“I’ve been down this road thousands of times,” he said. “I have a great team, I’m in a great location, I’m finally where I need to be, and honestly, when I started looking at what I do for a living, this is part of it. This is part of the challenge. I could literally walk outside one day and I could get hit by a car and that can change everything. You have all these things – people are getting injured, people are having to pull out – and we’re in a combative sport.
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We’re not like baseball, we’re not like basketball, where we can play over a hundred games a year. Even then, those guys are getting injured and taken out for a long period of time. So you can’t help that. You can only do your best to try to make sure you don’t get injured. And even then, it’s one day of the year that it happens. For me, it’s twice this year. But it is what it is. There’s nothing you can do about an injury. You just have to suck it up and go about your day.”
For reference, consider that Marquez hasn’t endured a couple jammed toenails or a knee scrape over the years. Starting as early as high school, Marquez has gone through injuries that would have made most call it a day.
“When I was 17 years old, I broke my elbow cap,” he said, and if you’re cringing while thinking of that, it gets worse. “In Greco wrestling, I landed very awkwardly and it just snapped my elbow cap. I had to get plates, and I realized the plates didn’t work after five weeks, and I had to go back in and get a wire, and then I had to get it removed. I was out for nine months. I had that injury, and then in wrestling in 2010, I ended up sliding my kneecap underneath the muscle to where I had to go get surgery to let it free float again. It absolutely sucked, but I learned over time that it is what it is.”
In 2018, Marquez completely tore his latissimus dorsi muscle, costing him over 30 months of his career.