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Michael Rothstein, ESPN Staff Writer
WBC and WBA strawweight champion Seniesa Estrada will have surgery to repair a hairline fracture on the knuckle of her right index finger, the fighter told ESPN on Tuesday.
Estrada (25-0, 9 KO) will have surgery on Sept. 12.
Estrada believes she injured the finger in the second round of her unanimous decision win over Leonela Yudica on July 28 in Las Vegas. It had changed her game plan for the fight, which had called for her to use a lot of right hands throughout the 10 rounds.
Therapy to try and repair the injury wouldn’t help, Estrada said, because it is an injury she had dealt with for a long time prior to this fight. She had aggravated it in sparring before. Estrada told ESPN she currently can’t make a full fist.
“It’s been a thing for a while,” Estrada told ESPN. “Luckily, in a fight, I hadn’t injured it in the fight but this last fight, second round, I forgot what I hit her with, an overhand right or a right hand and, ‘Bam,’ pain shot through my fingers and my hand.
“Once that happened, I can’t use it.”
Estrada told ESPN the injury threw off her game plan for the rest of the fight.
Estrada said meetings with a hand specialist showed the fracture and a cyst on her knuckle that would have to be “carved down,” because that’s the source of the pain, and some ligament damage.
Estrada said she’s not surprised she needs surgery because she sensed something was wrong, but the pain and situation is frustrating.
The 31-year-old Estrada didn’t fight for 11 months and ended up changing promoters from Golden Boy to Top Rank, where she’s fought three times and became a unified champion at strawweight earlier this year when she beat Tina Rupprecht in March.
“It’s just another pause,” Estrada said. “I’m pretty disappointed in that.”