Johny Hendricks has looked a heck of a lot better since making the weight jump up to 185 pounds.
The former welterweight champ struggled to make the weight limit of 171 pounds after his loss to Stephen Thompson in February of last year, as he missed weight in back-to-back Octagon appearances against Kelvin Gastelum and Neil Magny. He was also scheduled to face Tyron Woodley back in October of of 2015, however, he was forced to pull out of the bout citing complications from his weight cut.
Hendricks finally made the decision to make a jump up in weight and faced off against Hector Lombard in his 185-pound debut, and won the fight via unanimous decision at UFC Fight Night 105 back in February.
Now, “Bigg Rigg” is set to meet Tim Boetsch in the co-main event of UFC Fight Night 112 from Oklahoma City this weekend (Sun. June 25, 2017), and spoke to the UFC about his decision to make the jump to middleweight. Hendricks cited a brief interaction with Joe Silva after missing weight as the moment he knew it was time to go to 185 pounds (quotes via UFC):
“I wish I’d have listened to myself a long time ago because I would have been at ’85 two years ago. As soon as I missed weight with Tyron, I wanted to go to ’85. After this last fight at ’70, as soon as I stepped off the scale, I looked at Joe Silva and said, ‘I’m an ‘85er.’ I’ll never see welterweight again.
“I refuse to go back there. Now that I don’t have to cut weight, I’m training almost all the time because I’m not dreading training; I’m not dreading going to the gym. I’m not looking at this going, ‘Man, if I get back in there, I’m going to have to kill myself to try to make weight.’ Now it’s really been fun.”
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