Fox Sports Australia<\/a> that after winning the belt with a stunning knockout over Jiri Prochazka this past Saturday in Miami, he simply misplaced it afterward. One moment, Ulberg was in the octagon celebrating with his team and family, the party carried on to a nightclub, and the rest is a blur.<\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019ve lost the belt, bro,\u201d Ulberg said. \u201cI don\u2019t know exactly where it is. Initially after winning, the plan was to not have a drink. But you know how these things go, right? First, someone gives you a champagne to celebrate. Then one thing leads to another and you\u2019re doing shots. So it\u2019s \u2018OK, I\u2019ll have another, and another, and another\u2026\u2019 We\u2019ve got a big group of boys over here in Miami and, when the fight was done, we all went out to the afterparty at a nightclub.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen after that, it was back to one of the boys\u2019 apartments and we all hung out there. I didn\u2019t want to be carrying the belt around so I think it\u2019s still there at the apartment somewhere. One of the boys probably has it in bed with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ulberg doesn\u2019t sound too overly concerned about the belt going missing, especially since he\u2019s having to hang around the U.S. a bit longer due to his injury. Early in the first round of the UFC 327 main event, Ulberg tweaked his knee and was visibly compromised as he worked through the nightmare situation with Prochazka bearing down on him. Somehow, Ulberg landed a power left hand that floored Prochazka and followed with ground-and-pound to secure the championship win.<\/p>\n
Until he can have his leg injury diagnosed, Ulberg plans to put off his return to his native New Zealand and get checked out in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy knee is really swollen so I\u2019ll stay in the U.S. for scans and then, if I need to go under the knife, I will,\u201d Ulberg said. \u201cI think I\u2019ll fly to Las Vegas in the next few days and see the doctors there. Then I can do physio at the UFC Performance Institute and get looked after by the guys there. That\u2019s the plan. Get the knee sorted in Las Vegas and hang around for a few weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ulberg was signed off of Dana White\u2019s Contender Series after just his fourth pro MMA fight, and after losing his UFC debut he rattled off 10 consecutive victories to make it to the top of the light heavyweight division. He\u2019s no stranger to the perils of combat sports, having competed in kickboxing prior to making a full commitment to MMA.<\/p>\n
That past experience has helped him to process his current predicament.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I\u2019ve been hobbling around everywhere,\u201d Ulberg said. \u201cSo my knee isn\u2019t really wanting to forgive me right now. It\u2019s all been a crazy, crazy whirlwind and I\u2019m just going with it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a bit like when I was kickboxing, and broke my hand during King of the Ring. It was in the second fight on a night where I fought three times. Then after fighting, I\u2019d actually booked a holiday that weekend so still went away. It was only after getting back that I went and saw a doctor who said, \u2018You need surgery.\u2019 I already knew and said, \u2018OK, let\u2019s get it done.\u2019 And I think that\u2019s what we\u2019re facing now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carlos Ulberg won the light heavyweight championship at UFC 327, but risks having to vacate it due to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[829,99,6493,10080],"class_list":{"0":"post-586010","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-latest-news","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-ufc","11":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}