The UFC’s plans for it’s final pay-per-view event of the year have suffered a massive blow after the main event light-heavyweight title fight rematch between Jiri Prochazka and Glover Teixeira had to be scrapped after the champion suffered a serious injury.
“I am very disappointed to announce that I will not be defending my belt at UFC 282,” Prochazka said in a statement. “I was injured in training in Las Vegas while finishing my preparation for my title defense in the UFC’s light heavyweight division. I injured my shoulder and surgery is required which will put me out of action for at least six months.”
Meanwhile, Dana White has revealed that Prochazka’s injury is unusually severe, so there seems to be little hope of a speedy recovery in this instance, and it may well leave him out of action for significantly longer than six months.
“This is the worst shoulder injury the doctors have seen in UFC history,” White stated. “It’s really f***ing bad. His shoulder is very, very bad. He’s going to have serious surgery that will require extensive rehab.”
As such, Prochazka himself decided that the right thing to do was to vacate the title so that the division doesn’t come to a standstill while he’s getting surgery and rehabbing afterwards.
“I have decided, after consulting with UFC management, that due to this time constraint, I will not hold [up] the light heavyweight division and will vacate the title,” Prochazka said.
With Prochazka sidelined the obvious solution appeared to be to have his intended opponent Glover Teixeira fight either Jan Blachowicz or Magomed Ankalaev, who were scheduled to fight in the co-main event instead, but in a further twist, the Brazilian star turned that down and will no longer compete on the card.
That’s left the UFC with no option but to promote the co-main event between former champ Blachowicz and the No.3 ranked Ankalaev to headline status.
As thing stand that leaves the UFC with only four fights confirmed for the PPV portion of the card, with Paddy Pimblett vs. Jared Gordon currently in the co-main event spot, with Robbie Lawler vs. Santiago Ponzinibbio and Bryce Mitchell vs. Ilia Topuria being the other two bouts.
It remains to be seen what the UFC will do with the remaining spot. It’s possible they could just move the preliminary card heavyweight fight between Jairzinho Rozenstruik and Chris Daukaus up, but they may also be scrambling behind the scenes to come up with another fight that may bolster the weakened line-up a little over two weeks before fight night in Las Vegas.
