The fight itself was a solid, competitive contest, but the end result seems like it couldn’t have been much worse for Aleksandar Rakic—who not only lost out on his win bonus and had his title hopes halted (at least for the time being) but ended up with what could very easily be a long term injury for his trouble.
After a one sided round two—where Rakic controlled former champion Jan Blachowicz on the mats for 4.5 out of 5 minutes—the ‘Rocket’ took a step back from a striking exchange in the third, only to have his knee buckle under him, forcing him to drop to the mat holding his leg in pain. Blachowicz walked away with the TKO victory due to injury, Rakic left with what seems likely to be a lot of physical therapy out ahead of him, perhaps even surgery.
Still, it doesn’t seem that the 30-year-old fighting out of Vienna, Asutria is getting too terribly downbeat about the prospect of an extended layoff. In a recent post to his Instagram account, Rakic talked about his injury—noting, especially, that it was actually a recurrence of something he’d suffered during training for the fight.
A great battle took place in the octogan tonight but unfortunately it ended not the way Jan and I or the fans wanted. The same damn injury from 3 weeks ago in camp showed up again tonight. I felt I won both rounds, round one being close but round two was just mine then I opened up really good even in the third before my knee buckled. Knowing the fact that my cardio was off the chart ( with a heart beat at 36 in sleep ) I would start to picking him apart from third round on but it is what it is. Congratulation to Jan and I wish him the best. I will take care of this injury and come back like you never seen me before.
This is a unfinished fight between Jan and I and I really hope @ufc gives me a REMATCH .
No word yet on just how severe the injury may be, or when Rakic might expect to return to competition. For the moment, it sounds like Blachowicz has his eyes set on getting another shot at the light heavyweight title, which will be contested on June 11th in Kallang, Singapore. What fights will be in the offing once Glover Teixeira and Jiri Prochazka face off at UFC 275 remains to be seen.
