Jiri Procházka has been a fan-favorite ever since he first stepped into the octagon. This guy was a "zero excuse" full-on, gonna batter his opponent sort of person, from the word "go." I am really disappointed to see him making excuses after he got KO'd in a light-heavyweight fight that only happened because Alex Pereira vacated the belt to fight at heavyweight.
In the vacant belt slot we saw Procházka up against a relative unknown in Carols Ulberg and the odds were heavily in Jiri's favor.
But like I say in a lot of fights at this weight: Almost everyone is just one unchecked punch or kick away from completely flipping the odds.
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It was just a bit under 4 minutes when a lightning quick right made clean contact with Jiri's face and he immediately crumpled to the ground just like 99% of people not named Roy Nelson would have done. From that point it was just a few light ground and pound punches before Herb Dean called it off and declared Carlos Ulberg the light-heavyweight champion of the world.
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Things like this happen. Shock victories are not super-common, but they happen often enough that you really should kind of expect them every now and then. Jiri is famous enough that if he just bided his time and went and had a great fight again in his next bout, that he would get another crack at it, but instead he did something that I never thought I would see from the guy, he made excuses.
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For people that don't care enough to look for it, what happened is that Carlos Ulberg had a "blown" knee early in the round and this was evident to the announcers and the people watching on TV. He was clearly favoring this leg and nearly lost his footing on several occasions.
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In a statement that might have been an off-the-cuff statement Jiri said the above words that suggest that he was intentionally not targeting the injured knee and instead was looking to have a better fight. Is this true? I mean maybe. Jiri does present himself as a very honorable person and is fascinated with samurai culture. He also seems a bit insane in certain interviews but I think you need to be a bit off your rocker to be a cage fighter anyway.
Carlos wasn't accepting the excuse though and he shouldn't. But at the same time he might be buying into some hype that is designed to actually get Jiri a rematch really soon by acknowledging it at all.
There was no mercy in there. He was full of fear, hesitation, and that’s what got him clipped.
The problem with the rest of the LHW division is that the top guys are either gone now (Pereira) or are boring in the eyes of most fans (Magomed Ankalaev). After that we have other boring names such as Jamahal Hill and guys that are ranked as high as they are I think sort of out of respect for how long they have been around (Jan Błachowicz).
So Jiri might have just been doing what some PR person told him to do and doesn't really believe that this is the case because by creating controversy immediately following a loss, he increases the chances that he actually will get a rematch. This is a very unfortunate aspect of UFC. They don't want the best guys in the fights, they want the guys that create the most buzz and get tickets sold. Ankalaev isn't going to sell tickets and if that is who they award it to, they will either be a low-selling event, or they will be the 2nd to last fight as a co-main.
You never can tell what is real and what is for the cameras these days and I sometimes feel like all the fighters are in on it at the direction of Dana White to make this as much like WWE as possible.
I no longer watch the live events and only catch the highlights after the fact.