Jan Blachowicz on Jiri Prochazka’s call for Glover Teixeira rematch: ‘He will say everything to protect himself’

Jan Blachowicz isn’t buying Jiri Prochazka’s change of heart.

Earlier this week, Prochazka announced his desire to rematch Glover Teixeira for his first title defense. This came after the champ had already said he wanted to face Blachowicz next, and the ex-champ took umbrage with Prochazka’s change, saying “Denisa” was not upholding the “samurai code,”

On Wednesday, the man with the “Legendary Polish Power” explained what he meant by that.

“I’m not an expert, but if you start reading about samurai culture, stuff like this, in my opinion and my knowledge, he break the rules,” Blachowicz told Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour. “He break his own code. He believes in this, he lives in samurai way, so he [didn’t] uphold this code, in my opinion and what I know about samurai. Because he said, ‘I’m the biggest challenge for him now.’ Always, samurai are looking for the biggest challenge, and if they find it, they want to fight against this challenge. So if he said that I am the biggest challenge, he’s lying, or I don’t know what he’s thinking about now that he changed his decision. This is a question for him right now.”

As Prochazka explained in his announcement, his desire to face Teixeira stems from being unhappy with his performance in their first fight. Prochazka submitted Teixeira with just 28 seconds left in their “Fight of the Year” contender at UFC 275, and he wants to run it back to give a better performance.

But for Blachowicz, that’s just words.

“Like politics, now he will say everything to protect himself,” Blachowicz said. “I was surprised because nobody expected that, but what can I do? I’m waiting for official decision and that’s it. We’ll see. Maybe he changes his mind again.”

While Prochazka and Blachowicz have spoken about fighting each other, and Prochazka even laid the groundwork for a potential fight, the bout was far from official. UFC President Dana White even suggested that a rematch between Prochazka and Teixeira “absolutely makes sense”, though he wouldn’t commit to booking it. But Blachowicz, the No. 4-ranked light heavyweight in the world according to MMA Fighting’s Global Rankings, hopes Prochazka will do the right thing and make the biggest UFC fight between European fighters in years.

“Jiri, you said this many times, I’m the biggest challenge for you, so let’s go, let’s do this,” Blachowicz said. “Europe deserves a big fight. We have to do it. Not [just] Europe, the whole worlds deserves this fight, but also Europe, we have to do it here, in our continent. Glover, I like you, but now it’s my turn.”