Edmonton — Ahead of his fight with Kai Kara-France in June of 2023, Amir Albazi, who returns from an extended layoff to headline UFC Edmonton this Saturday, knew something was off.
“I didn’t really know what it was, but after my fight, it showed that I had something called supraventricular tachycardia, I think is the medical name for it. It’s basically an irregular heartbeat, where my heart would go up to 239 [beats per minute],” Albazi (17-1) told media outlets including Cageside Press during Wednesday’s media day in Edmonton.
Albazi, unbeaten in the UFC’s flyweight division, had been circling a possible title eliminator. Instead, he would go on to have heart surgery, return, then go back to training to face Brandon Moreno in Mexico City. Only, another malady struck. “Then my left arm literally stopped. I couldn’t lift my arm up, I couldn’t jab, I couldn’t do anything. I still kept training, even the coaches were like ‘you’re crazy.’ I kept throwing right hands, and trying to switch southpaw. After I got my first MRI, the first doctor actually told me ‘you shouldn’t be fighting anymore. Find a 9-to-5.'”
A 9-to-5 job wasn’t something Albazi was interested in. After getting a few other opinions, the UFC’s own medical staff caught wind, and pulled Albazi from action. “I had to go straight into surgery. They told me I was one punch away from actually getting paralyzed.”
As it turns out, everything worked out in the end. Now fully recovered, Amir Albazi returns to action off the longest break of his career, still circling a title shot, and still in a high-profile fight with Brandon Moreno. They headline the promotion’s first trip to Edmonton since 2019.
Albazi is actually a year older than Moreno, but as a wise Harrison Ford character once said, it’s not the years, it’s the mileage. Moreno almost certainly has more of that in this particular case.
“Definitely. He fought a lot of main events, a lot of tough hard five rounds, against [Deiveson] Figueiredo several times, against [Alexandre] Pantoja,” Albazi told Cageside Press. “For me, I don’t really focus on age, I really just think it’s a number, and like you say how much mileage you have on your body from training, from fighting. If he’s younger or older than me, I feel the best I’ve ever felt. I actually feel like I’m improving more and more every day, so I don’t feel age is a factor.”
An interesting factor also in play in UFC Edmonton is the new ruleset. 12-6 elbows, the bane of Jon Jones’ otherwise perfect record, are now legal. And the definition of a grounded fighter has been changed – no longer will fighters be able to game the system by placing a hand on the mat.
Albazi is all in one the rule changes. “Yeah of course. More violence for me, so I’m happy.”
He’d later elaborate that the 12-6 elbows were “not that much of a difference. For people that fight, it’s going to be easy to kind of work around it, but I’ll definitely have my eye on it. Especially with a downed opponent. If that opportunity presents itself, I’m going to take it.”
He’s also like to see more rule changes. Soccer kicks being legalized, perhaps. “I’m a grappler, but I like violence too at the same time,” Albazi admitted. “The more violence we bring into the game, I think the more exciting it gets.”
Watch the full UFC Edmonton media day appearance by Amir Albazi above.
