UFC featherweight contender Alex Volkanovski picked up the biggest win of his professional mixed martial arts career earlier this month, defeating Jose Aldo via unanimous decision at UFC 237.

The victory, which took place in Aldo’s hometown of Rio de Janeiro, served as Volkanovski’s seventeenth win in a row.

After scoring the most important victory of his UFC career, Volkanovski was amped up as his dream of finally getting the opportunity to fight for UFC gold seemed well in his grasp.

However, during his trip home from Rio, Alex Volkanovski began to feel under the weather. In addition to feeling ill, the Aussie noticed that his foot was beginning to swell.

After icing his foot failed to take down the swelling, Volkanovski went to the hospital for further examination.

It was there, at a hospital in Chile, the Alex Volkanovski learned the extent of his injury and illness.

“I guess it was too hard to tell because I was injured because of the trauma from the kicks, and that sort of threw me off,” Volkanovski said to ESPN. “But once I went on the plane it went crazy and obviously I just started feeling really crook [sick]. Then I went on the next flight and that’s when it really hit me; I had 40+ degree temperatures, it was nasty stuff. I was delirious by then and didn’t really know what was going on, but I was like ‘get me a doctor, I need a doctor’. So they did that and, yeah, it was pretty serious, the antibiotics didn’t work straight away; we were really worried about it hitting my tendons and bones because it was very close, once it does that you can have problems.

Alex Volkanovski continued:

“So we were pretty lucky the plane stopped in Chile rather than if I’d got on the next flight. Within a couple of hours I would have had to tell them we’ve got to turn this flight around, and by then the damage would have been done and I could have lost the leg, lose your life. That stuff’s very, very serious, but it didn’t get to that stage. We got it just at the right time; we left it too long where it rocked me so much, but we got in just in time for it not to do serious damage.”

Volkanovski is now back home and getting some well deserved rest.

Following his unanimous decision victory over Jose Aldo at UFC 237, many fans and analysts expected that the Aussie would be next in line for a shot at current UFC featherweight kingpin Max Holloway.

Unfortunately for Alex Volkanovski that did not prove to be the case. Instead, the promotion book Max Holloway to defend his title against Frankie Edgar at July’s UFC 240 event in Edmonton.