Bellator MMA’s David “The Caveman” Rickels earned a lightweight title fight with champion Michael Chandler by winning the Bellator Season 8 Lightweight Tournament. He defeated Lloyd Woodard, Jason Fischer and Saad Awad to get to the title fight, but an Independence Day firework accident nearly caused his championship aspirations to go up in flames. “I nearly blew up my hand on the Fourth of July. It didn’t affect my training at all. Everything is great, but I had a big open wound on my hand, and I had to be really careful as far as not getting infected,” Rickels told MMAWeekly.com. “I’ve done a really good job, surprisingly. I’ve got a resilient body and I’m feeling great going into this fight.” “I was lighting another one and the spark jumped over into the one in my hand and blew up. It was a really weird deal. It was a freak accident that could have cost me my damn hand let alone my title fight,” he explained. At first, Rickels didn’t know how much damage the firework caused, but his first thoughts were that it wasn’t good. “I said holy (expletive). I was like, how am I going to explain this? I didn’t know how bad it was because it was really dark and I couldn’t see anything. I could feel my finger, so I was like, okay, that’s there at least,” he said.
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