Robert Whittaker was suffering from a ton of injuries.
UFC Middleweight champion Robert Whittaker’s withdrawal from his UFC 221 bout against Luke Rockhold was a shock to the MMA world and a major blow to the UFC.
Now, with Rockhold set to face Yoel Romero for the interim title instead, Whittaker went on The MMA Hour to detail the disturbing series of illnesses the forced the withdrawal.
First off, apparently the champ blew out his hamstring.
“I’ve gone into many fights injured. I went into the Yoel Romero fight with a torn MCL, I went into multiple fights with broken hands, and that’s never deterred me. And during my prep and my camp, I did my hamstring — I did blow my hamstring out — but I was willing to work around it. So we just worked around it, threw it on the wall, no explosive sort of stuff, and then I got an abscess infection.”
He says that the infection put him in bed. Then the antibiotics severely drained him of energy and weakened his immune system to the point where he contracted a colon bug. On top of that, during recovery from the infection, he contracted chicken pox:
“It was the sickest I’ve been in my entire life.”
Whittaker says his coaching staff and family confronted him about pulling out of the fight.
“They all went to me and sat me down, almost like an intervention, and said, ‘Rob, there is zero chance you’re going to be able to fight. Even if you did get in there, it is so unsafe for you to go out there with no prep and your body as weak as it is.’”
Robert also said he has a hard time telling people what really floored him was the chicken pox. Usually when one pictures chicken pox, it’s a person with benign little red itchy dots all over their body. According to Whittaker, it’s a bit more intense.
“No, these were like blisters from head to toe all over my scalp, and because I had so many, some of them were popping and getting infected, and then there were fevers and headaches and nausea. It was just the worst thing, not to mention the itch.”
“I was even on the phone with my mom and I was like, ‘Why didn’t you get me vaccinated as a kid?’” he added, laughing. “She was like, ‘I’m sure I did!’ And my face is covered and my skin is red, I’m like, ‘I’m pretty sure you didn’t.’”
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