Alex Volkanovski On Blood Infection: I Could Have Lost My Leg
Alex Volkanovski executed the perfect game plan against Jose Aldo at UFC 237. Unfortunately for the Australian featherweight, the plan to get back home to Australia after the fight, didn’t go to plan.
On the way back to is home in New South Wales, Volkanovski had to spend several nights in a hospital in Chile, for a blood infection in his leg. Talking to ESPN, the 30 year old described the sequence of events and the serious implications there could have been, if he hadn’t have got to a hospital when he did.
“I guess it was too hard to tell because I was injured because of the trauma from the kicks, and that sort of threw me off. But once I went on the plane it went crazy and obviously I just started feeling really crook [sick]. Then I went on the next flight and that’s when it really hit me; I had 40+ degree temperatures, it was nasty stuff. I was delirious by then and didn’t really know what was going on, but I was like ‘get me a doctor, I need a doctor’. So they did that and, yeah, it was pretty serious, the antibiotics didn’t work straight away; we were really worried about it hitting my tendons and bones because it was very close, once it does that you can have problems.
“So we were pretty lucky the plane stopped in Chile rather than if I’d got on the next flight. Within a couple of hours I would have had to tell them we’ve got to turn this flight around, and by then the damage would have been done and I could have lost the leg, lose your life. That stuff’s very, very serious, but it didn’t get to that stage. We got it just at the right time; we left it too long where it rocked me so much, but we got in just in time for it not to do serious damage.”
As well as discussing the close shave with the blood infection, Volkankski also discussed his fight with Aldo, which he won via unanimous decision.
“We obviously prepared well, planned well and made a game plan that we executed well as well. But going in, obviously Aldo’s been one of the best for a long time, a lot of people said he’s been the best striker; but the game’s evolving and things that he’s done so well for so many years, we were able to use that against him.
“He’s very good with his counters; he’s very good at flipping; he’s very good at adjusting and always has a really good base; always powerful. But because of these things, all my fakes and all the little things that I was doing just really threw him off because he was too busy adjusting and worrying about what was coming so he could counter.
“All the little things like that just made him really, I wouldn’t say uncomfortable, but it just made him realise as the fight was going that he couldn’t do anything. I was just shutting him down and he never knew when I was coming in and things like that.
“Before he knew it, the fight was getting away from him because he didn’t know what to do; not even he knew what was going on. So that’s what I mean by the game’s evolving; I was throwing things at him that he’d never seen before and I just shut him down.”
Despite the dominant performance over the former 145lbs champion in Rio de Janeiro, Volkanovski found out while he was hospital that Frankie Edgar would be challenging Max Holloway for the UFC featherweight title at UFC 240.
Although initially disappointed with the news, the former rugby league star realises that it could work out for the best and that he will not only challenge for the belt in his next fight, but that it will also be on the Robert Whittaker vs Israel Adesanya card. Which is expected to go down in Australia towards the end of the year.
“Israel Adesanya, a training partner of mine, he’s actually pushing for that to happen as well. Obviously to have Max and myself on that card, as well as Izzy and Rob Whittaker, you can imagine how big [that would be] for pay-per-views, we’re talking serious money for them, so that’s something they want. I think the UFC want that, too. It’s going to be massive this side of the world.”
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