Those waiting on the enigmatic Swede’s return to the cage will have to wait longer as ‘The Mauler’ has suffered an undisclosed injury.
Alexander Gustafsson’s return to active competition continues to be a bumpy ride.
The former light heavyweight contender has been limping along fighting just once a year for the past five years, with his last win coming back in 2017. A brief retirement following a 2019 loss to Anthony Smith was followed by a fast first round loss to Fabricio Werdum in his 2020 heavyweight debut. Now his 2021 return to light heavyweight competition has been called off due to the Swede suffering an injury.
MMA Junkie was first to announce that an undisclosed injury would take Gustafsson off a September 4th UFC Fight Night (UFC Vegas 36 for those still keeping count). No word yet on whether his opponent Paul Craig will remain on the card or be shifted around — we suppose that depends on the nature of Gustafsson’s injury and whether the UFC can wrangle a decent 205er on two weeks notice.
Paul Craig is currently on a five fight win streak with his two latest victories coming against hyped prospect Jamahal Hill and PRIDE legend Mauricio “Shogun” Rua. While technically unranked due to all that retiring and division jumping, Gustafsson would still have been a massive name on Craig’s resume, the kind of thing to push him way up from his current #12 ranking in the division.
Neither Craig nor Gustafsson have commented on the fight cancellation since news broke on Saturday night. We’ll keep you in the loop on what happens next with Craig and what exactly happened to “The Mauler.”
UFC Vegas 36 goes down at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas and is headlined by Derek Brunson vs. Darren Till.