Now we know the full story on why Ray Borg missed weight for his fight at UFC on ESPN 2.
The Albuquerque-based competitor clocked in at 137.75 pounds for his scheduled bantamweight fight with Casey Kenney (12-1-1 MMA, 1-0 UFC) on Saturday night’s prelim card in Philadelphia and had to forfeit 20 percent of his purse because of the miss.
But this was no ordinary weight cut gone wrong. Appearing on “The Luke Thomas Show” on Monday, Borg (11-4 MMA, 5-4 UFC) detailed a wild series of events that led to a late-night visit to the hospital in the middle of his weight cut. According to Borg, his hotel lacked a steam room and sauna, so his team went about creating makeshift facilities in his hotel room.
“As crazy as this (expletive) sounds, the bad luck bug almost struck me again,” Borg said. “It sounds crazy, and it sounds (expletive) up because, as I took a step, I took a step and I slipped, and I hit my head on the bathtub.”
That, according to Borg, prompted a visit from the UFC doctor followed by a trip to a local hospital, where he got a CAT scan and a wrist X-ray.
“We were at the hospital ’til about 3 a.m.,” Borg continued. “They did a CAT scan, they did a little X-Ray to my wrist. I hit my wrist trying to catch the fall, and they said, ‘OK, well, you hurt your hand.’ And I said, ‘You know what, I’m not not showing up to this fight, I’m going to make it to this fight, so you know, I feel fine, I can fight.’ And the doctor said OK.”
Borg, however, still had weight to cut, which meant he was back at it just hours before he was supposed to show up for the official weigh-in.
“I was just exhausted, so we stayed up until 5:30 in the morning to cut as much weight as we can in 2 1/2 hours,” Borg said. “And I was just utterly exhausted, so I took about an hour-and-a-half nap, woke back up and just tried to cut that weight.”
But by this point, it was simply too much.
“I’m dead,” Borg said. “I’m literally dead. I just had an hour of sleep in the last 34 hours, so it was my choice to not to finish trying to finish cutting the weight. I was just physically and mentally exhausted from the night before.”
After such an ordeal, Borg wasn’t exactly in tip-top fighting condition, as was demonstrated in his upset loss to Kenney, a late replacement making his UFC debut. The unanimous-decision loss to Kenney marked the second straight defeat for Borg, whose last victory was over Jussier Formiga in March, 2017.
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