{"id":851364,"date":"2026-08-11T11:32:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T11:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/851364\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T11:32:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T11:32:10","slug":"cried-non-stop-dakota-ditcheva-suffers-double-hand-break-in-pfl-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/851364\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Cried non-stop\u2019: Dakota Ditcheva suffers double hand break in PFL return"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"isSelectedEnd\">Dakota Ditcheva says she has \u201ccried non-stop\u201d after breaking both of her hands during her unanimous decision victory over Denise Kielholtz at PFL New York earlier this month.<\/p>\n<p class=\"isSelectedEnd\">The unbeaten British flyweight returned to competition after more than a year away to outclass Kielholtz and extend her professional record to 16-0. Ditcheva, 28, had not fought since July 2025 after breaking her left hand before suffering a fracture to her other hand five months later.<\/p>\n<p class=\"isSelectedEnd\">\u201cI broke my hands in the fight. I could feel it from the second I started the second round,\u201d said Ditcheva, according to her YouTube channel and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/mixed-martial-arts\/articles\/ckgde2jxvkeo\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">BBC<\/a>. \u201cI didn\u2019t tell my corner. I didn\u2019t tell anybody. I didn\u2019t show it this time, and I didn\u2019t actually tell anybody until I got out of the cage.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"isSelectedEnd\">Ditcheva said one of the injuries was related to a previous break on which she opted not to have surgery last year, while the other was a smaller fracture. \u201cThe good thing is I have no new breaks. It\u2019s just the hand that wasn\u2019t operated on that I broke at the end of last year,\u201d said Ditcheva. \u201cI was told that if I didn\u2019t go ahead with surgery at that time, there was a possibility it could break again. I took the risk in not doing the surgery because I was hoping it would hold strong, and it didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"isSelectedEnd\">Ditcheva is back in splints and awaiting a decision from her surgeon on the next stage of her recovery, with another spell on the sidelines now expected. \u201cI have honestly cried non-stop the last week,\u201d she said. \u201cI will be back. This is not going to take me out. My career is not done. Although it felt like that once again, I will be back. I\u2019m hopefully going to be back quicker than I was last time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The latest setback comes after Ditcheva established herself as one of the PFL\u2019s leading fighters by winning its flyweight tournament in 2024, becoming the first British woman to claim a major MMA world championship and collecting a $1 million prize.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dakota Ditcheva says she has \u201ccried non-stop\u201d after breaking both of her hands during her unanimous decision victory&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":851365,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-851364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=851364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/851365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}