Paige VanZant has not competed in combat sports since a July 2021 decision loss to Rachael Ostovich at BareKnuckle FC 19. After a mysterious last-minute fight cancellation for BKFC London, the promotion held out hope that “12 Guage” would return for their annual big date. KnuckleMania event in February, but alas… Paige just revealed on her social media accounts that she broke her foot and won’t be doing anything without crutches for a while.
A video on Instagram showed her at the doctor’s office in front of an x-ray of her foot. “When they say maybe you broke three bones and not one…” the caption read as she did a little TikTok dance on The Weekend’s Creepin’ with the lyrics “I don’t wanna know”.
As for how the injury happened? Well, let’s just say that being an influencer can be a dangerous business. VanZant was in Anchorage, Alaska and decided to make a video of jumping off his balcony into soft snow. Unfortunately the snow wasn’t as soft as expected and the dirt cracked a metatarsal bone in his foot. She also shared a video of the crash landing, with the caption “Awesome way to end the year!!”
Luckily for Paige, she’s reached that level of social media popularity with her 3M+ Instagram followers and 580K+ OnlyFans that she doesn’t really have to fight anymore. BKFC chairman Dave Feldman said he doubted PVZ would return to the Bare Knuckle arena before she even broke her foot.
“We were talking about putting her on KnuckleMania [in February], and we’ll be talking to his manager again next week,” Feldman said in early December. “We’ll see what happens with that. I would like her to come back if she wants to come back to fight and test herself one more time. She does other things and she does very well and makes a lot of money. Then I do not know. If she wants to come back, she is welcome, but we don’t know for sure if she will come back. She belongs here. We’ll see soon.
VanZant also signed with professional wrestling promotion AEW in March 2022, appearing in promotions multiple times leading up to his tag team wrestling debut in May at Double or Nothing (watch the highlights here). She put on a solid performance, but may have kicked herself out of the regular rotation by stating that AEW should “pay me the PPV dollars to show up.”
For now, social media dollars will have to do until PVZ recovers from that broken foot.
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