Exclusive: 'Dancing With the Stars' pro Maksim Chmerkovskiy speaks out about injury
"I wanna come back and win," he said.
— -- "Dancing With the Stars" pro Maksim Chmerkovskiy has been posting pictures on social media while getting treatment for his calf injury and now he's speaking out for the first time.
In exclusive video obtained by "Good Morning America," the past Mirror Ball champ is talking via video to his "DWTS" partner Heather Morris and telling her that he does not intend to lose this season.
Chmerkovskiy sat out Monday's show and Morris was paired up with pro stand-in Alan Bersten.
"I still feel like we have a chance," he tells Morris and Bersten in the video. "You deserve it and I want to give you 150 percent effort and be physically active as I was at my best."
"I want to come back and win," he says.
Chmerkovskiy has been posting several selfies from the hospital, with one captioned, "Gettin' un-broken."
Chmerkovskiy's fiancee Peta Murgatroyd previously told "Access Hollywood" that he is getting surgery for what could be tears in his calf muscle.
"It's gonna take a couple of weeks at least to get better," she said. "He's having a surgery done," but she added that he's a fighter and will be back as soon as he can.
"GMA" anchor Lara Spencer said today that doctors made a concentrate from Chmerkovskiy's bone marrow stem cells and injected them into his calf to speed up the recovery process.
Earlier in the week, the dancer thanked his fans for all their "love and support!"
"Please rest assured that I'm taking this thing very seriously and, although I don't have a concrete return date, I'll give it my all!" he said on Wednesday.
"Dancing With the Stars" returns Monday night on ABC.