Alexander Gustafsson was originally scheduled to face Volkan Oezdemir at UFC 227. Unfortunately, Oezdemir was forced to have no time in the Octagon that night on account of a broken nose. After Oezdemir was forced to pull out, plans for Gustafsson gradually disintegrated until, ultimately, nothing was left. Names like Khalil Rountree, Thiago Santos, and Anthony Smith each attempted to fill in for Oezdemir, but nothing ever materialized. The most noteworthy of these names is Anthony Smith. Following Smith’s first-round KO of Mauricio “Shogun Rua” at UFC Hamburg, seemingly minutes later, Alexander Gustafsson withdrew from the UFC 227 pay per view. The irony of this withdrawal was not lost on reigning light heavyweight champoin Daniel Cormier. In fact, the reigning champ-champ felt that there was more than irony at play, but entitlement and dishonesty:
“Dear Alex, I don’t know what happened to you going back to the Rockhold situation,” Cormier wrote in an open letter to Gustafsson following his UFC 227 pull-out. “You have always been a stand up guy but your behavior changed. From calling a guy out the day after he got knocked out, to now offering to fight me knowing I have a broken hand, after Volkan couldn’t go. Now you’ve turned down Jan, turned down Khalil all while calling for a heavyweight title fight. Now, moments after Anthony Smith does his work like an animal you decide you’re hurt. Man, I respect you as a fighter. I will always be grateful for October 2015, but you and I won’t share the octagon again.”
Alexander Gustafsson claimed that he did not read this open letter and mysteriously and curtly stated that the injuries he sustained were “minor” and “no big deal.” Gustafsson’s tight-lipped description of the injuries did not do much to lift suspicion from the timing of his pull-out, but perhaps a vouch from the boss himself will manage to do so:
“It wasn’t a minor injury,” White said on UFC Unfiltered on Tuesday. “He had a serious injury to his hamstring. So he doesn’t have to do surgery. He’s doing physical therapy. And we’re hoping he can come back before the end of the year. Yeah, he was hurt…legitimate injury, and he’s working on it. We’re trying to get him in before the end of the year.”
So there you have it. Perhaps Gustafsson’s secrecy regarding the injury was a product of not wanting opponents to know possible vulnerabilities of his. If so, Dana White ensured that secret didn’t last long.
With Dana White vouching for the legitimacy of Alexander Gustafsson’s injury, should Daniel Cormier now face Gustafsson before year’s end after all?
