Former UFC welterweight champion Johny Hendricks thought a move to middleweight would solve his weight-cutting issues.
“Bigg Rigg,” though, didn’t account for sickness, which caused him to miss weight this past weekend at UFC Fight Night 112. Hendricks was finished by Tim Boetsch in Oklahoma City, dropping him to 1-1 in his new division.
“I felt like I was moving forward. That second round I really felt like I got his timing down. But you know, it really started the time before that, because like Wednesday something happened and I started running a fever. Thursday, Friday I’m just trying,” he said in an interview with Submission Radio. “My family was going through sickness for like three weeks prior to the fight. And I left and I was like, I didn’t get it. I was super excited. But as soon as you start cutting weight – cause I showed up and I think I was 13 (pounds) over when I showed up. At that point you’re fighting not only the weight but also the body. And I got to where it just, it just sucks because 185’s not that hard to make, but whenever you’re sick, it is.
“Your body’s just not gonna give up anything. And the next thing you know, you’re trying to turn it right around in 48 hours in the fight of your life. And whenever I was in there, it wasn’t like, things weren’t clicking like they should have.”
For Hendricks, the fight was just the end result to a long week. He explained that everything “didn’t go the way I wanted it to” against Boetsch, who landed a head-kick that led to the finish.
“It didn’t go the way that I wanted it to, but it sort of did,” he said. “The fight, I felt like I was pressuring him good, I just had a mental lapse. And you sort of can’t do that whenever you’re in there, definitely whenever you’re moving up weight class.”
