Ronda Rousey isn’t the only fighter hoping to stage a powerful comeback on Friday night at UFC 207. Former welterweight champion Johny Hendricks is also on the card, and he was hoping to turn his recent fortunes around after a losing skid that saw him go 0-2 over 2016. But that comeback is already starting to go off the rails as Hendricks failed to make weight earlier today, coming in at 173.5 pounds, 2.5 pounds above the allowed 171 pound limit for welterweights.
His fight against Neil Magny will still go on, with Magny getting 30 percent of Johny’s purse.
Johny Hendricks at 173.5. Misses weight for UFC207 pic.twitter.com/E2dvf016v7
— Damon Martin (@DamonMartin) December 29, 2016
This is hardly Hendricks’ first mishap on the scales. His last fight against Kelvin Gastelum in July was switched to a catchweight bout after Johny couldn’t make weight again. And before that, a No. 1 contender fight with Tyron Woodley was cancelled last second after Hendricks had to be rushed to the hospital with kidney stones caused by a rough cut.
This latest flub came at us from a mile away. On Wednesday afternoon an agitated and drawn out Hendricks rambled at the assembled press, claiming he didn’t have enough saliva to talk to them, and demanding they try to make weight before criticizing his past problems. At times he almost seemed to have trouble standing.
None of this can be good for Hendricks mentally or physically, and when MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani asked Johny why he didn’t move up to middleweight, Hendricks didn’t have a good answer for why not. At this point, with him missing weight for his last three fights, the UFC may not give him a choice. He may become the latest fighter banned from competing at his chosen weight class. And honestly, after seeing his condition on Wednesday and today at the weigh-ins, that may be the best thing to ever happen to him.