UFC Fight Night 52's Amir Sadollah explains two-year absence from MMA

UFC welterweight and “The Ultimate Fighter 7? winner Amir Sadollah didn’t plan to be absent from MMA for two years, but he said he didn’t exactly have a choice.

“Just a string of injuries,” Sadollah told MMAjunkie Radio. “It’s stupid, it’s part of the sport, but sometimes things just pile up. Just unfortunately a much longer stretch of time than I wanted it to be.”

Now set to return at UFC Fight Night 52, Sadollah (6-4 MMA, 6-4 UFC) is looking to rebound when he meets Yoshihiro Akiyama (13-5 MMA, 1-4 UFC) at the UFC Fight Pass-streamed event at Saitama Super Arena in Saitama, Japan.

“I’m excited; I’m definitely ready to be back in there,” said Sadollah, who was shifted to Saturday’s event after being linked to a fight with Nico Musoke at UFC Fight Night 53. “As Joe Silva once said to me, ‘Fight in the UFC, see the world.'”

Sadollah’s injuries, which for the moment remain undisclosed, forced him to withdraw from a fight in May 2013 and prompted him to try teaching MMA in Brooklyn, N.Y., where several of his family members reside.

“I’d never done it before, and I didn’t realize the skill set that being a coach and teacher (requires),” he said. “Being a fighter does not a coach make, that’s for sure. But in a weird way, teaching taught me a lot about basics.”

He also traveled to Thailand, where he trained at a slower pace and fell in love with the culture.

“I was in Bangkok one time, and picture New York times 10, just crowded with people, and there’s this one little sidewalk, and I see people creating a pocket around something, like there’s something on the ground,” he said. “And as I get closer, I see there’s just a cat, stretching out, just totally asleep. That’s the respect people have for life, that a cat would be so comfortable that he can and would sleep on the sidewalk. I don’t know where that would happen elsewhere.”

Since his debut on “The Ultimate Fighter 7? in 2008, Sadollah’s pressing goal has been to catch up as quickly as possible. He had no professional fights when he won the reality show and moved from the East Coast to Las Vegas to work alongside a bevy of top-level fighters at Xtreme Couture. It was a trial by fire as he tried to survive among title contenders with twice his experience.

Over the next six years, he bounced from gym to gym and honed his craft entirely while fighting in the octagon, losing to current champ Johny Hendricks and standout Dong Hyun Kim while racking up wins over Phil Baroni and Damarques Johnson. In his most recent appearance, which came in 2012 at UFC on FUEL TV 5, he was outpointed by onetime welterweight title challenger Dan Hardy.

Sadollah hasn’t walked an easy path compared to other fighters who come into the UFC with an abundance of training, but he’s managed to survive longer than many of them. Only two fighters from his season of “TUF” remain in the promotion. While he doesn’t have the resume of a title contender, he’s carved out a place in the welterweight division.

Akiyama’s place, meanwhile, is uncertain. The Japanese fighter and sometime model/actor also hasn’t fought in two years and just recently turned 39. He has lost his past four UFC bouts and was unsuccessful in lobbying for a fight with Wanderlei Silva. A loss on Saturday might signal the end of his career with the industry-leader.

Both fighters, however, need to prove they’re still got the competitive spark after such a long layoff. Sadollah, for one, said his time away from the sport gave him a chance to ground himself after so many years of toil inside a gym.

“In a weird way, it was a good thing, because it forced me to address other things in my life outside of fighting that for all the years I was fighting and training I didn’t even notice I ignored those things,” he said. “Personal life stuff.”

That, in turn, could make him a better fighter than he was before, but he’ll find out Saturday whether the wait was worth it.

For more on UFC Fight Night 52, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.

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