mma / News

Blood Infection Nearly Caused Alexander Volkanovski To Lose His Leg

May 28, 2019 | Posted by Jeremy Lambert

– Following his UFC 237 victory over Jose Aldo, Alexander Volkanovski was hospitalized with a blood infection while traveling home to Australia. Fortunately, Volkanovski is at home and currently resting. But in an interview with ESPN, Volkanovski revealed that he could have lost his leg due to the infection.

“I had 40+ degree (Celsius) temperatures (104+ degrees Fahrenheit), it was nasty stuff. I was delirious by then and didn’t really know what was going on, but I was like ‘get me a doctor, I need a doctor.’ So they did that and, yeah, it was pretty serious, the antibiotics didn’t work straight away; we were really worried about it hitting my tendons and bones because it was very close, once it does that you can have problems.

“So we were pretty lucky the plane stopped in Chile rather than if I’d got on the next flight. Within a couple of hours I would have had to tell them we’ve got to turn this flight around, and by then the damage would have been done and I could have lost the leg, lose your life. That stuff’s very, very serious, but it didn’t get to that stage. We got it just at the right time; we left it too long where it rocked me so much, but we got in just in time for it not to do serious damage.”