Alexander Gustafsson Out Indefinitely With A Back Injury

ESPN reports that Alexander Gustafsson is currently out of action due to a back injury and there’s no word on when he might be back. His last win was a decision against Jan Blachowicz at UFC Fight Ngiht 93 last month He was set to fight Antonio Rogerio Nogueira at UFC Fight Night 99 (November 19) but he had to back out.

His co-manager Tomas Ghassemi said Gustafsson has had the injury for “three to four years.” It has been hard for doctors to diagnose and makes it hard to schedule fights around when the condition flares up.

Ghassemi said: “Pain will come up and then disappear whenever it wants. It’s maybe an issue with a disk. When the pain starts to go into his legs, that’s when he knows it will affect his training and that’s what happened with this one. We wanted a quick turnaround after this last fight. He’s in great shape, but when it flared up and went into his legs, we couldn’t take the fight. If you try to fight through it and lose, you can’t blame it after the fact. It’s better to deal with it now.”

Ghassemi says they don’t know how to handle the injury right now. Gustafsson had time off in 2016 before. His last fight was his only fight so far this year. They think it can be fixed but they want to take time off to make sure they can. Gustafsson previously was in the middle of getting diagnosed and getting his options, but then the pain went away. He apparently had issues with the injury while training for a fight with Anthony Johnson in January 2015, only for it to go away before the fight happened. He has already met with specialists, including a doctor that works with Sweden’s national track and field team.