After a severe hand injury and subsequent retirement, MMA fighter Phumi Nkuta has returned to the sport and is also pursuing a career in professional wrestling.
Phumi Nkuta was convinced his career had ended. After a victory over Jason Eastman in Cage Fury FC in 2021, the 28-year-old fighter faced a significant setback. He suffered a broken hand that required surgery and months of rehab. Nkuta, who trained with former UFC bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling and top contender Merab Dvalishvili, revealed that the timing of the injury was the worst part. It forced him to announce his retirement from the sport.
“The hand injury was gruesome,” Nkuta shared with MMA Fighting. He had to wait two weeks for surgery, causing the hand to heal improperly. Doctors had to re-break and fix it. He spent almost four months in a cast. The fight was on Dec. 17, and he didn’t get out of the cast until March 10.
The first metacarpal was completely broken. It wasn’t even connected, and the knuckle was pushed back into his hand. The surgery had to wait until after the holidays, causing the hand to heal in its broken state. This prolonged the recovery process.
Nkuta spent months in a cast, unable to use his hand. He was ready to quit his fighting career. Between the injury and the struggle to find quality opponents, it seemed like a sign to leave MMA.
“It took a long while to even make a proper fist,” he said. After two months, he could make a solid fist. The first four weeks, he couldn’t even move his hand. To keep the hand solid, they had to insert six pins. Five went in through the side and one through the middle.
His hand was immobilized for about four months, followed by four weeks of rehab. “It was a lot. I didn’t have use of my hand for a while.” Once he was finally out of the cast and could move his hand, Nkuta started getting back into the gym. He loved practicing martial arts, even if he wasn’t going to fight again.
It wasn’t until summer 2022, nearly nine months after the injury, that Nkuta could punch at full strength again. He wasn’t ready to end his retirement, but he wanted to engage in MMA again because he loved the sport.
“I was training a lot,” Nkuta said. He helped Aljo prepare for the [Henry] Cejudo fight. He’s a martial artist, so he trains year-round. He’s not the type of guy that likes to hop in there and do a camp and get into a fight. He’s always training.
A few months after Sterling defeated Cejudo to defend his UFC title, Nkuta was still actively training. He hadn’t considered a comeback until his manager called about a potential opportunity.
“[My manager] Oren [Hodak] called me, and I’m driving home from seeing my family and he goes, ‘Look, there’s this card in Nashville and Dana White might be there, I heard some people from the UFC might be there, so you should hop in there.'” Nkuta recounted. “Aljo had been on me about coming back. Merab [Dvalishvili] had been on me about coming back. [Matt Frevola] had been on me, the whole team, and it’s one of those things where I love martial arts but I don’t necessarily love the sport of MMA.
“I love competing. If you got no fame, no clout, or anything from this sport, I’d still be doing it anyway, whether I’m in that ring or I’m teaching. So I looked at that opportunity, I was in shape, I was sparring anyways and I thought, let me just hop back in there. Dana and Sean Shelby and Mick Maynard weren’t there, but we hopped in and we got a win over one of the highest-touted prospects at flyweight outside of the UFC. I don’t know if it was meant to be or maybe Oren was trying to trick me to come back, but either way, I’m back.”
On Friday night, Nkuta jumps up to bantamweight for his CFFC return when he clashes with Hunter Starner. He’s trying to keep his perfect record intact. At this stage, Nkuta is 100 percent committed to his MMA career again, and hopes that an organization like the UFC takes notice.
When Nkuta isn’t fighting, he’s also found another passion project. He has aspirations to make it as a professional wrestler. Nkuta says that, like it or not, MMA and pro wrestling share a lot of similarities and characteristics that make it a natural fit for an athlete and somebody who holds the gift of gab. Deep down, Nkuta knows he possesses both, which is why a transition into pro wrestling just made sense to him.
Even before he made the decision to test himself in that world, Nkuta had already picked the brain of current WWE Superstar CM Punk, who previously called fights for CFFC in his spare time. Punk went the opposite route as Nkuta after he left professional wrestling and attempted to make it in MMA with two fights in the UFC.
It was during a broadcast that Nkuta turned to Punk for advice about getting on the microphone and cutting an authentic promo, which happens to work well in both MMA and pro wrestling. “We were doing commentary at CFFC, they let me do commentary for the prelims and I just asked him on the side,” Nkuta said. “Obviously, I’m a talker, I’d already done an interview with him and I don’t really plan what I’m going to say but I knew the interview was good. So I was like, let me ask this guy CM Punk how to cut a promo.
“He just said, ‘Be yourself. If you’re faking it, you’re being something that you’re not, everybody is going to see it. It’s going to be fake, it’s not going to be organic.’ So I’m going to be myself.”
Taking away that lesson from Punk helped Nkuta not only start exploring a career in pro wrestling, but it also gave him the confidence to speak proudly about his plans for the future now that he’s back to fighting full-time.
“When you hear me say I’m one of the best fighters on the planet, that I’m the best flyweight in the world, that I’m the king of any ring, that I’m going to kill it pro wrestling, I’m going to kill it in the sport of MMA, it’s because I genuinely believe that,” Nkuta said. “I’m not over here putting on fake suits and put on a fake persona. I really live, eat, and breathe this.
“I’m all the way back. I’ve been back since I took that fight [in Nashville]. I’m in the gym sparring, I’m boxing every week, I’m wrestling every week. It’s like I never left at this point. I can’t wait to show what I’ve got.”