Former title contender Volkan Oezdemir has detailed the rough road that he was on after his latest fight.
Oezdemir is looking to get back in the win column and on track to another title shot as he suffered a second-round TKO loss against Daniel Cormier at UFC 220 in January.
It’s already been announced that he’s slated to fight former UFC light heavyweight champion Mauricio Rua at UFC Fight Night 129 or better known as UFC Chile.
During a recent interview with MMA Fighting, He noted that came away from the evening with not just a broken orbital bone, but a staph infection — in three different places.
“I thought the fight was going in my favor,” Oezdemir said. “I know the more I was about to connect, the more I’d be able to prove something. But then I got caught once in my eye, he broke my orbital, and then after that I think the fight starts going in his favor. He started catching up to his rhythm.”
Oezdemir decided against surgery for the injury. However, that wasn’t his only problem as soon after, he broke out in a staph infection.
“I train before the fights and I guess the mats are dirty,” Oezdemir said. “I don’t know how many times they clean it, so, yeah, I got a staph infection from the fights in three different parts of my body, and that’s not fun, yeah.”
He had the staph on two spots on his stomach and another on his arm, which ultimately led to him being hospitalized in order to get infections under control.
“I had like two to three weeks of rest,” Oezdemir said. “And then I had to go slowly, step by step, watching, making sure everything is clean and I don’t do so much. It was some forced time off and I think it was for the best, because otherwise I would never take any time off. So it helped me stay away from the mats and maybe concentrate my time on something else.”
“I definitely learned a lot in this fight,” Oezdemir said. “I definitely learned lot of stuff, I know there is stuff I need to improve, I need to work on my strategy a lot, that is something that’s going to be different. So definitely this fight is something that is going to make a different fighter.”
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