Radach feels Sharp after Layoff

Originally posted on Sherdog.com

Benji “Razor” Radach knows all about long layoffs.

Earlier in his career, he spent nearly three years away from MMA after suffering a broken jaw in 2004 at the heavy hands of Chris Leben. It was the first in a long string of, well, crippling physical ailments that had Radach wondering if some higher power was trying to tell him to find another line of work.

So the fact that his fight Saturday for EliteXC against its former middleweight champion, Murilo“Ninja” Rua, will be his first in nine months is the proverbial piece of cake. If anything, Radach said, rather than being mentally or physically challenging, the layoff has actually been a good thing, following, as it did, a very fight-stacked 2007.

“I think it’s really been therapeutic,” Radach, 29, said. “Cause I fought a lot last year. Six times. So it was just cram-packed with training hard and beating my body up. And you know, you have to heal up from everything. And I really needed a break just to get the hunger back. Now, I’m going to go into this fight healthy and strong and ready to win.”

Whatever adversity Radach has faced in the cage -- and of 21 professional fights, he’s only suffered four losses -- pales in comparison to a very trying period from June 2004 to February 2007 that is the stuff of fighters’ bad dreams.

“It was pretty much injury after injury,” Radach recalled. “I had the broken jaw. Then I had a herniated disc in my neck and lost all this muscle in my right pec and right tricep. It was like I was paralyzed. I couldn’t even do a pushup. It was pretty bad.

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