Jan Blachowicz details finding man hanged in the woods – touches rope for luck

As pre-fight rituals go, Jan Blachowicz touching the rope of a man he once found hanged in a forest is pretty out there.

The Pole is a regular visitor to a Warsaw forest where he takes his dog for a walk, but his usual stroll took a dark turn one day when he came upon a man who’d hanged himself from a nearby tree.

Speaking during a special behind-the-scenes documentary series ahead of UFC 253, Blachowicz said,

This is the last episode before my flight. Today I will tell you a story about a hangman, we will visit my barber and I will show you the last training in Poland. #UFC253 #LegendaryPolishPower pic.twitter.com/2iU1SVzsCJ

— Jan Blachowicz (@JanBlachowicz) September 16, 2020

‘Ok so i’ve found him, I’ve had to call the police and medical help.’

What came next is a notion that some might find unsettling.

‘The cop asked me if I took a piece of rope with me. ‘What for?’ I asked.’

‘For luck. When you find a hanging man, you take his rope for luck. That’s what people believed in the old days.’

‘I checked the internet, and sure enough, that is exactly what people thought and believed in. If you don’t believe me, check for yourself.’

Indeed, a quick Google search does reveal some support for Blachowicz’s claim. Remarkably, the 205lbs star said he has, ‘a 90 percent success rate since I started doing this.’

And by ‘this’, Blachowicz doesn’t mean taking the rope home with him, because you know, that would be too weird. Instead, he prefers to walk back to the tree and touch the rope before a big fight. Now, he doesn’t say exactly when he first found the hanged man. However, the former KSW champion did see his UFC career take a massive turn for the better following a 2017 loss to Patrick Cummings. Since that day, he has won 7/8 fights which is almost 90%.

As if this story wasn’t eerie enough, Blachowicz says he’s taken a film crew to the spot before and the audio was eerily distorted so they couldn’t use it. He’s also told the story to the UFC film crew before but they never used the footage.

‘Maybe the UFC also had the same problem with the sound, I need to ask them about that,’ he said. ‘That’s some ‘Paranormal Activity’ stuff right there.’

The 37-year-old is on the cusp of his first-ever title fight in the UFC. Naturally, he made his usual, morbid pilgrimage to touch the hanged man’s rope.

Will it work its magic against Dominick Reyes at UFC 253?