After multiple failed cuts to the welterweight division’s 170-pound limit, former champion Johny Hendricks was sent packing to the 185-pound middleweight division. In his first fight in this new division, he followed an easy weight cut with a competitive but impressive decision win over former Bellator champ Hector Lombard. Things seemed to be looking up.
Unfortunately, Johny Hendricks’ second middleweight bout, a Sunday showdown with Tim Boetsch, was much less successful. First, he missed weight for the fight. Then, he was turned off by a second-round head-kick and a swarm of uppercuts.
Speaking on a recent episode of Submission Radio, Hendricks explained why he missed weight for this middleweight bout – despite being undersized for the division. Apparently, it all came down to a bout of illness, which he also says affected his performance in the fight.
“Wednesday, something happened and I started running a fever,” he said, (h/t MMAFighting.com). “Thursday, Friday, I’m sitting there going, ‘Oh my gosh.’ It’s funny because I love fans but I think that they’re the most ill-informed people and the reason that I say that is because if y’all are feeling sick, what do y’all do? If you are sick what do you get to do? You get to take a day off.”
“My family was going through sickness for three weeks prior to the fight and I laughed because I didn’t get it. I was super excited. Awesome, nothing’s going on. Until you start cutting weight. I showed up and I think I was 13 [pounds] over and I drank 10 pounds of fluids that day and at that point you’re fighting not only the weight but also your body. It just sucks because 185 is not that hard to make but whenever you’re sick, it is. You’re body’s not gonna give up anything and the next thing you know, you’re trying to turn right around in 48 hours and fight for your life.”
Hendricks then explained how this illness affected him in the fight.
“Whenever I was in there, things weren’t clicking like they should have. I saw a lot of openings, I got his timing down. The only thing he really hit me with was that push kick until he rocked me with that kick. . . Whenever I was sitting there, I thought I was still moving and my coach told me, ‘No, you literally just stood still.’ I really don’t know what I was thinking. Everything he did, I knew. I saw everything. There was nothing he could do and then he threw that high kick and finished it so kudos to him.”
Do you think this is a fair excuse from Johny Hendricks?
This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 6/29/2017.