Waldo Cortes-Acosta has had quite the week – from vacationing in the Dominican Republic to scoring a big knockout win at UFC Fight Night 265 in Doha, Qatar.
Last Tuesday, Cortes-Acosta (16-2 MMA, 9-2 UFC) and his wife, got a call from the hospital back home in Arizona, telling them they could bring home their daughter, who’s been in incubation since her premature birth. Unfortunately, when they got back home the following day on Wednesday from visiting his home country of the Dominican Republic, the hospital told them they would have to wait two more days, as his daughter was put back in incubation for precautionary reasons.
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Almost immediately thereafter, Cortes-Acosta got a call from coach and manager Javier Torres that would vastly alter his plans.
“I get a call from my manager, and he said, ‘Hey, you want to fight in Qatar?,'” Cortes-Acosta recalled speaking in Spanish with Hablemos MMA. “I was like, ‘How?’, and he said, ‘Against Shamil, do you want to fight?’ I told him, ‘You’re messing with me,’ because he always messes around, but he said he was being for real. I was like, ‘OK, let me talk to my wife to see what’s going on.’ I talk to my wife, and my wife tells me, ‘You’re on weight, you’re good, go for it. This is like a sign of God.'”
Serghei Spivac had to withdraw from his heavyweight bout against rising contender Shamil Gaziev on the main card of UFC Fight Night 265 in Qatar – an event happening just three days away from when Cortes-Acosta got the call.
The UFC was in need of a heavyweight, even if it meant getting one across the globe.
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“I went to the gym and I told my coach to get me a training partner so I could go in there and spar and see how I felt, because I wasn’t going all the way to Qatar without knowing how I felt,” Cortes-Acosta said explaining the steps he took after hanging up with his coach. “We sparred nine rounds and everything was good, so I said, ‘Let’s go.’ Three hours later, I was on a flight to Qatar. Imagine this, I fly back home from the Dominican Republic for nine hours, I see my daughter to see if the hospital would release her, and then I hopped on a plane for almost 21 hours.”
With official weigh-ins a little over a day away, Cortes-Acosta had no choice but to fly out that same Wednesday he got back to Arizona. It was a 21-hour journey that got him to the scale just in the nick of time.
“When I get to Qatar, I was all swollen, and I get there just a couple of hours before weigh-ins,” Cortes-Acosta recalled. “I’m two pounds over weight, so I have to go train and immediately after getting off the plane. I lose the weight, I weigh in, and I was very happy. From there, we went to go eat a stake and go to bed to fight the next day. The rest is history.”
Cortes-Acosta went on to knock out Gaziev less than 90 seconds into the first round. It was a violent finish that got him a $50,000 Performance of the Night bonus on top of his purse of a new multifight contract he signed prior to the fight.
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What makes his feat even more impressive, is that Cortes-Acosta had just fought two weeks prior, when he knocked out former PFL champion Ante Delija at UFC Fight Night 263 in Las Vegas. He also won a $50,000 bonus for his finish over Delija, where he had to battle adversity as he was badly poked in the eye prior to getting the finish.
“It feels like a dream come true,” Cortes-Acosta said. “Every now and then, I have to pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming. It’s incredible what’s been achieved, and the confidence I had all along to take the fight on short notice and all that. It’s truly incredible.”
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Waldo Cortes-Acosta recounts insane turnaround for UFC Qatar
