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.”