Dana White won’t rush a decision on the UFC Light Heavyweight Championship at the start of Carlos Ulberg’s recovery.
Ulberg’s team revealed to Ariel Helwani that the newly-minted 205-pound champion underwent surgery for a torn ACL. Ulberg also suffered additional injuries in his title win over Jiri Prochazka at UFC 327. “Black Jag” has some tibia damage along with bone bruising.
Speaking to reporters, White said he’s going to wait on Ulberg’s recovery process before making a decision on what’s next for the light heavyweight title picture (via MMAMania).
“One of the good things about it is he was at Power Slap last night and I was talking to him,” White said. “And he’s gonna stay in Vegas. He’s got the surgery, and he’s gonna start working at the [UFC Performance Institute]. Apparently where he lives in Australia, he’s in a remote part of the country, so there isn’t much around him.
“What we would do before we built the Performance Institute is we would get these guys surgeries with great doctors, and then they’d go home, and they wouldn’t do anything, they didn’t do any physical therapy or recovery. Now with the PI, that place has saved more fights and helped more athletes prolong their careers. We’ll get him in there, and see how fast he starts to recover and we always figure it out.”
Ulberg’s knockout win over Prochazka was improbable given he suffered the knee injury early on in the fight. His movement was clearly compromised, but Prochazka failed to capitalize. Instead, Ulberg clocked his opponent with a hook for a knockdown. Ulberg then sealed the deal with ground punches to win UFC gold for the first time in his career.
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