Krzysztof Jotko will pocket big money if he defeats Kerim Engizek in the \u20ac1 million Tipsport Gamechanger tournament this Saturday in D\u00fcsseldorf, Germany, and he\u2019s aiming even higher in 2026.<\/p>\n
Jotko is a longtime veteran of the UFC, where he beat the likes of Misha Cirkunov, Gerald Meerschaert, and Eryk Anders for a promotion record of 11-6. The Polish middleweight made his way to the Oktagon tourney final with a trio of victories in 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe don\u2019t have nothing on me,\u201d Jotko told MMA Fighting. \u201cI fight with better people. Let\u2019s check the [records], who he fight and where he fight, and where I fight with who, and you have the answer. He fight only in Germany, Slovakia and Czech Republic. He fights in his backyard all the time. He never being in a big stage, he never fight in Australia, Canada, America, with the toughest guys in the UFC. We\u2019re going to find out this weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he\u2019s a tough guy,\u201d he continued. \u201cHe\u2019s a tough guy. He\u2019s not going to quit. He comes hard on me, 100 percent. I expect him to comes hard on me when he has lot of energy, but I think round by round I\u2019m going to break him, little bit by little. I want to finish my job in round three.\u201d<\/p>\n
The original plan was to book the fight for Dec. 28 in Prague, but Engizek had to postpone it after fracturing his hand. Jotko doesn\u2019t mind competing in Engizek\u2019s backyard this time around, and wonders if he\u2019s already 100 percent recovered from the serious hand issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cI broke my hands six times,\u201d Jotko said. \u201cOne time I coming back after six months, I fight with the Brad Tavares in the UFC and I really don\u2019t feel good so I don\u2019t know, maybe he gonna feel good and have a good training camp, I don\u2019t know, but I don\u2019t believe this. We\u2019ll see what we\u2019re gonna see this weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jotko said that a medical error had him compete three times with a broken hand during his UFC career, and that\u2019s one of the issues he\u2019s had at the time. At age 36, and riding a four-fight winning streak \u2014 his longest in a decade \u2014 Jotko believes he\u2019s finally realizing his full potential.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a lot of problems in my private life with my ex-wife, I have a problem with my health, with my stomach, so my life was not good, and I couldn\u2019t focus 100 percent,\u201d Jotko said. \u201cBut I fixed my life, I fixed everything. I feel really like I\u2019m in the prime right now, and you can see it, I have four-win streak, two TKOs, and Saturday is going to me my fifth win.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked if he regrets entering the cage when he wasn\u2019t fit, Jotko said \u201csometimes life makes you do stupid decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLike, for example, if you don\u2019t have the money and you have a fight coming up, you need to take them because you don\u2019t have money for life, you know what I mean?\u201d Jotko said. \u201cI have a couple mistakes in what I did, my career in the UFC. I lose some fights, I also fight with the broken hands. I fight for three fights with my broken hands. But now I\u2019m good, you can see my records, and everything is going good direction.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Polish veteran parted ways with the UFC after a loss to Brendan Allen in 2022 and fought once under the PFL banner the following year. Will Fleury bested Jotko via split decision, but the result was overturned to a no-contest after Fleury tested positive for drostanolone. Jotko also failed a drug test<\/a> in PFL and never went back to the promotion.<\/p>\n Once again under the same umbrella as part of the Oktagon roster, Jotko climbs the middleweight rankings while Fleury holds both heavyweight and light heavyweight titles. Jotko has no intention to go all the way up to the heaviest weight class, but likes the idea of being a champ-champ in 2026.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have some unfinished business,\u201d Jotko said. \u201cIf everything gonna be good with the middleweight division, I\u2019m gonna jump higher and try to take his [light heavyweight] belt and take my rematch [laughs].\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Krzysztof Jotko will pocket big money if he defeats Kerim Engizek in the \u20ac1 million Tipsport Gamechanger tournament…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418127,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-418126","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}