Khetag Pliev had his finger lopped off at some point during his MMA fight against Devin Goodale at the Cage Fury Fighting Championship (CFFC) event last Thurs. night (April 1, 2021) on UFC Fight Pass, a gory turn of events that at first sounded like an off-color April Fool’s joke.

Unfortunately for Pliev, this was as real as it gets.

The 37-year-old “Lion” was able to get his finger reattached, which is pretty amazing when you consider they had trouble finding it. After an extensive search, which sent a camera man under the cage like Jon Jones, the missing digit was found lodged in Pliev’s glove.

So what the heck happened?

“What happened was Khetag got the takedown — and this is all on film — and when he has the takedown, [Goodale] reaches under and grabs his glove and starts pulling illegally on his glove, causing Khetag’s finger to lodge. coach Joey Patterson told MMA Fighting. “Once the finger lodged and they came back up to their feet throwing punches, Khetag has a very hard punch and he threw it. The finger was already bent and caught in there, it caused the finger to sever.”

Fortunately the finger was able to be saved.

“The finger didn’t completely sever,” Patterson continued. “There’s a lot of different speculation out there, people saying, ‘Oh, he lost his finger.’ The finger was hanging by a thread, hanging by the skin, but it was lodged inside the glove. At that point he finished the round, came back, and didn’t say anything. He kept at it, tried to hide it, that’s when the doctors noticed it and had to stop it.”

Watch the entire chaotic event unfold in the embedded video above.

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