{"id":278461,"date":"2018-06-12T10:50:49","date_gmt":"2018-06-12T17:50:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.tcpcharms.com\/bjpenn\/?p=278461"},"modified":"2018-06-12T10:50:49","modified_gmt":"2018-06-12T17:50:49","slug":"robert-whittaker-explains-what-its-like-to-fight-yoel-romero-he-felt-like-steel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.tcpcharms.com\/bjpenn\/mma-news\/robert-whittaker\/robert-whittaker-explains-what-its-like-to-fight-yoel-romero-he-felt-like-steel\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Whittaker explains what it’s like to fight Yoel Romero: “he felt like steel”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yoel Romero has now been compared to steel by two former opponents. The first man to compare Romero to steel was former UFC middleweight champion Luke Rockhold.<\/a> Now, reigning UFC middleweight champion Robert Whittaker has borrowed this metaphor, using it to describe the incredibly uncomfortable experience of fighting the Cuban behemoth.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis time, he felt like steel,\u201d Whittaker told The Daily Telegraph<\/a> of his second and most recent fight with Romero, which headlined the stacked UFC 225 last Saturday night. \u201cI was punching and kicking him but it wasn\u2019t doing any damage. He was walking forward through everything. It was weird.”<\/p>\n

\u201cMy shots just weren\u2019t stopping him. I\u2019ve fought everyone in the middleweight division \u2014 including Romero previously \u2014 and I\u2019ve never seen anything like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cExcept for my face, all the damage on my body is from me hitting him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whittaker isn’t sure why Romero’s body now feels like steel, when it didn’t in their first fight<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe you get stronger as you get older,” he said of Romero, who is now 41 years old.\u00a0\u201cI assume that\u2019s what happens when you get to your forties.”<\/p>\n

Romero also missed weight for his UFC 225 fight \u2014 albeit only by 0.2 pounds \u2014 which could explain why he felt so sturdy to Whittaker.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe didn\u2019t feel like a middleweight,” Whittaker said.\u00a0\u201cI know you probably agree he doesn\u2019t look like a middleweight and I can tell you he doesn\u2019t feel like one either.”<\/p>\n

Because Romero missed weight for UFC 225, the fight wasn’t technically a title fight, which means Whittaker’s win doesn’t\u00a0technically register as a title defense.<\/p>\n

Whittaker’s next most recent fight, which occurred in July of 2017, was also against Romero. He won that fight by unanimous decision, capturing the UFC interim middleweight title in the process. He was then promoted to undisputed champion when Georges St-Pierre<\/a> vacated that title.<\/p>\n

What do you think of Robert Whittaker’s account of fighting Yoel Romero?<\/p>\n

This article first appeared on\u00a0<\/i>BJPenn.com<\/i><\/span><\/a>\u00a0on 6\/12\/2018. <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yoel Romero has now been compared to steel by two former opponents. The first man to compare Romero to steel was former UFC middleweight champion Luke Rockhold. Now, reigning UFC middleweight champion Robert Whittaker has borrowed this metaphor, using it to describe the incredibly uncomfortable experience of fighting the Cuban behemoth. \u201cThis time, he felt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54430,"featured_media":272356,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[10582,10179],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nRobert Whittaker explains what it's like to fight Yoel Romero: "he felt like steel" | BJPenn.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.tcpcharms.com\/bjpenn\/mma-news\/robert-whittaker\/robert-whittaker-explains-what-its-like-to-fight-yoel-romero-he-felt-like-steel\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Robert Whittaker explains what it's like to fight Yoel Romero: "he felt like steel" | BJPenn.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Yoel Romero has now been compared to steel by two former opponents. The first man to compare Romero to steel was former UFC middleweight champion Luke Rockhold. 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