Liam McCracken will step into the cage on Dana White’s Contender Series this Tuesday chasing a UFC contract, less than three years removed from an accident that nearly cost him his life. The 25-year-old from the UK will face Sylvester Sanchez in a bid to earn a spot on the roster, capping a comeback that even his own doctors doubted was possible.
In September 2023, McCracken was struck by a bus while crossing a road with his headphones on. He never heard the driver’s horn.
“I got run over by a bus,” McCracken said during an interview. “It dragged me like 60 ft along the floor. Everyone who seen it thought I was d*ad. I shouldn’t even be here. Literally, I should have been d*ad before it happened. Never mind if I survived it, I shouldn’t be walking, shouldn’t be talking.”
The damage to his body was staggering. McCracken experienced four fractures to his spine, a broken pelvis, broken ribs, broken legs, a broken nose, neck injuries, a torn MCL and meniscus, and severe injuries to his head, ear, lip and legs. He estimated close to 20 broken bones in total.
Doctors were blunt about his chances of returning to competition.
“Me mom and dad and me girlfriend had a meeting with the consultants early on and she said, ‘I can’t see him figh ting again after this,'” McCracken recalled.
He spent months relearning to walk and underwent weekly X-rays on his back for nearly three months to monitor whether his spinal fractures were healing without surgery, a procedure that would have meant the end of his career had it been required.
McCracken credits his family, his team and a Liverpool clinic that treated him almost daily after his hospital discharge for making his recovery possible. He returned to competition in September 2024, exactly two years after the accident, and has competed three times since, most recently winning a decision in June that put him on the UFC’s radar.
McCracken says he is now competing with a confidence he never had earlier in his career. “I feel like I’ve never been ready for anything in me life,” he said. “I’ve got full confidence in myself.”
A win Tuesday would make him a UFC star, a moment he says would carry the weight of everything he has overcome.
“It’s like fulfilling a childhood dream,” McCracken said. “After all the obstacles that I’ve had to come through to get here, it’s just going to make it even more sweet when it happens.”
