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The UFC light heavyweight division might well just be cursed.
Jon Jones spent nearly 10 years reigning over the division as champion, with some missteps along the way but no losses.
But Jones vacated the title in 2020 in order to move up to heavyweight, where is now the reigning champ.
Jan Blachowicz then won the interim title over Dominick Reyes. But he was only able to defend it once before dropping to Glover Teixeira.
Teixeira then lost the title to Jiri Prochazka in the his first title defense and Prochazka had to vacate the belt due to a shoulder injury prior to defending it even once.
That led us to Jamahal Hill, who took the vacant belt with a victory over Teixiera in January. But much like Prochazka, he too had to vacate the title after rupturing his achilles while playing basketball.
Prochazka, speaking on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour, says that weight gain was the likely cause of Hill’s injury.
“My reaction was, ‘What are you doing, man,’” Prochazka said on The MMA Hour. “It doesn’t matter [what the reason was], but everyone I saw he had big weight, he [gained weight], and especially for the ankles and all of these areas like the knees, for the body, it’s a big weight.
“If you turn your weight to more than normal, then the knees and ankles, it’s bad. That was the first logical [thought] about that.”
Now, who knows whether or not that truly caused the injury. But Prochazka doesn’t have much room to talk either way. His shoulder injury was reported caused by a coach at his trying to pop a dislocated shoulder back into place and making it significantly worse in the process.
“What happened was, it popped out and he had some guys there at the gym (who tried to put it back in). And they f****** ripped the shit out of it and destroyed his shoulder,” UFC president Dana White said of the injury.
Cursed division.