After years of frustrating injuries, fighter feels strong

Injuries are as much part of mixed martial arts as arm bars and guillotine chokes. That’s not exactly a news flash.

Even so, Albuquerque’s Damacio Page has had more than his share.

After his most recent victory, by first-round rear naked choke over Will Campuzano in October 2009, Page was sidelined for 13 months with a torn rotator cuff and a torn labrum.

	Saturday MMA: Alexander Gustafsson vs. Thiago Silva, Damacio Page vs. Brad Pickett, several other fights. TV: Fuel TV (618 DirecTV, 398 DISH, unavailable on Comcast), 1 p.m.

He was still not 100 percent, he says, when he lost by submission to Demetrious Johnson in November 2010 and to Brian Bowles in March 2011.

Then, a freak training injury necessitated surgery to fuse the C5 and C6 vertebrae in his neck.

For several months, Page (15-6) was reduced to cheerleader status as Jackson-Winkeljohn MMA teammates rose in the ranks.

“Watching them reach stardom is great, but it was hard,” Page says. “It was hard to see them (succeed) while I’m sitting there nursing injuries, trying to get 100 percent while I know I could be in the same boat as them.”

Page’s MMA ship, however, has not sailed. He’ll return to the Octagon Saturday in Stockholm, facing Great Britain’s Brad Pickett. The bantamweight (135-pound) fight is part of a UFC card to be televised on Fuel TV.

“It’s very exciting,” Page says. “This is the best I’ve felt in three years. … I feel like I’m starting over. This is a brand-new me, and I’ve got to go out there and I’ve got to get the win.

“As long as I stick with the game plan, fight smart and hard, I should come out with the victory.”

Page is by no means underestimating Pickett (20-6).

“He’s very tough,” Page says. He’s nitty-gritty, like nails.

“He’s gonna bring it, gonna swing hard, and he’s gonna try to take me out the same way I’m gonna try to take him out. So it should be a real good fight, exciting.”

Pickett, who’s also coming off a loss, appears to feel the same excitement and the same urgency.

“(Page) is world-class,” Pickett told mmajunkie.com. “Damacio Page is a very dangerous opponent, and I’d be stupid to look past him.”

Page is scheduled to leave Tuesday on the long trip to Stockholm. It helps that he’s a veteran of foreign travel, having fought four times in Japan. But, he says, “This is the first time I’m traveling east to Europe. It should be exciting. I’ll probably stay there for a while after (the fight).”

Before the fight, though, there’ll be no sight-seeing and no sampling of Swedish cuisine.

“It’s all business until the day after the fight,” he says. “… I have to get there, I have to work out, I have to do p.r., and I have to cut weight.”

In terms of travel and fan support, Page could be at a disadvantage.

Pickett trains at the American Top Team gym in Florida, but Page suspects he’s spent time at home in England leading up to the fight. And Pickett told MMA Junkie that he expects to have friends and family in the crowd at Stockholm’s Globe Arena.

“I heard he went to London for a while,” Page says. “I don’t know if he started his camp there or ended his camp there.

“But either way, I’m fighting in his backyard.”

The virtues of training in Albuquerque’s rarefied air, Page says, outweigh any disadvantages he might have.

“There’s nothing better than (training at) 5,500 feet,” he says.

Nor is there anything better, he adds, than doing what you love and making a living at it.

“I live (MMA), I breathe it, and it’s all I think about,” says Page, 29. “If I can stay healthy and feel the way I feel right now, I don’t see why I can’t go until I’m 35, 36.

“I love it that much.”
— This article appeared on page B3 of the Albuquerque Journal