A few weeks ago, news broke that UFC bantamweight veteran Brad Pickett had been removed from the UFC Hamburg fight card and had his fight rescheduled for October 8 in Manchester, England at UFC 204.

At the time, it was thought that Pickett had suffered a minor injury that caused a slight delay in his fighting schedule, however, speaking on his new 'One Punch Podcast' yesterday, the British man revealed that his injury was a little more serious than most presumed and he described how it first occurred.

"I say it's a new injury but it's not. It sounds really bad but I fractured my spine," Pickett said. "Normally you'd assume that I'd be bedridden and paralyzed, which obviously can happen [but it wasn't that serious]. 

"The injury occurred when I was first meant to be making my UFC debut against Miguel Torres and I was training and I hurt my lower back wrestling. It was so bad, I ruptured my L5-S1 disc and I had to pull out of that fight. Demetrious Johnson stepped in, beat him and went on to get a title shot against Dominick Cruz."

Pickett then described how the injury had flared up again in the last weeks, and how the UFC had decided to reschedule him for the UFC 204 card.   

"Every now and again it flairs up and I get some lower back pain, so I have to ease off my training," Pickett said. "What I do normally do is take a rest for a few days, and normally it settles down and I can train again, but this time it just wasn't going away so I went and saw a back specialist in America who did X-rays and an MRI and stuff. He said because I have nothing between my L5 and S1 discs, it's like vertebrate going on vertebrate, and over time I'd irritated it and got a small fracture in my spine.

"It sounds terrible, but what it is now is it's a lot about pain management, and I've just been taking some strong anti-inflammatories to get the inflammation of my discs. That all said, all it did was really hinder my training for a few weeks and fighting in Hamburg, don't get me wrong, I could've done it, but I wanted to be at my best for me, my fans and my opponent.

While injuries are always the first excuse for some fighters when they underperform, Pickett is well aware they are just part of the game and he never lets then get to him mentally even when he's just preparing for a fight.

"You are never going to go into the gym let alone a fight 100%," Pickett said. "You never know how you are going to feel the day of a fight, you may wake up not feeling great but that doesn't mean you are going to rest that day or not fight. You don't take a day off and you have to fight, so you have to do the same in your training. 

"Don't get me wrong you don't want to train with a serious injury and make it worse but sometimes you aren't always going to feel 100% when you are training. This sport is the toughest sport in the world."