UFC 324: Modestas Bukauskas Undergoes Heart Surgery at 19 Years Old and How Horrific Injury Led Him to Drink Himself to Sleep

In his youth, Bukauskas played tennis and basketball, even moving around the world to pursue the latter, but all roads led him back to fighting.

Once his heart problem was resolved, Bukauskas focused entirely on mixed martial arts – except for a brief side stint aged 24 when he appeared on ITV dating show Take Me Out – and was signed by the UFC with a 10-2 record.

He won his first fight but suffered three consecutive defeats. He broke his kneecap in a defeat to Khalil Rountree in 2021.

The UFC subsequently cut him, and thus began another difficult chapter in the life of the young Bukauskas.

“There were a lot of times just in my room, like inside my four walls with my knee in a cast… A lot of times it was very painful, when I was drinking myself to sleep,” he explains.

Deep down, he knew this was not a sustainable path to athletic success.

“Obviously I’m not proud of it,” Bukauskas says.

“I guess you could say I was always taught at home to be mentally strong, so I never looked at it that way [I was depressed].

“It was my way of escaping the real world.”

Bukauskas hid his drinking from his father. He spent weeks in a dark place in his mind that he had never been before.

But his father and those close to him were a constant source of reassurance, and Bukauskas emerged stronger again.

“You’re just riding that wave,” he says.

“When you look up at the mountain, you’re standing there at the bottom; obviously it looks very daunting, but you’re taking incremental steps.”