Sean O’Malley does not think Jiri Prochazka is brushing off that UFC 327 loss anytime soon. After watching Carlos Ulberg stop Prochazka and take the vacant light heavyweight title, O’Malley said the former champion looks like a man who is about to disappear into the woods and unload on a tree.
“You know he’s going to beat the f*ck out of some tree in the woods,” O’Malley said on his YouTube channel.
It is a funny line, but it also fits the way O’Malley sees Prochazka handling this kind of defeat. Jiri is wired differently, and this was not some routine loss. He was chasing a second UFC title, had Ulberg dealing with a damaged leg, and still got caught and finished. Ulberg’s knockout win over Prochazka at UFC 327 flipped the entire fight in one shot, which is why O’Malley sounded more sympathetic than mocking.
After the fight, Prochazka said he held back because he felt mercy when he realized Ulberg was hurt. O’Malley said that idea would sound ridiculous coming from almost anyone else, but not from Jiri.
“Jiri says he felt bad, he felt mercy or he didn’t want to hurt him,” O’Malley said. “If anyone else said that, I’d be like, ‘Man…’ But Jiri, I kind of believe him. If he could have knocked him out with a right hand, he would have. Maybe in his head he did feel it and it might have played into it a little bit, but you could just see the heartbreak on Jiri. That motherf*cker’s going to have a tough time sleeping for a couple of weeks. Every time he closes his eyes on the bed, it goes through your mind, ‘What could I have done?’ And his fight was literally in the palm of his hand and now he’s not, he was almost UFC world champion and now he’s not.”
“This is one of the biggest lessons in my life.”@jiri_bjp reflects on losing the light-heavyweight title to an injured Carlos Ulberg.#UFC327 pic.twitter.com/N43JqbKeGd
— UFC Europe (@UFCEurope) April 12, 2026
Sean O’Malley says Jiri Prochazka let the fight slip away
O’Malley also broke down the finishing sequence and made it clear he thought Prochazka had the fight right there to take. In his view, Ulberg’s leg was compromised, the opening was obvious, and Prochazka just never closed the deal before the counter came back at him.
“Jiri literally 90 percent had him finished,” O’Malley said. “[Ulberg’s] leg, something’s going with his stuff. Every time he threw that calf kick, that leg kick, Carlos just ate it. He wasn’t even throwing right hands behind it, he was just eating them, and Jiri just didn’t capitalize on it. Kind of rushes in, he has Carlos backed up against the cage, Carlos has a right hand and a left hook, pretty much that’s it, and Jiri’s hand’s just down by his hip.”
That is the part that will probably stay with Prochazka the longest. He was not getting picked apart for three rounds. He was right there, then one mistake turned the whole thing upside down. O’Malley said that style has always been dangerous, even if it helped build Prochazka into one of the sport’s most unpredictable action fighters.
“It’s hard to say you can’t fight like that, because f*cking look at it, dude’s had a crazy career, but God, when your hand’s down by your f*cking hip and you’re fighting someone who counters that hard. God, dude, I just feel bad for Jiri. I literally felt his f*cking post-fight speech, because I said the same thing. ‘Merab [Dvalishvili], his nose, I felt bad, I just didn’t want to hit it anymore.’ So I get it. I feel that, Jiri. I feel that. Go and sit in a dark room for a couple of days and just gather, hang out, eat some snacks.” via MMAFighting
Prochazka already called himself stupid and pushed for a rematch, so now the question is whether he can turn that pain into another run instead of another hard lesson.
