Alexandre pantoja (right) and Brandon royval (left) fighting in UFC 296. Photo: Reproduction/Twitter @UFC
Despite the quiet victory over Brandon royval No. UFC 296, the flyweight champion (up to 56,7kg) Alexandre pantoja revealed that he suffered a huge scare during the confrontation. In an interview with the ‘Trocação Franca’ podcast, the Brazilian fighter said he started to feel unwell and almost passed out after a submission attempt on the North American in the fourth round.
See too
“I almost blacked out trying to finish it. Coming back from the third to the fourth round, Parrumpinha (Pantoja’s coach) came to me and said: ‘We lost this round’. I'm like, 'What? There’s no way we lost, master’. Parrumpinha is the best coach in the world today, in my opinion, and he said that to give me a sense of urgency because we were fighting an American in the United States and he knows that everything counts. It gives me this sense of urgency, that we needed to win the next round to make sure,” Pantoja said.
Alexandre told details of how he felt during the illness and reveals that he never went through anything similar during his professional career.
“I started with everything and when I got his back, I started to feel bad. I was aware that I was going to finish, man. This has never happened in my life before. I'm still processing what happened. But I started to see the world spinning, brother, like if I was drunk, you lay in bed and everything starts spinning. I was like: ‘Wow, I’m going to get out of here’. I have my back to him and I can’t allow him to leave there because I would be in real trouble”, concluded the champion.
You need login To comment.