Anthony Hernandez thinks he submitted Rodolfo Vieira at UFC 258 with broken hand

Anthony Hernandez’s guillotine choke submission of Rodolfo Vieira on Saturday night at UFC 258 was already a remarkable feat —the first time an ADCC gold medalist had ever been submitted in the octagon.

On Monday, the UFC light heavyweight added another detail that made his work all the more impressive — Hernandez (8-2 MMA, 2-2 UFC) pulled off his second-round finish with a suspected broken right hand.

“I was able to get back to my feet and then on the feet I was going to get his ass, because he’s a grappler,” Hernandez said on Monday’s edition of MMA Junkie Radio. “One of the right hands. I’m pretty sure broke the hand, it just went numb. It was like, ‘(Expletive),’ but it’s a fight, you gotta keep going, it’s a pride thing. … I kept throwing, it didn’t look like it was broken but it (expletive) hurt.”

Hernadez understood he was going up against a master grappler, but his training taught him to stay calm and not make mistakes, and his composure under pressure paid off during the fight.

“It was just like ‘(expletive)’ when I got taken down, but it was like, I had been practicing checking my hip with the left and he shot on my right and so he switched it up on me, which was sweet of him,” he said. “And I was just like ‘You (expletive),’ and when I was in the air I was like, ‘(Expletive), I’m gonna go for a ride!’ And then I was like, ‘Be calm, stay patient in there.’ I’ve been in bad situations before in practice. When you panic, you put yourself in a worse position, so I just had to stay calm (and) get back to (my) feet.”

Hernandez, who earned a “Performance of the Night” bonus for his efforts, says he’s going to get the hand x-rayed soon to confirm whether it’s been broken. In the meantime, he has no regrets about how the fight played out.

“I wanted to knock him out, I was trying. I hit him with some hard (expletive), and he was standing up still. I was like ‘Aww (expletive), this (expletive) is tough.’ He’s not one of those guys that you can just get out of there, you know? So I just went to Plan B and submitted him. My coaches were actually yelling ‘No, no, no!’ when I was grappling and they’re like ‘Get up, get up!’ and I was like, ‘(Expletive) that! I need to choke this guy out!’