Alexander Volkanovski became a 2-time featherweight champion, the second one after Jose Aldo. But it seems like his win came at a cost. While putting on one of the best fights in his career, he appears to have suffered a serious injury. According to his teammate and former champion, Israel Adesanya, the newly crowned 145 lbs champion lost his vision during the fight.

City Kickboxing’s middleweight star was there to support his teammate, Alexander Volkanovski, at the Kaseya Center, which is a place he knows pretty well. After all, Israel Adesanya defeated Alex Pereira in the same arena at UFC 287 to become a 2-time champion. Now, he witnessed Volkanovski achieve the same feat, capturing a UFC title twice, in the same arena, but at the cost of injury.

Israel Adesanya, in a post-PPV interview, revealed that ‘The Great’ had lost vision in his right eye, but he wasn’t really sure how that happened.“Apparently, he lost his sight in the third round,” Israel Adesanya told ‘mainevent’. “I guess, yeah, breaking news. He lost his sight in his left eye. I could see why he was on his bike a lot in the third round. I don’t know how, what happened, if it was blood or maybe like a knuckle or something.”

Nevertheless, the City Kickboxing team was pretty happy with the outcome as their fighter brought back a UFC title to their gym. “F—! He still did it. He won. So, what a champ,” Israel Adesanya stated as he lauded his teammate.

Well, we also have Alexander Volkanovski’s version of the whole situation. He addressed the injury during a post-fight interview, revealing when it exactly happened. Here’s what the 2-time champion had to say.

Alexander Volkanovski claims he got blinded in the 2nd round

According to Alexander Volkanovski, the second-round knockdown scored by Diego Lopes on Alexander Volkanovski left the Australian star blind. While speaking with the Mainevent crew backstage, ‘The Great’ stated, “I completely lost vision in my left eye [in the second round].” While it doesn’t feel good to get blinded, Volkanovski showcased the sportsmanship that he has and gave credit where credit was due and lauded Diego Lopes for that strike that knocked him down in the second round.

“It was a good shot, and then I just could not see, and I was like trying to get it back, and it was just completely gone,” Volkanovski added. However, he was able to recover, getting a bit of his vision back to complete the whole five rounds. “[My vision] slowly came back a little bit. At least, most of the fight, I could at least, see the little blur, which helped because it went from nothing. I was like, s–t, this ain’t good.”

Well, ‘The Great’ prevailed and went on to coast to a relatively comfortable victory despite the tough fight from Lopes. Regardless, what do you think about Alexander Volkanovski losing his vision? We’ll probably be getting more updates in the coming days, but in the meantime, let us know your thoughts in the comments down below.