Talia Santos needed surgery to repair a broken orbital bone in her loss to Valentina Shevchenko at UFC 275 on Saturday night, Her manager told MMA Fighting.
Santos, 28, had two of the judges’ three scorecards at the end of the third round with the champion, but the two fighters clashed towards the end of the third round. With severe swelling on one side of his face, Santos lost the last two innings on all three scorecards and Shevchenko rallied for a decisive win (48-47, 47-48, 49-46).
After the war, Santos said which she couldn’t see with her right eye during the final rounds. According to her manager, Tiago Okamura, the flyweight contender will be flying back to Brazil for surgery.
“We have two options,” Okamura told MMA Fighting. “For surgery here [in Singapore], and God knows how long we’ll have to stay and how the recovery will go, or wait two weeks for the swelling to subside a bit and then go for surgery. The doctors said the long flight would be no problem, and we would have better support back home. “
Shevchenko’s only two losses in the UFC were a bantamweight title fight with Amanda Nunes. She was undefeated in nine flyweight matches with five wins in overtime. Shevchenko has lost just two innings of her other three decisive wins combined.
