Former UFC heavyweight champ Junior dos Santos doesn’t credit his loss at UFC 155 to Cain Velasquez being the better fighter that night.
In fact, dos Santos offered a litany of reasons as to why he came up short in his second title defense.
“Really it was my head. I had some personal things going on, a bit of my attention was lacking because of it,” he told Brazilian news outlet Nagradedo MMA.
Aside from his purported psychological impairment heading into the fight, dos Santos had other, more corporeal problems: His creatine levels and his kidneys.
“Soon after the fight I went to the hospital and had a scan, which showed my creatine level was too high. The normal level is up to 300, mine was in 1400,” said dos Santos.
“I also had trouble in the urine and kidneys,” he said. “The explanation of the doctors is that I pushed over the line, I overtrained and problems could have happened even before the fight…I was so good that I ended up crossing the line.”
However, despite these physical maladies, dos Santos primarily blames the loss on his head being elsewhere.
“[The kidney and creatine issues] was the explanation of doctors. Mine is that I was not good with my head, was having personal problems and did not go well mentally in the fight.”
Angsty fans might be tempted to bash dos Santos for resorting to “excuses.” However, let’s remember the first fight between JDS and Velasquez.
Dos Santos knocked Velasquez out in 69 seconds. A Velasquez knee injury was the primary culprit for causing him to lose so decisively. After destroying dos Santos for five rounds in the rematch at UFC 155, everyone who hadn’t believed in the knee injury believed in it—Velasquez looked like an animal.
Thus, it’s totally possible that the reasons dos Santos offered for his poor performance were totally legitimate. Let’s not sacrifice him on the altar of public outrage just yet. After all, it’s totally possible that he earns a rubber match with Velasquez and crushes him just as badly as he did in their first fight.
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