After over a decade spent as a middleweight, Robert Whittaker made his light heavyweight debut at UFC 329, dominating Nikita Krylov en route to a third round TKO win. Could the fight have gone any better for “The Reaper?” Maybe if the commentary team hadn’t spent the whole fight taking about how he was too small and looked bloated for the division.
“The commentary called me fat!” Whittaker exclaimed on the Ariel Helwani Show. “Talking about my weight. Did I look that out of shape? I had abs the day
before. I just had some salt. Salt bloat going on.”
While Whittaker was happy to joke about the commentary, he did admit that he had serious concerns about the decision to move up as camp for UFC 329 progressed.
“We already had a lot of nerves coming into this fight off back to back losses, as close as the last one was,” Whittaker said. “And then a middleweight moves up to light heavyweight, everyone’s seen how this story ends a thousand times. So there’s a lot of self imposed pressure on myself and nerves and whatnot.”
“Then seeing all the comments and reading about people saying, ‘Too small,’ etcetera, ‘Too short,’ blah blah blah. And, it was one of those moments, like, you just gotta kinda find the belief. I started to doubt. Listen to the circle that’s important to you. Listen to the the ones that matter. The ones that have the informed information. And, yeah, just keep working, I guess.”
The former middleweight champion delved into the reason he moved up in weight and it came down to being miserable cutting down to 185.
“I was doing so well in middleweight, I think I still could have done well in middleweight,” he said. “I’m a good fighter, and that’s my weight division. I think it just reached a a tipping point where the last lot couple of fights, last couple of camps, I didn’t enjoy. Didn’t enjoy the last fight. Didn’t enjoy the last camp. The way I felt throughout the camp, something needed to change. That’s why I took so much time off between last fight and this fight is something needed to change. I needed to find a love for the sport. A love for the journey.”
“I needed to to change my approach to training, to change just how everything felt. And the light heavyweight transition was the first part of it because the last couple camps, around that week five, four, three mark, I’m starting to feel real fragile. Recovery is just bottomed out, just not feeling good, not feeling great, not performing in the sessions, feeling weak. And then, obviously, fight week and the week before it, I’m just drained, barely eating, just trying to get to that mark where I can cut the weight in the water. So, yeah, this move to light heavy was just exactly what I needed.”
“I think the weight had a big impact on how I felt because we’re emotional creatures and how we feel at the time is how it is, it kinda colors everything we do,” he concluded. “So if I’m feeling drained and lethargic, training isn’t very fun. Nobody likes training when you’re feeling like that. And then obviously, it’s coloring everything else that I’m doing. I’m at home, I’m with the kids, I’m just fatigued. It just wasn’t fun.”
Whittaker is now firmly settled on his decision to fight at 205 and excited to see what could be next given the state of light heavyweight.
“I think the light heavyweight division, especially with Pereira moving out and guys getting injured, there’s a shuffle of names in the division at the moment,” he said. “It is just ripe with opportunity. Like, literally, I could be one good performance away from fighting for the title.”
After seeing what he did at UFC 329, we’re all in on seeing how far Robert Whittaker can take this 205 pound run.
