‘Who needs teeth?’ Returning Whittaker laughs off gruesome injury

Robert Whittaker has been suffering one of the most eerie injuries to ever occur in the UFC for nine months.

Whittaker submitted to a face crank during his fight with Khamzat Chimaev in Abu Dhabi in October, which caused the Australian’s bottom teeth to buckle.

Hours later, a horrifying X-ray of the 34-year-old’s teeth went viral online, but Whittaker claims the experience wasn’t as bad as the media had predicted.

Because I have teeth issues, Whittaker laughs, “I’m not too bad for me.”

“It didn’t tickle,” he said. However, pushing them back and putting them together to make the trip home didn’t hurt when it did when it did. That was painful, yuck.

When Whittaker recalls meeting his wife and kids in Australia, he laughs joviously.

Whittaker claims that he was 19 years old, “young and dumb,” and “mucking around on the town” when he first lost his teeth.

Whittaker had been unable to bite down on an apple for nearly 15 years because the incident damaged his bottom teeth.

Before Chimaev later dislodged them, which required surgery, they were injured again when they were “pushed back” during his defeat by Dricus du Plessis in 2023.

“I entered, was put to sleep, and was awake.” Everything better. The important thing is that I put implants in, Whittaker says, even though I had four to six teeth removed.

I should have replaced the teeth after having the implants and replacing them much sooner, I thought. My life has improved significantly. But who, in any case, needs teeth?

Dental implants are synthetic teeth that replace tooth roots, which are typically made of metal, in the jaw to support the teeth that Whittaker had lost.

Whittaker, a former UFC middleweight champion, has won 17 of his 23 fights since joining the organization in 2012.

He is currently fifth in the UFC middleweight rankings, demonstrating that few people have the same level of longevity.

Although Whittaker asserts that his main motivation isn’t regaining the title, which he lost to Israel Adesanya in 2019 and is currently held by Du Plessis.

There are just things I’m working for, not that I have anything to prove. For my kids and any other athlete who wants to emulate me, Whittaker says.

“The kids are what motivates me to be better and work as hard as I do, because I’ve been in the game for so long,” he said.

De Ridder joined the UFC in 2012 and is only in his fourth fight.

He is 34 like Whittaker, but he spent the majority of his career in the middleweight and light-heavyweight division of MMA.

“De Ridder is going to try to make me uncomfortable and take me to the ground,” Whittaker said.