Gokhan Saki Looking To Return By March

Gokhan Saki was supposed to fight Khalil Rountree at UFC 219, but then the light heavyweight pulled out of the fight due to a knee injury.

Unfortunately for Saki, it wasn’t a new injury for the fighter because he has been dealing with knee issues for a few years now.

“This is an old injury that first came about at Glory 1 in Sweden,” Saki told MMA Fighting. “Something was wrong about five minutes before the fight. I went to the fight and finished it in one minute, but when I came back to the locker room my knee was swollen. I stopped for one week and then I continued training. With kickboxing, I could never really feel it, but in my UFC fight, I could feel something go wrong again when I kicked. Maybe it was the movement and the different footwork.”

Saki originally wanted to compete with the injury, but opted for surgery to repair the knee after several discussions with doctors.

Now that he is recovering from the surgery, it looks like Saki is going to be in the Octagon again by March.

“I’m hoping to fight again in March,” said Saki. “I would love to fight then, in March or April. The recovery going well. Today is five weeks since my meniscus was fixed so in three weeks we can start training again.”

With Saki off of the UFC 219 card against Rountree, a UFC debutante in Michal Oleksiejczuk was brought in as a late replacement.