Maybe interviewing Luke Rockhold directly after he weighs in isn’t the best idea… but maybe it is.
Luke Rockhold is a massive middleweight. Six weeks out from his UFC 221 headliner, he shared an image on his Instagram story of scales reading 205.4 lbs. In order to make the middleweight championship limit, he has to cut a fair bit.
On Friday night, Rockhold secured his interim middleweight title shot by tipping the scales at 185lbs on the button. The same cannot be said of his opponent Yoel Romero. ‘The Soldier of God’ is ineligible to win the belt on Sunday after two failed attempts to make weight.
Neither man looked in great shape onstage. Of course, both are in outrageously good condition physically, but they were both noticeably dehydrated and drained from the weight cut. Directly after the staredown, Rockhold went backstage to answer some questions from Megan Olivi.
Rockhold was constantly sucking on a bottle to rehydrate himself. While he was comprehensible, it seemed like he wasn’t properly able to articulate himself. This was prevalent from his first answer, a reaction to Romero missing weight.
“Typical. Par for the course. Yoel Romero.”
When he was asked what was said on stage during the staredown, he shook his head. It was clear that for the remainder of the interview, his answers were just going to be that little bit off.
“Same shit. Be professional. Man doesn’t have the cleanest track record.”
"When's the next one champ?"
"What about this one champ?" –
every fat fool who's never even taken a clatter off their Ma, a millisecond after your last fight.
Be smart fighting nation 🙏 https://t.co/jiI0nbdy3w— Conor McGregor (@TheNotoriousMMA) December 9, 2017
Next came Olivi’s longest question.
“Well certainly him missing weight doesn’t effect your performance in the Octagon. When you look at the match-up – southpaw vs southpaw, what are you seeing?”
This resulted in the shortest answer from Rockhold. One word,“Everything.”
Here's our interview with @LukeRockhold, and he's clearly feeling some type of way about @YoelRomeroMMA missing weight… #UFC221 https://t.co/G5aQ44nScp
— FOX Sports: UFC (@UFCONFOX) February 10, 2018
Although the solutions to the weight-cutting problem plaguing MMA aren’t clear, at the very least, interviews like these will make sure we don’t forget about the issue. It’s tough to watch, but it should be.
