(Video courtesy TheFightFix)

According to Jake Shields‘ father and manager, Jack Shields, the rumors that his son suffered an injury training for his UFC debut next weekend aren’t without merit.

The elder Shields told CSN Washington’s The Fight Fix over the weekend that Jake, who hasn’t fought at 170 since 2008, sustained a back injury due to a combination of too much running and cutting too much weight too quickly to drop down to welterweight for his UFC 121 fight with Martin Kampmann, but says that he has since made a complete recovery.

If you watch Jake’s training session with former Olympic wrestler Ben Askren, the former Strikeforce middleweight champ doesn’t seem to be showing any signs of being injured, but if the injury came from cutting weight, you never know what effect dropping the final five to 10 pounds will have on his back this week.


If you’re undecided on who to choose for your Fightpicker or betting picks, you might want to go with Kampmann. I was the only one out of Ben, Chad and myself who picked Martin during the roundtable segment of latest episode of The Bum Rush, but for the record I also made another darkhorse pick in Carlos Condit beating Dan Hardy and we all know how that fight turned out.

Even if Shields’ back is 100 percent healed by Saturday night, not being able to train for an extended period of time while he recovered could very well have an effect on his strength and conditioning. It’s also not outside the realm of possibility that his camp is understating the severity and timeline of the injury.

At least now if he loses he’ll have an excuse.