Prochazka has seen the glove thrown! He can go into action in January against a long-time rival. Let’s see if he has the courage, he says

On January 20, the UFC 297 gala is scheduled to feature the rivals of the Czech samurai Aleksandar Rakic and Jan Blachowicz. However, the Polish fighter withdrew from the duel and Jiri Prochazka was thrown the gauntlet by Rakic.

November, 11th, Jiri Prochazka lost his light heavyweight title fight when he was stopped in the second round by Alex Pereira. Until then, the Czech samurai was the better fighter, but unfortunately, that’s not the game. There was a lot of talk that the fight was stopped prematurely, but that won’t change anything.

What’s next? Pereira has a fight on the table with Jamahal Hill, but he‘s in trouble with the law and is still recovering from his injury. In the meantime, he challenged Brazilian Khamzat Chimaev, who Prochazka was eventually going to welcome to the light heavyweight division. But he eventually backed out in response to Chimaev’s title challenge and the BJP does not hold that.

Besides, Prochazka was interested in a quick rematch with Pereira, but that won’t happen. Thus, he and his team considered all the different options. He even toyed with the idea of maybe changing weight classes for one fight recently to fight as quickly as possible.

Now it is clear that he doesn’t even need to change weight class and he can fight very soon. Quite possibly even sooner than he would have expected. Because he’s got a very interesting challenge.

Will Prochazka go into action in January?

As early as January, 20th, the UFC 297 gala was supposed to feature Aleksandar Rakic and Jan Blachowicz, two fighters from the top light heavyweight division who have also been long standing for a fight with Jiri Prochazka.

They were supposed to fight once before. In March last year. Then Blachowicz got injured and the fight was postponed to May. It did happen, but the Pole won it due to Rakic injuring his knee in the third round. So the rematch was on the cards.

It won’t happen. Blachowicz had to withdraw again. It was supposed to be Rakic’s first fight back from injury. “You can’ never lose a rematch when you pull out for the second time,” Rakic said on Twitter in response to Blachowicz’s injury.

Beyond that, however, he sent a clear challenge. “Let’s see if Samurai has the balls to step up on Jan 20th. ,” Rakic pointed a finger at the Moravian fighter. So, Walk could be in action much sooner than one would ever expect.

Source: Twitter, UFC