Jan Blachowicz reveals injury that took him out of UFC Columbus main event

Those looking forward to the return of legendary “Polish Power” will have to wait a bit longer after former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Light Heavyweight champion, Jan Blachowicz, was forced to withdraw from his March 26, 2022, fight night main event against Aleksander Rakic.

That news, first reported a few days ago, initially came with no details on what injury had pushed Blachowicz out of the contest. But, now Jan has taken to Twitter to share the issue, and it’s a bit of a scary sounding one.

“Unfortunately, I will not fight March 26th at UFC Columbus,” Blachowicz wrote. “I have an injury in my spine around the neck area. That makes it impossible to train with heavy weights. I need to fix that now. I hope we will meet with Rakic in the Octagon in the first half of this year.”

Blachowicz was looking to bounce back from a poor showing against now-champ, Glover Teixeira, who took the belt off Jan at UFC 267 in Oct. 2021 (watch highlights here). Previous to that, the Polish heavyweight was on a five-fight win streak that included a win over Dominick Reyes for the vacant 205-pound title and a first title defense against Israel Adesanya, who attempted to move up from 185 pounds to become a two-division champion.

Blachowicz swatted Adesanya back down with a confidence that made people wonder whether he’d sit atop the division with ease for some time to come. So it was quite the surprise when 42-year-old Teixeira dragged Blachowicz to the ground and submitted him in the second round, ending his reign.

Hopefully, Blachowicz’s timeline of a return sometime before the middle of 2022 works out. Spine and neck issues are no joke.