Tristan Connelly got the bad news, and after letting it sink in, he called his manager, Jason House.
“Retirement is not even a word,” he told House.
Point made, Connelly then got down to the business of figuring out how to fix the disc issue that was causing him excruciating pain. The neck injury happened in a car crash in 2019, and in typical prizefighter fashion, he ignored it the best he could, even fighting and beating Michel Pereira in his long-awaited UFC debut in September of that year.
“I rehabbed it, but there would be flare-ups,” he said.