Former UFC Welterweight Champion Johny Hendricks will be making his middleweight division debut at UFC Fight Night 105, where he fights former Bellator Middleweight Champion Hector Lombard. If this move to middleweight doesn’t work out, however, Hendricks thinks his time as a fighter may be up/
“There’s a time to listen to your body and there’s a time not to, and I’ve decided not to listen to it for the last year,” Hendricks recently said during an interview with Submission Radio. “I’ve wanted to move up to ’85 for over a year now. But I still know that I could compete, I know that welterweight was a great division for me, but now it’s not. If I can’t go out to perform, if I’m performing at my worst, and I keep losing, what does that do for me? That’s just a waste of camp and a waste of time and a waste of money. Now it’s really time for me to listen to my body and say, ‘Hey, something’s got to give.’ I’ve either got to retire or I’ve got to move up. And why not? I’ve got one fight left on my contract, why not see what happens at 185?”
Hendricks lost a decision to Neil Magny at UFC 207, he agrees with the fans about who should have won the fight.
“Realistically, I thought I won that fight,” Hendricks said. “And I rewatch it and I rewatch it and I rewatch it. … I pretty much controlled him for 13 minutes, besides a minute of submission and 15 seconds of a submission. But I made a slight adjustment and it went away. And all of a sudden you lose a fight because of that? … So that’s why I’m looking at this going, it’s gotta be the weight. That’s why I want to do my last one at 185. And I tried to move up to 185 before my last fight, but my coaches and everybody said, hey, let’s just try one more at ’70. Yes, I said if I lost I would (retire). … (But) if I fight good at ’85, well then I’m gonna stay there. But if I don’t do good, then guess what? It’s time. I had my fun, I had my time. It’s not worth going out there and training for 12 weeks and then being done, or going out there and just losing. And that’s really what it’s about. Here’s one thing that really leads me to believe that fight was mine – did you hear the boos after that? The whole crowd thought I won that fight. So I don’t want to leave whenever the fans think I’ve won. That’s really where my head’s at: They believe I won that fight, so I’m gonna do one more. I don’t care about retirement.”
UFC Fight Night 105 takes place on Sunday, February 19 from the Scotiabank Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada with Derrick Lewis and Travis Browne headlining
