UFC middleweight Kyle Daukaus has a few pieces of hardware in his face from surgery following his knockout loss in Austin, Texas.
Opening the UFC on ESPN 37 prelims, Daukaus (11-3 MMA, 2-3 UFC) faced Roman Dolidze, aiming to make it back-to-back wins. Unfortunately for Daukaus (10-1 MMA, 4-1 UFC), his opponent landed a brutal knee to his face in the clinch, resulting in a first-round knockout loss.
The impact from the knee caused significant damage to Daukaus’ face, requiring surgery. On Tuesday, Daukaus posted a video on social media providing a health update and explaining the surgery he went through.
“All right so I just wanted to come on, give everybody an update as to let you know what’s going on with my face and stuff, why it’s so swollen and everything,” Daukaus said in a video posted to Instagram. “So yeah, during the fight I got kneed, obviously. As soon the knee landed, it kind of broke my face in three places. The scans I got, I had two orbital fractures, and I think I had a fracture in my eye socket as well underneath.
I went to the doctor’s obviously immediately after the fight. I was there kind of all night, came home probably around like 11 o’clock. I could have stayed in Austin and had the surgery the following week, but kinda just wanted to go home and just be where I’m comfortable at. So, flew home, went down to Jefferson Hospital, got everything taken care of. Got one of the best doctors to fix my face and everything like that.”
Daukaus appears to be in good spirits considering the severity of damage to his face. He also seems encouraged by the length of recovery time it will take for him to get back to training, which was a much shorter timeframe than he originally anticipated, but he does have some new hardware in his head.
“So yeah, surgery went well, it was last Thursday,” Daukaus said. “I got three plates put in, unfortunately, in my face. I got three plates on my like actual face and then I have one underneath my eyeball too, but the one underneath my eye isn’t really a plate. It kind of just molds to my bone so it’ll kind of eventually just become one as opposed to the ones that are screwed in here in my face and my cheekbone.”
Daukaus entered the bout against Dolidze on the heels of a buzzer-beating first-round submission of Jamie Pickett four months prior. Since his debut in 2020, the Dana White’s Contender Series veteran was on a good rhythm of fighting twice in a calendar year. He anticipates returning to the gym to continue his UFC career, but won’t rush things.
“I have about six to eight weeks of recovery, the doctor had said, which is something that’s far quicker than I thought it was going to be,” Daukaus said. “I thought I was going to be out at least a year. … Hopefully the swelling goes away very soon and hopefully within six to eight weeks I’ll be back and the gym training full time and getting the work in that I need to get in. I just want to thank everyone for the love and support.”