Middleweight Patrick (The Predator) Cote, whose title shot against Anderson Silva was cut short by injury at UFC 90 in suburban Chicago on Saturday night, will undergo knee surgery next week that is expected to keep him out for six to eight months.
Cote's title bid at the Allstate Arena ended 39 seconds into the third round when his right knee gave way. The 28-year-old from Montreal planted his right foot and crumpled to the ground, prompting a halt to the mixed martial arts fight.
"For him to be six to eight months off with that kind of surgery means that there's a lot of work to do in his knee," Stephane Patry, Cote's manager, told The Canadian Press on Monday from Montreal.
The Montreal operation will be handled by the same specialist who operated in the past on Cote's left knee and on welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre.
Cote has had to deal with an injured meniscus, the cartilage that stabilizes and cushions the knee joint, for close to a year.
Patry said the injury initially occurred some six weeks before Cote's bout with Drew McFedries in January. The knee was put back in place, but the damage had been done.
"We knew for a year that he needed surgery, but the timing wasn't right," Patry said. "Patrick wanted to go as far as he could with his knee because his career was going so well."
Cote (14-5) went on to beat both McFedries and Ricardo Almeida, at UFC 86 in July. The knee was fine, according to Patry, although it felt "weird" in certain positions.
"Then three weeks before Silva, he called me from Boston (where he trains with Mark DellaGrotte). He was crying," Patry said. "He said 'Man, I think we have to pull out. My knee, I just busted my knee.'
"So he came back to Montreal. We went to see the specialist. The specialist put the knee back in place and told him: 'Listen, you need that surgery, Patrick, and you need it now.' And Patrick was like 'Man, I have a title shot in three weeks. I can't do that to the UFC. I can't do that to myself, to my big chance. I'm not fighting a grappler, I'm fighting a striker. So can you do something?'
"He got a cortisone shot in his knee and did the fight."
Patry said he believed the knee would hold up because they expected the fight to stay on the feet.
"The kind of motion he was doing that could cause the knee to (buckle) was really high-risk in a grappling match but very low-risk in a standup fight."
Cote, however, aggravated the knee in the second round when he hit Silva with a body kick and told his corners between rounds he could no longer kick. He was told to focus on boxing.
Patry, meanwhile, says Cote was the main reason for Silva's uncharacteristically disengaged performance Saturday night.
The Cote game plan was to frustrate Silva and take him out of his comfort zone. The strategy was to pressure him early with kicks and the threat of the Canadian's powerful right hand, forcing the champion to attack in the later rounds in the hope he would open himself to Cote's counter-punching.
"We were very confident that with Patrick's power in his right hand, if he was able to put him in a position where Anderson had to be the first guy to punch, it was going to be dangerous for Anderson," Patry explained. "And the way for us to put a question in his mind was right at the beginning try to get him with the big right hand. And if you notice in the fight, at the 30-second mark, Patrick almost catches him with a big, big right hand. Anderson felt that, he felt that punch coming, he felt the wind behind it. So he was cautious.
"That's exactly what we wanted to do. We wanted Anderson basically to be lost in the Octagon and that's what happened. It's easy to say it wasn't the real Anderson Silva. That's what Dana (UFC president Dana White) said. But if you ask Anderson Silva himself, he's like `Man, this guy was giving me headaches."'
Silva offered no excuses at the post-fight news conference, other to say that jumping from 230 pounds to 205 (light-heavyweight) to 185 (middleweight) took a toll.
The Cote camp remains confident the Canadian can beat Silva.
"I'm telling you, if they fight again and it's the same kind of fight, Patrick's going to beat him," Patry said.
As previously planned, Cote left Chicago to go directly to Cancun, Mexico, to attend a friend's wedding.
NOTES - St. Pierre says he was "very impressed" by Thiago Alves' win over Josh Koscheck in the co-main event at UFC 90. "He showed everybody why he belongs in the top fighters in the welterweight division," St. Pierre wrote in his blog (
www.yardbarker.com). "Of course, it's up to the UFC, but I think he will be one of my next opponents pretty soon." St. Pierre also revealed he is due on the cover of Men's Fitness in January. The welterweight champ, whose next fight is Jan. 31 against B.J. Penn, is currently training in Brazil.
