“I might be blaming it on the weight. I’m blaming the weight, but I’m taking responsibility for myself, understand?”
Glover Teixeira suggests a bad weight cut was responsible for his stoppage loss to Jiri Prochazka at UFC 275, revealing that he was vomiting backstage after making weight.
The former UFC light heavyweight champion doesn’t want to make excuses for his performance and takes full responsibility for the loss but admits the weight cut played a major role in his defeat.
Had he not been throwing up just hours before the fight, Teixeira, who tapped in the fifth round to a rear-naked choke, believes he would have walked away with the victory on Saturday and retained the light heavyweight championship.
“Even though it was nine-thirty at night, I cut the weight at 3:00 in the afternoon and stayed until nine-thirty at night without drinking water, without anything,” Teixeira told Combate in a recent interview (h/t Sportskeeda). “And then when I started to recover, I started to vomit, I started to vomit … I felt like vomiting, I couldn’t do the interview after the weigh-in and that got in the way, got in the way in the fifth round there. I always talk to my students, ‘The weight cut will get in your way, if it’s a tough five-round fight, it will get in your way’ And it got in the way. I think that was it … I’ve never had a recovery like this.”
“The fight was brutal, I got tired, as I told you, I don’t want to blame my camp, I can do the fight again, and I can get tired again. I want you to expose this part, I want to take away all responsibility, because the camp is everything, if I didn’t lose the weight right, he did better than me, you know? If I didn’t lose the weight properly, it was my fault, that’s what I’m talking about, that I have to adjust, so it was totally my fault. I might be blaming it on the weight. I’m blaming the weight, but I’m taking responsibility for myself, understand?”
Teixeira has since requested a rematch with Prochazka and, judging by Dana White’s reaction to the fight, the 42-year-old may get his wish. Both men earned a Fight of the Night bonus on Saturday after participating in what many fans and analysts have labeled one of the greatest light heavyweight title fights in UFC history.