day.
These abdominal muscles are often attached to or at least cover the lower ribs. Imagine having to adjust your posture and gait because any wrong move will cause a muscle to contract over your broken rib sending shooting pain throughout your torso.
Hopefully this analysis will refute the claims that Jose Aldo is “running”. In reality he is smartly avoiding taking the biggest fight in his career with what has the potential to be a crippling injury.
