Hendricks reveals reason he missed weight

Johny Hendricks missed welterweight and then he missed again, then he moved to middleweight. His first fight at 185, vs. the formidable Hector Lobard, was a success, and he declared the cut the easiest of his life. On Sunday he had his second fight at middleweight, vs.Tim Boetsch, and he missed weight by three pounds, and lost.

During a recent appearance on Submission Radio, Hendricks offered an explanation for why.

Wednesday, something happened and I started running a fever,” he said, as transcribed by Jed Meshew for MMA Fighting. “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.

It was just like, you’re running a 102 temperature for two days and you’re playing it that way. You’re running a high temperature and you’re trying to do everything you can. You’re not trying to kill fluids but you’re trying to keep your fluids up a little bit so that way you can fight it. I pretty much just told the commission, ‘Guys, I have to fight this fight.’ Then [the temperature] broke on Friday, late, late Friday like 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning and whenever it broke we tried to hit it hard to get that last little bit off but at that point my body was just saying, ‘Hey, we’re just trying to survive at this point.’

Like I said, it’s not hard to make 85. That’s why I think it’s funny these people are like, ‘Oh he missed weight again.’ Well you know what, you have no idea. Any time you get sick you go to the hospital and what do they do? They put you in IVs and hydrate you up. Why? Because fluids help you fight the sickness. So that’s really what I was trying to do. I was trying not to put on a lot of weight [but also] if I don’t break that sickness, what do I do? Then I don’t get to fight. Then you just wasted 10 weeks of camp for nothing. So you’re in a catch 22.

185 is so easy to make. Right now if they said, ‘You have to fight next week,’ I could make it.

Hendricks also discussed the fight itself.

Whenever I was in there, things weren’t clicking like they should have,” he said. “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.