“The harder I train, the luckier I get.”
-Renzo Gracie

Yair Rodriguez went into the final round vs. Chan Sung Jung at UFC Fight Night 139 impossibly far behind on the judge’s scorecards, in an extraordinary fight, one fully worthy of the 25th anniversary of the UFC, and by extension, all of Mixed Martial Arts. And then he took it to the next level, one maybe never seen before, in what is at the least the Ko of the year. It was so extraordinary there have been suggestions it was basically a Hail Mary accident.

It wasn’t, as ‘El Pantera’ explained during a recent appearance on Ariel Helwani’s MMA Show. In fact, Yair landed a nearly identical upward spinning elbow in Round two, and just missed with a second try. Helwani asked the fighter if he had practiced the move.

Of course tons of times,” said Rodriguez, as transcribed by Adam Guillen Jr. for MMA Mania, “People near me throughout my career can tell you. If you saw the fight, I threw like five spinning elbows. I kept trying to make him come my way, to make him react and I couldn’t get him until I finally see the moment in the end. I put all my fate on my body and my technique and it was there.”

No one really taught me it, but it’s something I saw ‘Cowboy’ doing in the past. And I kept practicing it. When I was preparing at Cowboy’s ranch, we were preparing for the spinning back elbows because we knew he would open up a lot with his punches because he always comes with hooks and hooks and hooks. I knew if I could make him come my way and go under him, with a kick, flying knee or punch through the middle, I knew something was going to be there. So at the last second everything was perfect, the moment was perfect.

And the fight was only half the battle.

I was dealing with some health issues, and everybody at ‘Cowboy’s’ ranch can tell you about,” revealed Rodriguez. “I have a cyst in my liver is what they told me. I went to hospital the first of this month and did, they put me two bags of IV because I was dehydrated and I was having kidney failure, high blood pleasure. … I didn’t know what was going, maybe something I ate in Mexico before I came to my training camp, I don’t know. I dropped 10 pounds in five days without even trying. It was a very rough week.”